Yours Truly, or Free Expression in the Post-War: Murdoch, Anscombe, Orwell

Abstract: Speaking the truth, speaking truthfully: on what occasions do these notions coalesce? This essay examines how appeals to "objective truth" and "brute facts" in post-war writings by George Orwell and Elizabeth Anscombe provide the warrant for uncompromising critique of illiberalism and ideological conformity. Investigation of the related strategies of the cultural critic and the philosopher is framed by discussion of Iris Murdoch's important challenge to the severance of fact and value in contemporaneous philosophical discourse. All three writers engage in sustained reflection on the interdependence of thought and language, and on the ethical and political implications consequent to that recognition.