Jake Murdoch's Under The Net

Though innumerable philosophers over the centuries have ruminated on humanity’s inability to grasp absolute truths or genuine objectivity with regard to the world, the famous 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was the first to give the concept a name: perspectivism. Perspectivism is the belief that all conceptions of the world are from discrete individual perspectives, and that a categorical truth is impossible to arrive at since all perspectives can claim equal validity in the grand scheme of truth. Under the Net, written by philosopher Iris Murdoch, is greatly concerned with the notion of perspectivism in the case of the protagonist Jake Donoghue, whose fallacious perspective of his relationships with significant people in his life leads him on a wild-goose chase across London to solve conflicts that don’t exist and to inadvertently encounter knowledge he never intended to discover. …show more content…
The first manifestation of this self-important notion of Donoghue’s was with the introduction of his best friend Finn, introduced as “an inhabitant of my universe” (Murdoch 9). Jake refuses to give Finn credit for any capacity for autonomy outside of his relation with Jake, even going so far as to claim that “it’s somehow clear that we aren’t equals” (Murdoch 7). Much like the old world’s faith in the geocentric model of the solar system in which the Earth serves as the gravitational center of the universe, Donoghue’s firm self-absorption distracts him all indications of the reality of the world he lives in. He watches as all his convictions prove false one by one, the make believe world he vainly crafted for himself splintering wall by wall. Even the ever faithful Finn leaves him in the end, resolved to travel to Ireland in search of a deeper connection with his