Oxford Quartet

The Women Who Took On the Philosophical Establishment

"Metaphysical Animals" traces the careers and friendships of Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and Mary Midgley.

...The biographical material in "Metaphysical Animals" is evocative and sparkling, sketching each woman's character with a novelist's mastery of detail. The photographs — Murdoch's peculiar flat, the common room where Anscombe and Foot debated, the tea-stained cover of a pamphlet Anscombe co-wrote at the beginning of the war, personal letters illustrated with hand-drawn cartoons — provide a charming sense of intimacy and the texture of everyday midcentury British life, its teacups and cats and ration coupons. What's less persuasive is the book's overall thesis that the four friends somehow redirected the course of British philosophy or even that they shared a distinct cause or approach. This never comes into focus. Anscombe, for example, was a committed Catholic who opposed both birth control and abortion. Foot was an atheist who told Anscombe that she saw no good reason to believe otherwise. Murdoch was drawn to existentialism and published the first English-language book on Sartre. Midgley became increasingly interested in the similarities between human beings and animals...nyt