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Metaphysical Animals

Metaphysical Animals

  • How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4'S BOOK OF THE WEEK**

'[A] splendidly entertaining book, fizzing with character and incident' Spectator

'Invigorating... told with terrific fluency and humour' Sunday Times
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'In philosophy, one must start from scratch - & it takes a very long time to reach scratch'

Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe were philosophy students at Oxford during the Second World War when most male undergraduates (and many tutors) were conscripted. Taught by refugee scholars, women and conscientious objectors, the four friends developed a philosophy that could respond to the war's darkest revelations.

How, they asked, do we find our way through the devastation of what we have created? Not even the great thinkers of the past or the logical innovators and Existentialists of the early twentieth century could make sense of this new human reality. So, in search of an answer, the four friends set out to bring philosophy back to life.

Written with expertise and flair, Metaphysical Animals is a vivid blend of philosophy and recovered history - bringing back the women who shared ideas, as well as sofas, shoes and even lovers. Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman show how from the disorder and despair of the war, four brilliant friends reinvigorated philosophy and created a way of ethical thinking that remains with us today.

Reviews

  • Joyful... These four are enlivening companions... four glorious heroines, confident and curious, focused on the world and not on themselves

    Spectator

  • 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

    Thomas Nagel, London Review of Books

  • Lively ... This fascinating work of historico-logico-feminism shows... how women fought their way on to the world stage of philosophy and turned its spotlight away from an analytical desert on to what was really important - moral clarity, wisdom and truth

    John Walsh, Sunday Times

  • 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... To read this story is to be reminded...that the life of the mind can be as intense and eventful as friendship itself

    Anil Gomes, Guardian

  • A very entertaining read that manages to turn dry, intellectual gymnastics into a high-stakes spectator sport

    Irish Times

About the Author

Clare Mac Cumhaill

Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman are philosophy lecturers and friends. Mac Cumhaill is an expert in the philosophy of perception and aesthetics at Durham University; Wiseman lectures at Liverpool University and is a recognised authority on the work of Elizabeth Anscombe. Their interest in the group of philosophers in this book sprang from a concern about their students: why were so many brilliant female fledgling philosophers leaving the discipline? Clare and Rachael began telling the story of Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe to inspire the next generation. Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman are the co-directors of www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk, a pioneering scholarly project that focuses attention on the four women and makes the case for analytic philosophy's first all-female philosophical school. They live in Newcastle, the city to which Mary Midgley moved in 1951. In the final years of her life Clare and Rachael became good friends with Mary. When she died, aged 99, they were inspired to tell this story.

Clare Mac Cumhaill

Rachael Wiseman

Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman are philosophy lecturers and friends. Mac Cumhaill is an expert in the philosophy of perception and aesthetics at Durham University; Wiseman lectures at Liverpool University and is a recognised authority on the work of Elizabeth Anscombe. Their interest in the group of philosophers in this book sprang from a concern about their students: why were so many brilliant female fledgling philosophers leaving the discipline? Clare and Rachael began telling the story of Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe to inspire the next generation. Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman are the co-directors of www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk, a pioneering scholarly project that focuses attention on the four women and makes the case for analytic philosophy's first all-female philosophical school. They live in Newcastle, the city to which Mary Midgley moved in 1951. In the final years of her life Clare and Rachael became good friends with Mary. When she died, aged 99, they were inspired to tell this story.

Rachael Wiseman

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