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Books

Metaphysical Animals by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman and The Women Are Up to Something by Benjamin Lipscomb

Katie Barron look at two books on four famous female philosophers and friends.

Two books have recently been published within months of each other exploring the lives of the same four female philosophers and making the same claim – that these four friends were the leaders in demolishing the logical positivism and moral relativism that dominated English-language philosophy in the mid-twentieth century.

The four young philosophers, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch, met as undergraduates in Oxford during the Second World War and became close friends. Women had only recently been allowed to take degrees at Oxford. Suddenly, all the young men were away fighting, and the women could spread their wings.

Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot both became philosophy tutors at Somerville College, Oxford.

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