The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics

Four women mapped “a route for themselves where none existed” and changed the field of ethics, according to this refreshing group biography. Lipscomb, a philosophy professor at Houghton College, focuses on the philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch, who, despite their differences, were close friends and did “something revolutionary” by reintegrating ethics into philosophy at a time when it was out of fashion. Beginning at the oustet of WWII, the narrative traces how each thinker forged a place for themselves in a male-dominated world: they all studied at Oxford, where they met in 1940, were trained in analytic philosophy, and were fiercely dedicated to their field. Together, Lipscomb writes, they “diagnosed” the prevailing moral philosophy of the day, that there’s no objective good or bad, as an “intellectual fad,” and countered by proposing there are indeed moral truths. Lipscomb keeps things centered on their friendship, making powerful use of newly opened archives and the philosophers’ unpublished correspondence, as when he brings Oxford to life using Murdoch’s letters to friends. This credible corrective couldn’t have arrived at a better time. (Nov.)