Iris Murdoch

 

Metaphysical Animals review – four women who changed philosophy

How Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley arrived at a radically new philosophical approach

Aniel Gomes

Thursday 10 February 2022

Metaphysical Animals is both story and argument. The story is a fine one. Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley were students at Oxford during the second world war. They found a world in which many of the men were absent. Those who remained were either too old or too principled to fight. It was a world, as Midgley later put it, where women’s voices could be heard.