The Women Are Up to Something

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This the story of four philosophers--Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch--who helped shape the intellectual history of the 20th century, reviving the ethical imagination of their time and ours. The Second World War gave these four women their chance, as they pursued roles formerly reserved for men. But they succeeded because of their formidable intelligence and because of who they were: a combative Catholic convert who never cared whom she offended; her unlikely best friend, an atheist who grew up in a world of class and manners; a woman who spent a decade and a half raising her boys, publishing the first of her sixteen books at almost 60; and a mystical novelist who gradually drifted away from the academy. This is a book for those interested in these vivid characters, in the first school of women philosophers, or in alternative ways of thinking about how to live.