In Realms of Value Perry discusses the fields of philosophy of the natural and social sciences, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion in the context of the “realms” of value. The task of his study is to bring unity and order into these areas, relying on a fundamental definition of value, defining it as any interest in any object.

Arend’s Gifford Lectures, ‘Critique of Heaven and Earth’, delivered in Aberdeen in 1970 and 1972, were published in two volumes: Critique of Heaven (1972) and Critique of Earth (1974). The series sets out to address something of a revolution in the domain of natural theology through an investigation of the works of Karl Marx.

This book, a revised and expanded version of Murdoch’s 1982 Gifford Lectures, is an intriguing, scholarly, but sprawling work that proceeds reflectively through an enormous range of topics, including art and religion, morals and politics, Wittgenstein, metaphysics, deconstruction, Schopenhauer, imagination, and Martin Buber. What Murdoch presents here is not a systematic treatise, but what can be described as ‘a huge hall of reflection full of light and space and fresh air, in which ideas and intuitions can be unsystematically nurtured’.