Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

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For those interested in the history of philosophy most of this book is as interesting and engaging as anything on the market. The main part of the book begins and ends with this incident, illustrating the commitment of Anscombe and the others to the real-life importance of moral philosophy. The book focuses mainly on the 1930s to the 1950s, following the four from their undergraduate years to the start of their professional careers. From the point of view of a person from India, a country that was colonised by the British, it all seems quite self - indulgent. In the 1970s and 80s, Carol Gilligan discovered that this difference is the crux of what distinguished the hitherto neglected ways of thinking of girls and women from those of their male counterparts who had been viewed as models of mature moral thought.

This kind of book is often riddled with speculation, but the authors interviewed Mary Midgley as a primary source, who was the only one still alive before this book was published. Foot's Trolley Problem encapsulates the genuine questions surrounding AI (as opposed to the silly ones, like the paper clip issue), while Midgley tackles the possibly even more significant question of our place in, and relation to nature, a sort of wonderful synthesis of ontology with ethics.The book is a unique and compelling document for those who know only the slim outlines of these women’s lives and works. From the point of view of Westerners, in a world coming to terms with the Second World War, it may offer insights.

The school’s founder and headmistress, Olive Willis, took inspiration from the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. And so many of the central figures in British philosophy – and elsewhere in Europe – have been male, mostly bachelors, mostly socially isolated or even alienated.Mary may have dodged past Iris in Mrs Z’s hallway that summer, belongings and shoelaces trailing, head buzzing with Greek declensions.