Obedience and reality in the philosophy of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch

Obedience plays a central role in the history of Christian thought, with theologians such as Aquinas and St Benedict emphasising the importance of obeying superiors as a way of obeying God (ST3.105; Benedict & Fry 1998). Murdoch and Weil both want to retain the central place of obedience in ethics, but neither is fully committed to all the metaphysical doctrines of Christianity. Weil and Murdoch, I suggest, offer one alternative picture to this Christian ideal of obedience by appealing to a Platonic metaphysic, where a principle of "obedience to reality"(1951; 1970) enables us to live according to Truth and Goodness.