Download or read book The Essential Mary Midgley written by Mary Midgley and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology includes carefully chosen selections from her best-selling books, including Wickedness, Beast and Man, Science and Poetry and The Myths We Live By. An unrivalled introduction to a great philosopher, and includes a.
Download or read book The Essential Mary Midgley written by David Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology includes carefully chosen selections from her best-selling books, including Wickedness, Beast and Man, Science and Poetry and The Myths We Live By. An unrivalled introduction to a great philosopher, and includes a.
Download or read book The Essential Mary Midgley written by David Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feared and admired in equal measure, Mary Midgley has carefully yet profoundly challenged many of the scientific and moral orthodoxies of the twentieth century. The Essential Mary Midgley collects for the first time the very best of this famous philosopher's work, described by the Financial Times as 'common sense philosophy of the highest order'. This unrivalled introduction to a great philosopher and brilliant writer incorporates carefully selected excerpts from Mary Midgley's bestselling books, including Wickedness, Beast and Man, Science and Poetry, and The Myths We Live By. With a specially written foreword by James Lovelock, this classic text presents a superb and eminently readable insight into questions she has returned to time and again in her renowned sharp prose. This anthology discusses major topics, such as the roots of human nature, reason and imagination, the myths of science and the importance of holism in thinking about science and the environment.
Download or read book Owl of Minerva written by Mary Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the UK's foremost moral philosophers, Mary Midgley recounts her remarkable story in this elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching. In spite of her many books and public profile, little is known about Mary's life. Part of a famous generation of women philosophers that includes Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Warnock and Iris Murdoch, Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British Philosophy, writing and arguing about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness. As the mother of three children, her journey during the 1950s and 1960s was one of a woman fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva’s owl really does fly at dusk. Charting the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain, this publication sheds light on Mary’s close friends, her moral philosophy and her meetings with major philosophers, including Wittgenstein and Isaiah Berlin.
Download or read book Beast and Man written by Mary Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers have traditionally concentrated on the qualities that make human beings different from other species. In Beast and Man Mary Midgley, one of our foremost intellectuals, stresses continuities. What makes people tick? Largely, she asserts, the same things as animals. She tells us humans are rather more like other animals than we previously allowed ourselves to believe, and reminds us just how primitive we are in comparison to the sophistication of many animals. A veritable classic for our age, Beast and Man has helped change the way we think about ourselves and the world in which we live.
Download or read book The Essential Mary Midgley written by David Midgley and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wickedness written by Dr Mary Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To look into the darkness of the human soul is a frightening venture. Here Mary Midgley does so, with her customary brilliance and clarity. In Wickedness she sets out to delineate not so much the nature of wickedness as its actual sources. Midgley's analysis proves that the capacity for real wickedness is an inevitable part of human nature. This is not however a blanket acceptance of evil. She provides us with a framework that accepts its existence yet offers humankind the possibility of rejecting this part of our nature. Out of this dark journey she returns with an offering to us: an understanding of human nature that enhances our very humanity. To read Wickedness is to understand Mary Midgley's reputation as one of the world's greatest moral philosophers.
Download or read book The Myths We Live By written by Mary Midgley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-04 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new Introduction by the author 'An elegant and sane little book. – The New Statesman Myths, as Mary Midgley argues in this powerful book, are everywhere. In political thought they sit at the heart of theories of human nature and the social contract; in economics in the pursuit of self interest; and in science the idea of human beings as machines, which originates in the seventeenth century, is a today a potent force. Far from being the opposite of science, however, Midgley argues that myth is a central part of it. Myths are neither lies nor mere stories but a network of powerful symbols for interpreting the world. Tackling a dazzling array of subjects such as philosophy, evolutionary psychology, animals, consciousness and the environment in her customary razor-sharp prose, The Myths We Live By reminds us of the powerful role of symbolism and the need to take our imaginative life seriously. Mary Midgley is a moral philosopher and the author of many books including Wickedness, Evolution as a Religion, Beast and Man and Science and Poetry. All are published in Routledge Classics.
Download or read book The Essential Mary Midgley written by International Society for Science and Religion and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Science and Poetry written by Mary Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crude materialism, reduction of mind to body, extreme individualism. All products of a 17th century scientific inheritance which looks at the parts of our existence at the expense of the whole. Cutting through myths of scientific omnipotence, Mary Midgley explores how this inheritance has so powerfully shaped the way we are, and the problems it has brought with it. She argues that poetry and the arts can help reconcile these problems, and counteract generations of 'one-eyed specialists', unable and unwilling to look beyond their own scientific or literary sphere. Dawkins, Atkins, Bacon and Descartes all come under fire as Midgely sears through contemporary debate, from Gaia to memes, and organic food to greenhouse gases. After years of unquestioned imperialism, science is finally forced to take a step back and acknowledge the arts.
