In Praise of Virtuous Women

The remarkable women philosophers who are the subjects of these two books were contemporaries as undergraduates at Oxford, and all studied or taught at Somerville College in the days when women could only attend the (very few) women’s college. Though none were still teaching there by the time I arrived at Somerville in 1975, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe were regular visitors to Somerville High Table during my time there as post-doc. Mary Midgley, working at a more considerable distance in Newcastle, I did not meet until years later when, then in her seventies – her children grown and having re-entered philosophical life with evangelical anti-reductionist fervour and a razor sharp mind - she was a frequent visitor to Cambridge and the scourge of Richard Dawkins, then at the height of his notoriety. (Dawkins refused eventually to take part in any panel with Midgley, so effectively did she destroy his arguments.)