ABSTRACT
I consider, and provide a critique of, Iris Murdoch’s lifelong engagement with Plato, and her idiosyncratic use of ideas and themes that she found in Plato’s works. The chapter is arranged thematically and focusses on some of her favourite and often-quoted passages, investigating what she saw and what she missed in picking these themes out and using them repeatedly over many years and in several contexts. The themes covered include beauty, poetry and love, Plato’s supposed mistrust of art, the Theory of Forms, Socrates’ disapproval of writing in the Phaedrus, and material about language and falsity in some later dialogues by Plato.
