The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of a unique experiment by the Rugby Football League, to apply the American professional team sports model to its game, making it the first British sport ever to attempt this. It investigates the economic, financial and social changes, which have occurred within the sport of rugby league, since the introduction of the 'Super League'. The adoption of the American professional team sports model is based on increasing the uncertainty of outcome of games in order to ensure profit maximisation of the clubs. This has raised a number of issues, pertaining to both the game of rugby league itself, the difference between American and British sport, and the ever increasing effect of television revenues and mass media on sport. The adaptation of the model by rugby league officials has resulted in decisive changes to the way the game is played and how the Rugby Football League is run. A change to three divisions from two, the introduction of a 'Super League' copying football's Premiership and a switch from the traditional winter game to a summer season has taken place. Also critical has been the move from terrestrial to satellite television and the effect of this move on network externalities that could influence the long-term future of the game. The £87million financial investment from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation provided the catalyst for change, in exchange for the five-year exclusive broadcasting rights to the game. The American model was utilised in order to try and financially stabilise the league through the process of profit maximisation. The need for equilibrium within the league also led to the utilisation of various restrictive controls, all of which are common-place in the United States. After critically evaluating the relevant literature, attention is turned to testing the effect of the experiment of applying the American model to British Rugby League. A five-strand approach has been adopted using data both pre and post, the introduction of Super League, utilising nine, case study-clubs throughout the study. Firstly, any change in uncertainty of outcome was examined using the standard deviation of Win/Loss percentage adapted from the approach by Noll (1988) and Scully (1989). Demand for the live matches through attendance figures and broadcasting demand, using audience viewing data were examined. The third strand examines whether the predicted outcome of the American model, and increases in revenue and profit, have been achieved. Finally, two social surveys were carried out on three major stakeholder groups, club officials, players and supporters. The results indicate that the application of the American Professional Team Sports model to rugby league did not achieve the predicted outcome of increased uncertainty, attendance and ultimately, revenue. The reasons for this can be explained by the partial implementations of the model and non-market factors, which appear to be much more significant within British Rugby League than in American sports. The over-riding results suggest that regardless of structural or organisational changes, rugby league is destined to remain a northern minority sport.

Murdoch considers herself a 'Christian fellow-traveller', 'a kind of Platonist' and a 'sort of Buddhist', all of which summarise her spirit of writing very well. Iris Murdoch places a very serious obligation on the artist to present reality to his/her observers/readers. In almost all her philosophical articles, books, and interviews, she expresses with great emphasis the task of art, especially prose literature, as a form of education for moral development. In that sense, we can call her a moralist and a 'philosophical' novelist. With her 'Novels of the Good' Iris Murdoch is inviting the reader for a 'journey into the iris', saying: 'I am the Iris; come into me and see. ' The message of her novels is not of 'philosophy' but of everyday moral reality. In other words, reading Murdochian novels is reading morals. This is the main argument in this study. The moral education (preception) of the reader by Iris Murdoch is to 'realise' (receive) the 'perception' of the other--hence the title of the thesis--through her 'novels of character'. For Murdoch, appreciating a work of art is no different than knowing another person(s). The good artist and the good person have, in that respect, the same moral discipline. And this disciplined attention brings with it the true perception and clarity and morally right behaviour. The reader has to attend with moral responsibility to the work of art because it is through literature that s/he can enlarge his/her vision and inner space. The thesis is divided into two main sections: the moral precepts and their exemplification as concrete everyday examples in her novels themselves. The Introduction provides the 'philosophical' and theoretical background for Murdoch's 'Novels of the Good'. Included here is a dictionary of some of the major 'concepts', or rather 'precepts' that Murdoch uses both in her novels and her philosophical articles and books, in order to train her reader to gain ethical vision. Also included in this chapter is a section on reading and readers through structuralist and reader-oriented theories in contrast to or comparison with Murdoch's conception/perception of the 'reader' in her novels. Chapter I switches on the 'machine', Murdoch's &camera-eye' on the egoistic human 'psyche', which Murdoch likens to a machine. Chapter 11 discusses this 'machine' in close-up, that is through first-person narrative novels. Chapter 111, which includes novels that have philosophers at the centre, throws a 'light' on philosophy and everyday reality. Chapter IV explores the importance of death in everyday life. However, although the chapters are divided under different titles, the novels discussed in each chapter can be related to the rest as Murdoch discusses the same precepts recurrently in different contexts which gives her novels the 'serial' characteristic. Each novel is part of the reader's pilgrimage to the Good to understand his/her limitations in the face of the contingent reality represented in her fiction through free individual characters. To enter the Murdochland is to enter the cycle of 'arriving at not arriving'.