Download or read book Can t We Make Moral Judgements written by Mary Midgley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How many times do we hear the statement 'It's not for me to judge'? It conveys one of the most popular ideas of our time: that to make judgements of others is essentially wrong. In this classic text, the renowned moral philosopher Mary Midgely turns a spotlight on the ever popular stance in society that we should not make moral judgements on others. Guiding the reader through the diverse approaches to this complex subject, she interrogates our strong beliefs about such things as the value of freedom that underlie our scepticism about making moral judgements. She shows how the question of whether or not we can make these judgements must inevitably affect our attitudes not only to the law and its institutions but also to events that occur in our daily lives, and suggests that mistrust of moral judgements may be making life even harder for us than it would be otherwise. The texts and philosophers discussed range from Nietzsche and Sartre to P.D. James and the Bhagavad Gita. The Bloomsbury Revelations edition includes a new preface from the author.
Download or read book Evolution as a Religion written by Mary Midgley and published by Methuen Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Solitary Self written by Mary Midgley and published by . This book was released on 2016-01-29 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the nature of our moral constitution to challenge the view that reduces human motivation to self-interest. This title argues that simple, one-sided accounts of human motives, such as the 'selfish gene' tendency in neo-Darwinian thought, may be illuminating but are always unrealistic.
Download or read book The Women Are Up to Something written by Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Résumé éditeur : This book tells two intertwined stories, centered on twentieth-century moral philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. The first is the story of four friends who came up to Oxford together just before WWII. It is the story of their lives, loves, and intellectual preoccupations; it is a story about women trying to find a place in a man's world of academic philosophy. The second story is about these friends' shared philosophical project and their unintentional creation of a school of thought that challenged the dominant way of doing ethics. That dominant school of thought envisioned the world as empty, value-free matter, on which humans impose meaning. This outlook treated statements such as “this is good” as mere expressions of feeling or preference, reflecting no objective standards. It emphasized human freedom and demanded an unflinching recognition of the value-free world. The four friends diagnosed this moral philosophy as an impoverishing intellectual fad. This style of thought, they believed, obscured the realities of human nature and left people without the resources to make difficult moral choices or to confront evil. As an alternative, the women proposed a naturalistic ethics, reviving a line of thought running through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, and enriched by modern biologists like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. The women proposed that there are, in fact, moral truths, based in facts about the distinctive nature of the human animal and what that animal needs to thrive."
Download or read book Utopias Dolphins and Computers written by Mary Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do the big philosophical questions so often strike us as far-fetched and little to with everyday life? Mary Midgley shows that it need not be that way; she shows that there is a need for philosophy in the real world. Her popularity as one of our foremost philosophers is based on a no-nonsense, down-to-earth approach to fundamental human problems, philosphical or otherwise. In Utopias, Dolphins and Computers she makes her case for philosophy as a difficult but necessary tool for solving some of the most pressing issues facing contemporary society. How should we treat animals? Why are we so confused about the value of education? What is at stake in feminism? Why should we sustain our environment? Why do we think intelligent computers will save us? Mary Midgley argues that philosophy not only can, but should be used in thinking about these questions. Utopias, Dolphins and Computers will make fascinating reading for philosophers, educationalists, feminists, environmentalists and indeed anyone interested in the questions of philosophy, ethics and life.
Download or read book Metaphysical Animals written by Clare Mac Cumhaill and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A vibrant portrait of four college friends—Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley—who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away fighting World War II. The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch were philosophy students at Oxford when most male undergraduates and many tutors were conscripted away to fight in the Second World War. Together, these young women, all friends, developed a philosophy that could respond to the war’s darkest revelations. Neither the great Enlightenment thinkers of the past, the logical innovators of the early twentieth century, or the new Existentialist philosophy trickling across the Channel, could make sense of this new human reality of limitless depravity and destructive power, the women felt. Their answer was to bring philosophy back to life. We are metaphysical animals, they realized, creatures that can question their very being. Who am I? What is freedom? What is human goodness? The answers we give, they believed, shape what we will become. Written with expertise and flair, Metaphysical Animals is a lively portrait of women who shared ideas, but also apartments, clothes and even lovers. Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman show how from the disorder and despair of the war, four brilliant friends created a way of ethical thinking that is there for us today.
Download or read book Philosophers at Table written by Raymond D. Boisvert and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When you boil it down, one of the most important things we do each day is eat. The question of eating—what, and how—may seem simple at first, but it is dense with complex meanings, reflecting myriad roles that food plays and has played over the centuries. In fact, as Raymond D. Boisvert and Lisa Heldke show in this book, it’s difficult to imagine a more philosophically charged act than eating. Philosophers at Table explores the philosophical scaffolding that supports this crucial aspect of everyday life, showing that we are not just creatures with minds, but also with stomachs. Examining a cornucopia of literary works, myths, histories, and film—not to mention philosophical ideas—the authors make the case for a bona fide philosophy of food. They look at Babette’s Feast as an argument for hospitality as a central ethical virtue. They compare fast food in Accra to the molecular gastronomy of Spain as a way of considering the nature of food as art. And they bite into a slug—which is, unsurprisingly, completely gross—to explore tasting as a learning tool, a way of knowing. A surprising, original take on something we have not philosophically savored enough, Philosophers at Table invites readers to think in fresh ways about the simple and important act of eating.
