Mary Midgley, Persons and The Moral Community

Introduction In this guest post Elizabeth Mackintosh explores Mary Midgley’s integrated and relational notion of the self and how this drives her vision and conception of a ‘mixed’ moral community. A Midgleyean mixed moral community is one where we appreciate the many types of relationships and communities we are in. Midgley not only connects human […]

Mary Midgley and our Need For (Good) Philosophy, Ian James Kidd (10/11/18)

 At the Midgley Archive Launch we heard a series of wonderful talks from distinguished guests. Here, Dr Ian James Kidd takes inspiration from the archive and reflects on the necessity of philosophy.   Philosophy is a necessity, not a luxury Mary Midgley thought philosophy was a necessity, not a luxury – something we need to […]

Geoff and Mary Midgley – Two Kinds of Philosopher. David Midgley (10/11/2018)

At the Midgley Archive Launch we heard a series of wonderful short talks from distinguished guests. We’ll be sharing them here over the next week. The first is David Midgley’s discussion of his philosopher parents.  I need to preface this paper with a double apology – in the first place I must confess to being […]

Mary Beatrice Midgley (1919-2018)

This piece was originally published at The Institute of Art and Ideas Mary Beatrice Midgley, collaborator and inspiration for the Women In Parenthesis project has died. Mary was a giant among philosophers, though she only published the first of her 19 books at the age of 59, a feat which is unfathomable today in more than one […]

Speaker Vulnerability and the Patriarchal University. By Lara Coleman

A Response and Tribute to Pamela Sue Anderson I never quite crossed paths with Pamela Sue Anderson. She returned to Oxford in 2001 to take up a post at my former college the year after I finished my undergraduate studies.  In February 2017, we were both invited to speak at a British Academy conference on […]

What influence did Wittgenstein and Aquinas have on Anscombe and Foot?

Both Foot and Anscombe talk about Aquinas quite often, and both of them seem to take it for granted that Aquinas’ thought can be elucidated by thinking about it from directions provided by Wittgenstein; not just that Aquinas can be corrected or improved by the addition of a Wittgensteinian perspective, but rather that what Aquinas himself actually thought can be elucidated by looking at his work from such an angle. Both of them do this quite often, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicit, but almost always very casually, as if it is quite obvious that this is how it should be. But in what sense in Aquinas Wittgensteinian?!

Silencing and Speaker Vulnerability: Undoing an oppressive form of (wilful) ignorance

 by Pamela Sue Anderson Essay, Photo, Guidance Qs (t.b.w.) Pamela wrote this paper for our International Women’s Day Conference 2016 [link], Resounding Voices: Women, Silence and the Production of Knowledge. It is with her permission that we publish the full script here. Tragically, Pamela passed away in March 2017. Her beautiful paper offers a way […]

Pamela Sue Anderson: ‘Silencing and Speaker Vulnerability: Undoing an oppressive form of (wilful) ignorance

Presented at International Women’s Day Conference Durham University, UK 8 March 2016 Silencing and Speaker Vulnerability: Undoing an oppressive form of (wilful) ignorance Pamela Sue Anderson ABSTRACT The French feminist philosopher, Michèle Le Doeuff, has taught us something about ‘the collectivity’, which she discovers in women’s struggle for access to the philosophical, but also about […]