Murdoch and Weil on what separates us from reality
Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil claim that attention is the necessary condition for the mind to access reality, and that attention is not only an epistemic, but a moral faculty. While Murdoch is inspired by Weil, I argue that their understanding of attention and the process of moral perception through attention differs significantly because of the different role they assign to the self. On the one hand, attention provides access to reality which is necessarily mediated by our capacities, history, and worldview. On the other, attention provides a more complete removal of all that pertains to the historical individual, tending towards an ideal of impersonality. In this talk I examine the advantages and disadvantages of each conception. If attention is personal, how does it provide access to a shared, even objective, reality? If attention is impersonal, is it really possible to attend and divest ourselves of who we are and what we know? The answers to these questions also bear on the issue of in what way, exactly, attention has moral relevance.
SILVIA CAPRIOGLIO PANIZZA | CoRe project Senior Researcher
Cycle of Seminars: Conservation and Transformation in Ethics and Religion
Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, FBK-ISR
The speaker will connect remotely.
The event will be held ONLINE in English.
Registration by October 24, 2025 at 12:00 a.m. is required in order to arrange the connection.
Speakers
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Caprioglio Panizza - Guest SpeakerCoRe project Senior ResearcherSilvia Caprioglio Panizza is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College Dublin. Previously she worked in Norwich, Cambridge, Rome, and Tübingen. She is the author of The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil (Routledge), co-editor of The Murdochian Mind (Routledge) and co-editor and co-translator of Simone Weil’s literary works (Bloomsbury). Her work focuses on moral psychology, particularly on question relating to attention, trust, moral modality, and how these bear on animal ethics.
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Registration to this event is mandatory.
Registration closed on 24/10/2025.
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Organizers
The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.