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In chapter one, I describe the different conceptions of self that Murdoch and Nussbaum have, and I show how these affect their depictions of human good. And I relate how each one defends the internal logic of her claims against the critique of moral relativism. I examine Iris Murdoch's conception of reality and consciousness in the distinctive way that she fuses them to a transcendent morality. / In chapter two, I turn to Murdoch's description of the journey from illusion to reality and the role of love or eros in this journey. I examine the many points of intersection between her description of the escape from selfishness and Wendy Farley's (1996) theory of how we acknowledge the other through a type of attention that she calls eros for the other . / In Chapter three, I discuss the problem that evil poses for Murdoch's moral philosophy, and how Murdoch and Farley interpret the experience of the void as yearning for relation. In the conclusion of this thesis, I present Murdoch's views on form as the consolation of human yearning. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis develops a complex theoretical model for conceptualizing the relationships among philosophy, religion, and art and, then, examines the philosophical writings and the novels of Iris Murdoch from this perspective. The theoretical model in its most general form is based on the premiss that philosophy, religion, and art can be thought of as conventionally defined linguistic fields analogous to Wittgensteinian language-games. Relations among the linguistic fields are, in turn, analysed as exclusive ("Disparate" Model), inclusive ("Reductionist" Model), or interactional ("Dialectical" and "Tensional" Models), the latter pair being most appropriate for figurative language, the former pair for non-figurative language. The Dialectical and Tensional Models are assimilated, respectively, to Roman Jakobson's theory of metaphor and metonymy as the fundamental poles of language. Emphasis falls upon the continuum between the dialectical-metaphoric and the tensional-metonymic poles as the area in which creative, imaginative activities, such as the writing of novels or deliberation upon ethical problems, takes place. Iris Murdoch's theories of "crystalline" and "journalistic," "open" and "closed" novels and the related ways of thinking are coordinated with this continuum as a paradigm. Moreover, a creative tension is revealed in her philosophical writings between a resisted impetus towards totalizing explanations and the experience of the inherent contingency of philosophical thought. Thus, there is in Murdoch's philosophy, as in her creative prose, an exploration of the dynamics between the dialectical-metaphoric pole of thought and language and the tensional-metonymic pole, with an increasing, though never finally realized tendency towards the tensional-metonymic pole. Detailed analyses of Murdoch's aesthetic and ethical thought and of a wide selection of her novels illustrate this thesis.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1957. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 498-507).

