Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

"At the outset of World War II , a quartet of young women, Oxford students—Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley—were “bored of listening to men talk about books by men about men,” as Mac Cumhaill, a Durham University professor, and Wiseman, a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, write. In their marvelous group biography, MacCumhaill and Wiseman vivify how the friendships of these women congealed to bring “philosophy back to life.” As their male counterparts departed for the front lines, this brilliant group of women came together in their dining halls and shared lodging quarters to challenge the thinking of their male colleagues. In the shadows of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, these friends rejected the logical positivists who favoured empirical scientific questions. They didn’t really create a distinct philosophical approach as much as they shared an interest in the metaphysics of morals. While today we may recognize the prolific Iris Murdoch more for her fiction—like her Booker-winning novel The Sea, the Sea — others made an enduring mark. For example, I learned that after their Oxford years, Murdoch’s good friend Phillipa Foot was responsible for the classic conundrum of the ‘trolley problem,’ which posed the question of whether one would—or should—willingly kill one person to save five. And beyond philosophy, Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman’s deft sketches of these women sparkle with details of their world, from hot tea and cold shared flats to the lovers and ex-lovers who sometimes shared those flats."