Mary Midgley

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Mary Midgley (2002)
Jon Edgar: Mary Midgley between James Lovelock and Richard Mabey (2008)

Mary Beatrice Midgley (born on 3. September 1919 as Mary Scrutton in London , died on 10. October 2018 ) was a British philosopher .

Life

Mary Scruttons father was a pastor at King's College , Cambridge , both parents politically belonged to the circle of the left magazine New Statesman . Scrutton attended Downe House boarding school in Cold Ash near Thatcham and studied from 1938 at Somerville College , Oxford . Formative fellow students were Iris Murdoch , Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe . From 1942 she was conscripted into the civil service.

In 1947 she began a doctoral project and in 1948 became a lecturer at Reading University . She broke off the dissertation on plotin with Gilbert Murray .

In 1950 she married the philosophy teacher Geoffrey Midgley (1921–1997), with whom she had three sons. Their first book was dedicated to them: with many thanks for making it so clear to me that the human infant is not a blank paper .

In 1962, Midgley began teaching as a senior lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University , which she did until 1980. Since then she has been a freelance philosopher and has been repeatedly invited to other universities for research stays and teaching activities.

Midgley received an honorary doctorate from Durham University in 1995 and from Newcastle University in 2008. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature .

She became known for her philosophical work on science , ethics and animal rights . She not only wrote in a generally understandable manner, but also sought a connection between professional philosophy and common sense . She therefore saw AJ Ayers Language, Truth and Logic (1935) as a pointless and unscientific gimmick. Richard Dawkins accused her of having a selfish philosophy.

Midgley is also featured in debates on vegetarianism because of her books Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature and Animals and Why They Matter . JM Coetzee cited them in 1999 in his book The Life of Animals and in 2003 in Elizabeth Costello .

Her son David Midgley (* 1948) is Professor of German Literature and Intellectual History and teaches at St John's College at the University of Cambridge .

Mary Midgley died in October 2018 at the age of 99.

Fonts (selection)

  • Beast and Man. The Roots of Human Nature . Routledge, London 1978
  • Heart and Mind. The Varieties of Moral Experience . Routledge, London 1981
  • Animals And Why They Matter. A Journey Around the Species Barrier . University of Georgia Press, 1983
  • Wickedness. A philosophical essay . Routledge, London 1984
  • with Judith Hughes: Women's Choices. Philosophical Problems Facing Feminism . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1983
  • Evolution as a religion. Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears . Routledge, London 1985
  • Can't We Make Moral Judgments? Bristol Press, 1989
  • Wisdom, Information and Wonder. What Is Knowledge For? Routledge, London 1989
  • Science As Salvation. A Modern Myth and Its Meaning . Routledge, London 1992 Gifford Lectures .
  • The Ethical Primate. Humans, Freedom and Morality . Routledge, London 1994
  • Utopias, Dolphins and Computers. Problems of Philosophical Plumbing . Routledge, London 1996
  • Science and Poetry . Routledge, London 2001
  • Myths We Live By . Routledge, London 2003
  • (Ed.): Earthy Realism. The Meaning of Gaia . Imprint Academic, 2007
  • The Solitary Self. Darwin and the Selfish Gene . Acumen, 2010
  • Are you an illusion? Acumen, 2014
  • What is Philosophy for? Bloomsbury, 2018

literature

  • Mary Midgley: The Owl of Minerva. A memoir . Routledge, London 2005 (autobiography)
  • David Midgley (Ed.): The Essential Mary Midgley . Routledge, London 2005

Web links

Commons : Mary Midgley  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter Aspden: Lunch with the FT: Mary Midgley , Financial Times , April 5, 2014, p.3
  2. ^ Geoffrey Midgley , The Independent obituary , May 8, 1997
  3. ^ Mary Midgley: Beast And Man. The Roots of Human Nature . Routledge, London 1978, pp. Ix
  4. ^ Famous Vegetarians - Mary Midgley (1919-) , at International Vegetarian Union
  5. ^ Andy Lamey: Sympathy and scapegoating in JM Coetzee , in: Anton Leist; Peter Singer (Ed.): JM Coetzee and ethics: philosophical perspectives on literature . New York: Columbia University Press, 2010
  6. ↑ David Midgley ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , at University of Cambridge @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mml.cam.ac.uk
personal data
SURNAME Midgley, Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Midgley, Mary Beatrice; Scrutton, Mary Beatrice (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 2018