1 Pre-proof Ratio, 25.2 (2012), 164-76 IRIS MURDOCH AND THE BORDERS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Tony Milligan Abstract Iris Murdoch’s philosophical texts depart significantly from familiar analytic discursive norms. (Such as the norms concerning argument structure and the minimization of rhetoric.) This may lead us to adopt one of two strategies. On the one hand an assimilation strategy that involves translation of Murdoch’s claims into the more familiar terms of property˗realism (the terminology of ethical naturalism and non˗naturalism). On the other hand, there is the option of adopting a crossover strategy and reading Murdoch as (in some sense) a philosopher who belongs more properly to the continental tradition. The following article argues that if familiar Quinean claims about ontological commitment and Murdoch’s account of metaphor are both broadly correct then the assimilation strategy must fail to produce a faithful translation. Nonetheless, Murdoch’s connection to the analytic tradition is more than genealogical, it is more than a matter of her writing (initially) in response to analytic contemporaries before branching off in a more continental direction. While she departs from familiar analytic discursive norms, she continues to accept most of the epistemic values (such as clarity and simplicity) that the norms embody. I. Introduction There may be no satisfactory and uncontroversial way to draw a clear line between analytic and continental philosophy but a distinction of some sort (however revised or carefully reformulated) is hard to do without, even if it appeals only to differences of philosophical temperament. For those who place themselves on the analytic side of the divide, it may be hard to determine what does and does not count as philosophy among the continentals. (A problem that Iris Murdoch shares when she remarks that Derrida is ‘not strictly a philosopher’.) 1 Those on the continental side have no comparable problem. Analytic philosophy is, after all, a bit like violence, hard to define but we all know it when we see it. 1 Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, (London: Penguin, 1993), p.151.