Mary Midgley
Humans are animals with a nature of their own, and philosophy must resist simplistic myths like the selfish gene or the mind as a machine.
Placement
Oxford contemporary of Anscombe, Foot and Murdoch: humans are animals with a nature, and philosophy must resist reductive myths – the “selfish gene”, social atomism, the machine model of the mind.
Key ideas
- Human nature as animal nature
- Critique of reductionism
- Philosophy as plumbing
Influence
Influenced by 3
Aristotle
influenced by
Midgley defended, with Aristotle, a specific human nature whose characteristic needs and capacities set the conditions of a good human life (Beast and Man, 1978). M. Midgley, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1978)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Aristotle › 384–322 BCE
Charles Darwin
influenced by
Midgley used Darwin and ethology to place human nature among the animals (Beast and Man, 1978) and criticised making evolution a secular creed (Evolution as a Religion, 1985). M. Midgley, Beast and Man (1978); Evolution as a Religion (1985)
Evidence: AI draft
Charles Darwin › 1809–1882
Iris Murdoch
influenced by
Midgley, Murdoch’s fellow student at Oxford, followed her critique of Sartre’s solitary choosing will and wrote on her moral philosophy (‘Sorting out the Zeitgeist’, 1998). M. Midgley, “Sorting out the Zeitgeist: The Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch” (1998); C. Mac Cumhaill and R. Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals (2022); SEP “Iris Murdoch”
Evidence: AI draft
Iris Murdoch › 1919–1999
Criticism
Criticizes 1
Thomas Hobbes
criticised
Midgley used ethology against Hobbes’s picture of humans as natural egoists: sociability and care are as much part of evolved human nature as competition (Beast and Man, 1978). M. Midgley, Beast and Man (1978); The Solitary Self: Darwin and the Selfish Gene (2010)
Evidence: AI draft
Thomas Hobbes › 1588–1679
Works
- 1978Beast and Man
Humans have a nature, as animals do; ethology, not Hobbes or existentialism, tells us what kind of beings we are.
- 1984Wickedness
Evil is not a positive force but a failure – of attention, imagination and courage – that fills the gap where good should be.
Position
Midgley’s central claim is that human beings are animals and must be understood as such – not reduced to genes or machines, but seen as creatures with an evolved nature of needs, feelings and capacities, out of which morality grows. “Beast and Man” uses ethology to argue against the picture of humans as either blank slates or egoists in the manner of Hobbes; against existentialism it insists we do not choose our nature. She attacked “reductive” pictures that take one science for the whole truth: the selfish gene, social atomism, the mind as computer. Philosophy, she said, is like plumbing – unnoticed until it goes wrong, when the hidden conceptual pipes must be exposed and repaired.
Life & context
Mary Midgley (1919–2018), born Mary Scrutton, studied at Oxford during the war alongside Anscombe, Foot and Murdoch, later recalling that the absence of men made it possible for women to be heard. She taught at Newcastle University from 1962 to 1980 and published her first book at fifty-nine. Prolific into her nineties, she wrote for a general public and engaged in public controversy with Richard Dawkins.
Further main works
- Science as Salvation (1992)
- The Myths We Live By (2003)
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