26 13 February 2022
verified by observation, it
was meaningless. Moral
judgments, he claimed, were
of no more consequence than
shouting “hooray!” or “boo!”
— and therefore philosophy,
as practised by Plato, Aristotle
and their heirs, was at an end.
How Iris, Elizabeth, Mary
and Philippa (one thinks of
them, impertinently, on
first-name terms) joined
forces to confront this
dismaying reductionism
through the war years and
beyond is told with terrific
fluency and humour.
When faced with some
exegetical cruxes, readers
may curse their lack of a
politics A-level, but the main
threads emerge clearly. The
authors don’t try to present
their heroines as proxy
males; on the contrary they
emphasise their femininity.
Much is made of their clothes,
shoes, eating habits (sardines
and cake feature heavily),
home furnishings, friendships,
amours (Iris seems to change
lovers as often as her
underwear), Sapphic pashes
and competitive triumphs.
Sometimes they seem like
raffish forerunners of the Four
Marys in the Bunty comic.
Quite a contrast from LudwigWittgenstein, who appears in
these pages as an overbearing,
foot-stamping, poker-
wielding, alpha-male bully.
Reading the ethologist
Konrad Lorenz’s studies of the
animal kingdom set Midgley
thinking about the distinction
between animals and
humans; she saw it was
possible to regard humans as
animals who possess a natural
instinct for thinking beyond
normal human experience
— hence the book’s title.
Metaphysical Animals starts
and ends with the moment in
1956 when Anscombe rocked
a gathering of Oxford dons,
assembled to award an
honorary degree to Harry
Truman, by denouncing him
as a mass murderer for
ordering the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It prompted a defensive
transatlantic reply from the
president. This fascinating
work of historico-logico-
feminism shows what led to
that moment: how women
fought their way on to the
world stage of philosophy
and turned its spotlight
away from an analytical
desert on to what was really
important — moral clarity,
wisdom and truth. cwith the Zetland Hunt.
Schooled by governesses, she
never learnt Greek, which
made her feel inadequate
among her peers, but shone at
philosophy, politics and
economics. Anscombe, the
rogue trouser-wearer, was
taught Greek from childhood
by her mother.
When the Somerville
quartet were students of 19 or
20, tumultuous events were
unfolding — not just in Europe
on the brink of war, but in the
study of philosophy. AJ Ayer,
with his “nine-shilling
bombshell” Language, Truth
and Logic, was revolutionising
the study of metaphysics.
He argued that, because
any talk of “God” or “the
Absolute”, of right and wrong,
justice and virtue, couldn’t be©ST ANNE’S COLLEGE OXFORDPHILOSOPHY
John Walsh
Metaphysical Animals
How Four Women Brought
Philosophy Back to Life
by Clare Mac Cumhaill and
Rachel Wiseman
Chatto £25 pp398When Elizabeth Anscombe
gave her first lecture at the
University of Oxford in 1948,
on Protagoras’ doctrine of
belief, the authorities worried
that female students might
be corrupted. Not by the
thrust of her talk, but by her
trousers. The clerk of schools
wrote to her, insisting that she
come to the university in a
skirt. Every week he lay in
wait, refusing to let her enter
if she was improperly attired.
Eventually a compromise
was reached: they gave her a
changing room containing a
skirt (and a decanter of sherry
as a bribe) and said she could
arrive in trousers provided
she appeared before students
in the skirt. Anscombe agreed
— and then wore both.
This invigorating book
charts the struggle of female
philosophers in the 1930s and
1940s to be taken seriously at
a time when their male
equivalents — and lots of
women too — thought lady
dons both ridiculous and
humiliating for colleges. The
authors track the careers of
four individual thinkers who
held posts at Somerville
College, Oxford, and sought
to find “a fruitful line in
moral philosophy”.
They were a varied bunch.
Iris Murdoch, Dublin-born,
later a famous novelist, won a
scholarship to Badminton
School (where she wept so
copiously that a Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to
Iris was formed), and another
to Oxford, where she joined
political campaigns and wrote
a prizewinning essay on “If I
were foreign secretary”. Mary
Midgley, physically awkward
and fond of newts, grew up in a
Middlesex rectory with copies
of The New Statesman in the
library, but spent time in
Vienna, where she watched the
Nazis invade in 1938. Philippa
Bosanquet, granddaughter of
the US president Grover
Cleveland, was brought
up in a 16-bedroom
Yorkshire mansion
and rode to houndsQuad sex wars
A lively account of Iris Murdoch and the Oxford women who
fought the male establishment and shook up philosophy
Wittgenstein
appears as a
foot-stamping
alpha bully
BOOKS
Seeking clarity Iris Murdoch,
inset, and with colleaguesThis year’s winner of the
£10,000 Sunday Times
Charlotte Aitken Young
Writer of the Year award,
the country’s most
prestigious prize for
authors of 35 or under,
will be announced on
Thursday, February 24.Before that, on
Wednesday, February 23,
readers have a chance to
meet and hear from the five
shortlisted authors — Cal
Flyn, Rachel Long, Caleb
Azumah Nelson, Megan
Nolan and, digitally, Anna
Beecher — at a special
event at Waterstones’
flagship Piccadilly branch.
The novelist and critic
Sebastian Faulks, chairman
of the Charlotte Aitken
Trust, will host the evening.
Tickets, at £6, can be
ordered online at
waterstones.com/
events.YOUR CHANCE TO
MEET OUR YOUNG
WRITERS
The Charlotte
Aitken Trust
YOUNG WRITER
OF THE YEAR
Playing host
Sebastian
Faulks will
chair the
eventDAVID HARTLEY/SHUTTERSTOCKNolan
Beecher
Azumah
NelsonLong
Flyn