Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

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Late in her life I interviewed Midgley, who still spoke in dismissive terms of Ayer, though she claimed he had renounced his views (which was not entirely true). She spoke of a “life force” and was scathing about what she called the “scientism” of her new bete noire, Richard Dawkins. Engaging. . .Stories that rival in passion and intrigue anything that Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels have to offer and contain much to interest specialists as well as general readers.” This work is something remarkable . . .It is a tale of philosophy expressed in the story of four friends. . . Metaphysical Animals is terrific; women philosophers on women philosophers.”

There are a couple of prominent themes in the book. The first is the fact that they were all women. This is why I decided to read it and how the book is marketed. It's certainly covered although not extensively. Nevertheless, it's very true that at the time it was a world of men, and philosophy, in particular, was heavily biased against women. A funny example is Elizabeth’s first lecture, which she gave in trousers. It became a huge controversy at the time, requiring an official statement by the clerk that she needed to become "appropriately dressed", meaning a skirt. She ended up managing a compromise where she would go to school in her trousers, but change to a skirt in a changing room before going to lecture. There are many other examples where women were clearly not taken seriously just because of their gender, and overall barriers to being part of philosophy. The void that men left when they were sent off to the front made space for women in all fields, and British philosophy was transformed by this shift. Philosophy from a female perspective allowed for a genuine curiosity freed from the posturing and arrogance so many young men would bring into the classroom, and allowed the influence that their friendships, romances (and later on, experiences as mothers) had on them to shape their views. It's particularly interesting to juxtapose these to those of the solitary existences of the men, most often unmarried, who are overwhelmingly taught as the great philosophical thinkers. Le Guin puts forth a similar view on this subject in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places.Irresistible. . . Highly evocative . . . Bring[s] to life an important episode in intellectual history, and [has] made me again grateful that I was for a time a contemporary of these unforgettable women.” Overall, for readers interested in philosophy or even just this cultural period, this is an enjoyable and rewarding book about four fascinating women whose philosophy deserves more attention. It will probably make you want to read more by these thinkers, and it might even make you want to "do" philosophy!

Absorbing. . .each of this book’s subjects produced work that, in seeking to reconnect ‘human life, action and perception’ with morality, remains vitally relevant.” The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch were philosophy students at Oxford when most male undergraduates and many tutors were conscripted away to fight in the Second World War. Together, these young women, all friends, developed a philosophy that could respond to the war’s darkest revelations. In the late 1930s, British philosophy, at least at Oxford, was dominated by AJ Ayer, whose groundbreaking book Language, Truth and Logic was published in 1936. Ayer was the chief promoter of logical positivism, a school of thought that aimed to clean up philosophy by ruling out large areas of the field as unverifiable and therefore not fit for logical discussion.Murdoch is already well-known as a novelist and as the subject of a Hollywood biopic starring Kate Winslet and Judi Dench. Foot's name is not so well-known, but the so-called "trolley problem" that she originated has become famous in recent years thanks to the TV show The Good Place. Anscombe and Midgley are still largely unknown outside of philosophy departments. This book serves as a welcome introduction to the lives and moral/ethical philosophies of these four impressive thinkers. The narrative is of four brilliant women finding their voices, opposing received wisdom, and developing an alternative picture of human beings and their place in the world. They studied among refugee academics who taught Greek and Latin in small apartments and filled the streets of north Oxford with sounds of eastern Europe. And they shared their ideas – in cafes, on sofas, in common rooms. It is a tale that is rightly attracting attention, not just in this book but also in Benjamin Lipscomb’s excellent The Women Are Up to Something, published by Oxford University Press at the end of last year. To read this story is to be reminded of the institutional barriers preventing women from studying philosophy Even within its own defined terms, Metaphysical Animals isn’t entirely convincing in making its case. It’s hard to get an objective sense of where these four women stood in terms of influence in the greater scheme of philosophy, either as individuals or as a group. Indeed, it’s not entirely clear whether they ever amounted to a group beyond being friends. I wanted to like this book, but ultimately I think it could have been so much better. I find the authors’ use of first names deeply annoying. It’s overly familiar to our main characters, which annoys my feminist sensibilities, as well as some well known philosophers. I hated the references to Ayer as Freddie, but almost threw the book against the wall when they referred to Kant as Immanuel. Forget the rudeness; it’s unkind to readers to have to do mental calculations to figure out who they’re talking about. Ayer is Ayer and Kant is Kant.

