Iris Murdoch
Oxford
13 November 1990

"Our philosophical tradition, which goes back to Plato, is menaced in this technological post-Nietzchean age by a determinism which undermines our ethics and our concept of truth. Philosophy must not be allowed to fragment away into sociology, anthropology, psychology, logic and various forms of science. The planet needs philosophy. Human beings are moral beings: we must preserve a philosophical discourse which takes this as its fundamental subject matter. The great metaphysicians were great moralists. The center must hold."