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 […]

‘Rings and Books’ by Mary Midgley

Midgley wrote this essay in the mid-1950s for BBC radio. In her memoir The Owl of Minerva, she recalls:

“I wrote it because I had suddenly been struck by the fact that nearly all the famous philosophers whose lives we know about were lifelong bachelors…

Then and Now

by Mary Midgley Mary Midgley Considers How What Is Called Philosophy Has Changed Since She And Her Friends First Plunged Into It Changes In World-Pictures. When we four people started studying Philosophy at Oxford in the early 1940s, quite a lot of the topics that we might have expected to discuss – most importantly, Human […]