Meticulously researched, Metaphysical Animals paints a vivid portrait of the friendship between four remarkable female philosophers.”As already noted, the book serves as kind of an origin story for the four philosophers; the main part of the book follows them only to the 1950s, when they were just beginning their careers. Their work after that is touched on only briefly in the final "Afterwards" chapter. As a result, their most important work is not described in detail here. This is a bit of a disappointment, but it is understandable, as an adequate presentation of each woman's mature work would probably have doubled the length of the book, at least. Another slight defect is that the book begins with a preface that summarizes the argument of the book, as if readers need to have the argument spoon-fed to them in advance. I recommend skipping that preface (or at least saving it for later) and starting with the chapter about the Truman incident. Otherwise, the book is excellent: the biographical content is vividly narrated, and the philosophy is described and summarized as clearly as possible given the demands of brevity (although it does help to have some general knowledge of philosophy before reading). The problem, of course, with philosophy is: where do you start and where do you end? It’s an overarching discipline in which people write whole books on strictly limited concepts. What level of knowledge should be assumed of the reader? Lurking around the edges of Midgley’s thought was something mystical and celebratory that left her excluded from mainstream philosophy Philippa, reared as an aristocrat by governesses who taught her nothing, took the softer option of PPE (now the common choice of future British politicians) and achieved a first as well. But only now can I appreciate what a brilliant ethical philosopher she was. In a climate dominated by linguistic philosophers speaking an ‘ordinary language’ and treating matters of good and evil as purely emotional preferences (Ayer) or arbitrary commands (Hare), Foot rediscovered the ethical principles expounded by Aristotle and Aquinas and developed a theory of Natural Goodness. In our debased colloquial language it sounds to some today like an ingredient advertised in flavoured fruit juice, but simply means that virtuous behaviour is natural in us as human beings living with each other. Aristotle believed we could be good at living just as we can be good at sport or carpentry, and that virtuous qualities such as honesty and courage and prudence (phronesis in Greek) were the qualities that enable us to do so. I used to regret that when I was at Georgetown our philosophy curriculum was so weighted with scholastic tradition that I was utterly unsuited to what passed for philosophy in most secular American universities. Reading Natural Goodness now made me take my old copy of Aristotle’s Ethics off the shelf. My Jesuit education had seemed like old junk in the attic, but like on Antiques Roadshow, Philippa Foot revalued it as a priceless heirloom. Still, I find Anscombe’s Roman Catholic writings annoying – I wonder if C. S. Lewis was thinking of her when he suggested that Just War theory was devised for princes, to deter a robber baron about to send his knights to bash up another robber baron’s demesne, rather than a citizen in a democracy faced with a draft notice. The Roman Catholic articles in Anscombe’s collected papers make one think she left her philosopher’s gown on the riverbank when she plunged into the Tiber. As an amateur evolutionist I am also reading Mary Midgley’s The Solitary Self: Darwin and the Selfish Gene with enjoyment as well as Murdoch’s The Nice and the Good, especially for a character based on Philippa. Mary asks: might philosophy written by people who spent their days in a mixed community, among men, women and children, who wrote while babies slept upstairs — nocturnal philosophers like herself — be a little different from what we actually find in the European tradition? After all, that two people can be in the same place at the one time is not at all illogical from the point of view of a pregnant woman. And the problem of other minds can't really arise for a breastfeeding mother who worries whether it is something she has eaten that has upset her baby. Isn't the European tradition's obsession with solipsism and freedom all a bit... adolescent?