How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

The​ appearance within a few months of each other of two books about the same four women is a bit startling, but on reflection the topic is so natural and interesting that one might even wonder why it hasn’t been treated before. Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), Mary Midgley (née Scrutton) and Iris Murdoch all matriculated at Oxford in the late 1930s. When most of the men went off to war, they found themselves, as women philosophy students, in a very unusual situation – not in the minority and on the periphery, but central and predominant. (The rule in normal times had been that no more than a fifth of the undergraduates at Oxford could be women.) Midgley later wrote that the enhanced attention and absence of the usual competitive male atmosphere made it possible for her to find her voice as a philosopher. Distinctive and talented though each of them was, it seems no accident that such a stellar group emerged from this atypical moment. Thomas Nagel, London Review of Books

Interessante recensione di due libri usciti recentemente e che ci illuminano sullo spirito oxfordiano: The Women Are up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch Revolutionised Ethics,by Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb (Oxford), e, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman (Chatto). 

Infine una scrittrice da scoprire, la britannica Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75),

In the words of one critic, Taylor is “best known for not being better known.” Burdened by her famous name, she has never achieved the level of mainstream appreciation that she is due. Yet a small band of critics and writers ranks her among the most psychologically penetrating English novelists of the twentieth century. Charlie Tyson, The New Yorker