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. A vivid picture of the times, and of the formative experiences of the four women who would go on to become some of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. . . As with any good history, there is something eerily prescient in Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman’s account of a university educated cultural elite for whom moral discourse had declined to the point of linguistic one-upmanship—and the subsequent need to reconnect with a more robust notion of virtue, human flourishing, and what makes for a good life.”

I have warm feelings about the Vienna Circle because it was a collection of brilliant people who came together at an interesting time and place, but I do think that some of their followers went too far in reducing philosophy to logic and dismissing legitmate questions as "nonsense" in an aggressive and shaming way. The early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus was one of the villians, but he repudiated his earlier works and by the time these ladies came around he had gone far enough into new directions that he could be a guide and mentor for them. The four women who are the subject to of this book helped to redirect philosophy into a more humane and interesting direction that recoginized that people are far more than calculating machines. As the title says, we are metaphysical animals, so we cannot be fully understood without considering our spiritual, irrational, social and emotional qualities. There are complications along the way. Murdoch, in particular, has a habit of both falling in love and being fallen for. She almost irrevocably damages her friendship with Foot by causing and then breaking a complicated love quadrilateral. Her admiration for Anscombe shades into the erotic. But, in and out of each others’ orbit, they start to find alternative ways of thinking about human beings, drawing on insights from Aristotle, Aquinas and Wittgenstein. Anscombe and Foot develop formidable reputations in academic philosophy. Murdoch’s beautiful, challenging philosophical writing gives way to a career as an acclaimed novelist and woman of letters. Midgley is the most grounded of the quartet, bringing philosophy into conversation with zoology and ethology and publishing the first of her 18 books when she is 59. Dishy and intimate, you’ll feel as if you’ve been invited to afternoon tea with the smartest set on campus.” The second theme is metaphysics, as alluded to by the title. We are indeed metaphysical animals, and this cannot be denied. The book beautifully explores the connections between history and philosophy, which is unusually tight in this period. At the beginning of the century, philosophy in Britain was occupied by Idealist metaphysicians vastly influenced by Hegel, seeking complex metaphysics where the goal was to seek the unified whole, the Absolute. This was the task of philosophy. In the late 1930s, British philosophy, at least at Oxford, was dominated by AJ Ayer, whose groundbreaking book Language, Truth and Logic was published in 1936. Ayer was the chief promoter of logical positivism, a school of thought that aimed to clean up philosophy by ruling out large areas of the field as unverifiable and therefore not fit for logical discussion.

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The narrative is of four brilliant women finding their voices, opposing received wisdom, and developing an alternative picture of human beings and their place in the world . . . To read this story is to be reminded . . . that the life of the mind can be as intense and eventful as friendship itself.” Though this book tells many of the same stories as The Women Are Up To Something, there is often far more detail here. It was distracting at first (do I need to know all the plants that were in the garden at Elizabeth’s school?), but soon I embraced it all, realizing that this book is as much history, as much a portrait of a time, as it is biography & philosophy. I did appreciate personal details, like Wittgenstein buying Elizabeth a cape when he realized she was too poor to afford a raincoat & all the excerpts from their various diaries. I appreciated that women other than our four friends were given space here, from wives of lecturers to other female philosophers who paved the way, but were largely written out of philosophical history…by the men. Of course, the dynamics of the friendships between these four women are fascinating & I think their personalities are allowed to shine through as they were, warts & all. Mary asks: might philosophy written by people who spent their days in a mixed community, among men, women and children, who wrote while babies slept upstairs — nocturnal philosophers like herself — be a little different from what we actually find in the European tradition? After all, that two people can be in the same place at the one time is not at all illogical from the point of view of a pregnant woman. And the problem of other minds can't really arise for a breastfeeding mother who worries whether it is something she has eaten that has upset her baby. Isn't the European tradition's obsession with solipsism and freedom all a bit... adolescent? There are a couple of prominent themes in the book. The first is the fact that they were all women. This is why I decided to read it and how the book is marketed. It's certainly covered although not extensively. Nevertheless, it's very true that at the time it was a world of men, and philosophy, in particular, was heavily biased against women. A funny example is Elizabeth’s first lecture, which she gave in trousers. It became a huge controversy at the time, requiring an official statement by the clerk that she needed to become "appropriately dressed", meaning a skirt. She ended up managing a compromise where she would go to school in her trousers, but change to a skirt in a changing room before going to lecture. There are many other examples where women were clearly not taken seriously just because of their gender, and overall barriers to being part of philosophy.

The authors spend some time discussing Susan Stebbings-should have been longer- and Freddie Ayer, and his soul-destroying positivism. I loved getting a glimpse of Elizabeth's relationship with Wittgenstein, one of those heroes whose words and ideas I've pored over for decades now, largely through her translations, and felt that the treatment of most everyone — from the leading ladies and philosophical giants to the most fleeting of cameos — was fair, unflinching without resorting to the kind of judgment that is far more present in the assessment of ideas. Similarly, the persistent affirmation of the book's title, the reminder that we humans are animals, too, and our language central to the activity of our lives, felt to me satisfying and right. Metaphysical Animals is both story and argument. The story is a fine one. Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley were students at Oxford during the second world war. They found a world in which many of the men were absent. Those who remained were either too old or too principled to fight. It was a world, as Midgley later put it, where women’s voices could be heard.Elizabeth meets Wittgenstein. She is perplexed but she has religious faith which makes her serious.