Let Me Look Again, Iris Murdoch on Attention, Love and Unselfing

Picture a window in Oxford. Someone stands at the glass with a heavy mind, turning over a small hurt again and again, replaying what was said and what they should have said back.

Then a bird appears.

A kestrel, hovering on the wind, wings trembling, perfectly still in the air. And in one breath the hurt dissolves. The whole bright world comes rushing back in.

That small moment belongs to Iris Murdoch, who wrote it down in 1970. It holds a gift for anyone who wakes up this Sunday carrying a little mental weather. Your heavy mind can lift in an instant, the moment your attention lands on something real and beautiful outside yourself.

This is part of Timeless Authors, our daily series on the writers who change ordinary days. Yesterday Charles Dickens reminded us that we can wake up new. Today Iris Murdoch shows us how love begins with the way we look.

Iris Murdoch (1919 to 1999)
Irish born novelist and philosopher, author of twenty six novels and a luminous teacher of attention, love and the good.

The Teaching of Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch taught that the moral life happens in the quiet moments of looking. When we turn a just and loving attention toward people, nature and art, our anxious, self focused mind softens, and the real world comes into view. She called this unselfing, and she saw it as the doorway to both goodness and joy.

Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered.
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (1970)

I love how ordinary this is. A window, a mood, a bird. Murdoch, one of the great thinkers of her century, placed the whole drama of the moral life right there, in a single glance out the window.

In Their Own Words, Favorite and Lesser Known Quotes

Murdoch wrote in two voices, as a philosopher in essays like The Sovereignty of Good and as a novelist in books like The Sea, The Sea. These short lines come from both.

On Love

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch, The Sublime and the Good, Chicago Review (1959)

Read that one slowly. Love, for Murdoch, begins as a kind of waking up. The person across the table has a whole inner world as vivid as yours. Seeing that clearly is the first act of love.

Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.
Iris Murdoch, The Sublime and the Good, Chicago Review (1959)

So love becomes an adventure. Every person you love is a country you get to keep discovering.

On Attention

I have used the word ‘attention’, which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality.
Iris Murdoch, The Idea of Perfection, in The Sovereignty of Good (1970)

A just and loving gaze. What a beautiful thing to aim for. Murdoch borrowed the word from the French philosopher Simone Weil, and she made it the center of her whole moral vision.

Let me look again.
Iris Murdoch, The Idea of Perfection, in The Sovereignty of Good (1970)

These four words come from her most famous example, a mother who quietly decides to see her daughter in law with fresh, kinder eyes. Murdoch noticed that the change happened entirely inside the mother, through patient looking. Four words, and a relationship transforms.

Moral change comes from an attention to the world whose natural result is a decrease in egoism
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992)

This is the gentle engine of growth. You change by looking outward, with curiosity, and the self quietly makes room.

On Small Joys

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea (1978), spoken by its narrator, Charles Arrowby

Murdoch could be playful too. This line comes from the novel that won her the Booker Prize, and it feels like permission. A good pear. A warm bath. A morning walk. Joy grows in small, frequent doses.

Who Was Iris Murdoch?

Jean Iris Murdoch was born on July 15, 1919, in Phibsborough, Dublin. A few weeks later her family moved to London, where she grew up as a deeply loved only child.

She studied at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating with first class honours in 1942. During and after the war she worked at the Treasury in London and then with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, helping displaced people in refugee camps across Europe.

After postgraduate study in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge, she became a fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, in 1948 and taught philosophy there until 1963.

Her first novel, Under the Net, appeared in 1954. Twenty five more followed, including The Bell (1958) and The Sea, The Sea, which won the Booker Prize in 1978. Her philosophy grew alongside the fiction, in The Sovereignty of Good (1970) and in her Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, which became Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals.

In 1956 she married the literary critic John Bayley, and their marriage lasted more than four decades. She was made a Dame in 1987. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1997 and died in Oxford on February 8, 1999. The Gifford Lectures archive and her Wikipedia biography tell her story in full.

What Unselfing Really Means

Unselfing can sound like erasing yourself. Murdoch meant something far warmer.

The self, in her picture, tends to spin a cozy fog of worry, comparison and private stories. Unselfing is simply the moment the fog parts. You see the kestrel. You hear the friend. You notice the light on the kitchen wall. And you feel more alive, more present and more yourself than you did a moment before.

Nature, art and good attention to other people were her three favorite doorways. Each one invites you outward, and each one sends you home lighter.

So instead of asking how do I fix my mood, try asking what beautiful thing is right in front of me?

