Owl of Minerva: A Memoir

by Midgley; Mary

• ISBN13: 9780415371391
• ISBN10: 0415371392
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2007-08-14
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

One of the UK?s foremost living 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. The mother of three children, her journey is one of a woman who during the 1950s and 1960s was 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.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Light, Darkness and Owls

Early Days, 1924-3?

Greenford Rectory Starting School

Moving On Greenford Growing Parental Activities

Other Scrutton Relatives

More Relatives - The Hays

Ladies and Non-Ladies

Ancestors?

Thomas Urquhart and the Universal Language

Early Scruttons

The Lord Justice

At Downe House School, 1932-3?

The Place Learning This And That Attending to History

Collingwood A World Apart

At Oxford, 1938-4?

Preparations First Impressions Marxist Dreams Studying the Classics

A Changing World

Life in Wartime

Marxism in Decline

Starting Greats

The Philosophical Scene

What is Empiricism?

Gender Queries

What Iris Said

Wartime Jobs, 1942-4?

In The Civil Service Interlude at Downe At Bedford School

In Oxford Again, 1945-?

On Boar's Hill Winter Interlude

Not Doing the

At Reading, 1949-5?

Dialectical Difficulties

At Newcastle, 1950-200?

Settling In Journalistic Ploys Newcastle University

The Philosophy Department

Writing About Beasts And Other Things

Family Movements

Geoff's Activities

Darker Weather

Survival Strategies

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