Dissertção (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasilia, Instituto de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Filosofia, 2010. / Submitted by Raquel Viana (tempestade_b@hotmail.com) on 2011-06-16T19:41:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2010_RafaelSilvaPinto.pdf: 355277 bytes, checksum: c2600acaea6a4ecaf101f2422c62a9ad (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Guilherme Lourenço Machado(gui.admin@gmail.com) on 2011-06-17T13:07:41Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2010_RafaelSilvaPinto.pdf: 355277 bytes, checksum: c2600acaea6a4ecaf101f2422c62a9ad (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-06-17T13:07:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2010_RafaelSilvaPinto.pdf: 355277 bytes, checksum: c2600acaea6a4ecaf101f2422c62a9ad (MD5) / Interpretação da filosofia moral de Iris Murdoch. A presente dissertação é estruturada em torno de três temáticas correlatas a fim de buscar uma compreensão abrangente da ética e da metafísica da filósofa. São elas: o pluralismo das visões morais, o bem e o vazio. A pergunta fundamental que orienta a investigação é sobre a possibilidade ou não de compatibilizar o pluralismo das visões morais e a soberania do Bem. Esta relação ocorre por meio de uma filosofia moral concebida como iconoclasmo criativo, que se nutre da tensão entre forma e contingência, explorando as fissuras e as ambigüidades de vários cenários e conceitos morais tais como retratados por sistemas filosóficos, pelas obras de arte, pela religião e tantas outras atividades humanas investigadas. Por meio da crítica de correntes filosóficas preponderantes, a filósofa delineia o seu programa de recuperação de conceitos e imagens metafísicos, esclarecendo a sua centralidade para o pluralismo moral, concebido como a exploração imaginativa do mistério vinculado às visões morais dos indivíduos. O caráter assistemático de sua filosofia bem como a pluralidade de formas adotadas para investigar cenários morais diversos integram a sua concepção de moralidade como uma peregrinação individual em busca do Bem, que envolve a purificação do Eros e o aperfeiçoamento dos estados de consciência. O Bem é a melhor metáfora encontrada para exprimir que a moralidade não pode ser descartada da vida humana. O seu caráter transcendente visa à preservação da consciência moral e do julgamento ético individual como ferramentas críticas para apontar os limites e as falibilidades de toda e qualquer teoria. A sua filosofia é um convite ao leitor para empreender sua própria jornada espiritual, é uma provocação para que os indivíduos não considerem o discernimento entre o bem e o mal uma mera questão de escolha ou de vontade arbitrária, mas um engajamento existencial na tarefa inesgotável de atenção, purificação da energia espiritual, aprimoramento da visão moral, que envolve tanto um aprofundamento íntimo da compreensão do vocabulário moral como uma transformação moral interior. A discussão do problema do mal face ao realismo moral abre caminho para uma análise mais acurada do conceito de vazio, que se revela como idéia-chave para a compreensão do Bem e da própria atividade filosófica. _______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / Interpretation of Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy. The present dissertation is structured upon three issues correlated in order to propose a general grasp of ethics and metaphysics in Iris Murdoch’s thought. The issues are: the pluralism of moral visions, the good and the void. The fundamental question, which guides the investigation, is about the possibility of harmonizing her pluralism of moral visions and the sovereignty of the Good. This relation comes about by means of a moral philosophy conceived as creative iconoclasm, which is fostered by the tension between form and contingency, exploring fissures and ambiguities of several moral pictures and concepts as portrayed by philosophical systems, by works of art, by religion and so many others human activities investigated. By means of the criticism of predominating philosophical currents, the philosopher draws her recuperation program for metaphysics’ concepts and pictures, showing its centrality for moral pluralism, thought as an imaginative exploration of the mystery attached to individuals’ moral visions. The unsystematic feature of her philosophy, as well as the plurality of adopted forms in order to investigate different moral scenarios, integrates her conception of morality as an individual peregrination in search of the Good, which involves the purification of Eros and the improvement of states of consciousness. The Good is the best metaphor found to express that morality cannot be eliminated from human life. Its transcendent feature intends to preserve moral consciousness and individual ethical judgment as critical tools to point limits and failures of every theory. Her philosophy is an invitation to the reader to undertake his own spiritual journey. It’s a challenge to individuals not to regard the discernment between good and evil as a matter of choice or arbitrary will, but as an existential commitment to the ceaseless task of attention, to the purification of spiritual energy, to the improvement of moral vision, which involves an intimate deepening of the comprehension of moral vocabulary as well as an interior moral transformation. The discussion of the problem of evil faced with the Good as a reality principle enables a more accurate analysis of the concept of the void, that reveals itself as a key idea for the comprehension of the Good and of the philosophical activity itself.

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