Science Has a Name for the Kestrel Moment

In 2020, a team led by Virginia Sturm at UC San Francisco, working with awe researcher Dacher Keltner, invited older adults to take a short walk once a week for eight weeks. One group was asked to look for awe along the way, noticing the vastness of trees, skies and ordinary wonders.

The awe walkers reported more joy and more warm, connected feelings like compassion and gratitude, and less day to day distress. And when they took selfies during their walks, something lovely happened. Week by week, they made themselves smaller in the frame and gave more space to the world around them, with bigger smiles. The researchers titled their paper Big Smile, Small Self.

That is Murdoch’s kestrel, photographed. When the self takes up a little less room, joy takes up more.

There’s a lineage here I love. Murdoch borrowed attention from Simone Weil, and the On Being community has carried Weil’s idea forward too, in a reflection on deep listening inspired by Krista Tippett’s conversation with the artist Ann Hamilton. Attention, in that tradition, becomes a kind of prayer.

If you loved this, our posts on William James and attention and Walt Whitman on everyday wonder sing in the same key.

Why This Teaching Fits Today

It’s Sunday, November 1, the first morning of a new month. The clocks fell back overnight, so this morning arrives with a little extra light and a little extra time.

It’s also All Saints’ Day in many traditions, a day for remembering the good people who shaped us. Murdoch would love that. Remembering someone with a just and loving gaze is attention at its most tender.

Outside, the last bright leaves are coming down and the autumn sky is wide open. A perfect morning to go looking for your kestrel.

Your Morning Practice, the Kestrel Walk

This takes about fifteen minutes.

Name your weather. Before you head out, write one line about whatever is weighing on your mind this morning. Then set it down.
Walk and look outward. Take a fifteen minute walk, or sit by a window, and look for one thing that makes you feel small in the best way. A bird, a tall tree, the sky.
Stay with it. When you find it, give it one full minute of just and loving attention. Notice color, movement, detail.
Look again at someone. Bring one person to mind and say quietly, let me look again. Find one new good thing about them.
Give yourself a small treat. End with a little joy, a warm drink, a favorite song, a square of chocolate.

Make it automatic with an if then plan. If I catch myself replaying a small hurt, then I look out the nearest window for one full minute.

Essential Reading

The Sovereignty of Good (1970), her short, luminous book on attention, love and the good. Start here.
The Sea, The Sea (1978), her Booker Prize winning novel about love, illusion and the sea.
The Bell (1958), a warm, wise novel about a community trying to live well together.
Existentialists and Mystics, a collection of her essays, including The Sublime and the Good.
Iris Murdoch at the Gifford Lectures archive, a clear overview of her life and work.

Quick Answers About Iris Murdoch

Who was Iris Murdoch?

Iris Murdoch (1919 to 1999) was an Irish born British novelist and philosopher. She taught philosophy at St Anne’s College, Oxford, wrote twenty six novels including the Booker Prize winning The Sea, The Sea, and wrote influential works of moral philosophy such as The Sovereignty of Good.

What did Iris Murdoch mean by unselfing?

Unselfing is her word for the moment our anxious, self focused thoughts fall away as we attend to something real and beautiful outside ourselves, like nature, art or another person. She saw it as the beginning of goodness and a source of joy.

What is the kestrel passage?

In The Sovereignty of Good, Murdoch describes looking out a window in a resentful mood and suddenly seeing a hovering kestrel. In that moment her brooding self disappears and she sees only the bird. It is her most famous image of unselfing.

What did Iris Murdoch say about love?

In her 1959 essay The Sublime and the Good she wrote that love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. For Murdoch, love begins with truly seeing another person.

Where should I start reading Iris Murdoch?

The Sovereignty of Good is the best doorway into her philosophy. For her fiction, many readers begin with The Sea, The Sea or The Bell.

Your Kestrel Is Out There This Morning

Think back to that window in Oxford, and the heavy mind that lifted the instant a bird appeared on the wind.

Your kestrel is out there too. A bird, a face, a patch of November sky, waiting for your just and loving gaze.

Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered.
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (1970)

What will you look at with fresh eyes today?

Start early. Start looking. Start today.

Complement this with William James on Attention, Habit and Belief, Charles Dickens on Kindness and a Change of Heart and Put On the Mask Tonight and Meet Your Original Face.

Want a calm, intentional start every day? Hold Until Sunrise is our little app for mornings that matter.

For a little goodness in your inbox every Sunday, join us here.

With love, Paolo

Sources

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Carry this into tomorrow morning

The practice in this post lives in an app we built, Hold Until Sunrise. Your alarm becomes a moment of stillness. You hold your phone, rest with one affirmation, and let the sunrise welcome you into the day. Begin tomorrow gently and on your own terms. Find it on the App Store here.