The Women Are Up to Something

How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics

By: Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb

Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray

On the cusp of the Second World War, four women went to Oxford to begin their studies: a fiercely brilliant Catholic convert; a daughter of privilege longing to escape her stifling upbringing; an ardent Communist and aspiring novelist with a list of would-be lovers as long as her arm; and a quiet, messy lover of newts and mice who would become a great public intellectual of our time. They became lifelong friends. At the time, only a handful of women had ever made lives in philosophy. But when Oxford's men were drafted in the war, everything changed.

As Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch labored to make a place for themselves in a male-dominated world, as they made friendships and families, and as they drifted toward and away from each other, they never stopped insisting that some lives are better than others. They argued that courage and discernment and justice—and love—are the heart of a good life.

This book presents the first sustained engagement with these women's contributions: with the critique and the alternative they framed. Drawing on a cluster of recently opened archives and extensive correspondence and interviews with those who knew them best, Benjamin Lipscomb traces the lives and ideas of four friends who gave us a better way to think about ethics, and ourselves.

©2022 Oxford University Press (P)2022 Tantor

Extraordinary!

Excellent work involving a tremendous amount of compilation, sorting, abstraction and synthesis of lives, thoughts, theories, histories, sentiments, and more. It is essential to understand what went on in the mid-twentieth century in Britain, Europe and beyond through important and brilliant people .

Wonderful book, ok performance

This is an excellent book, 5 stars to Lipscombe for his work. The narrator is poorly chosen for the book: he struggles with a lot of the foreign language terms (the French is especially disastrous) and even some of the English ones, which is distracting.

Fascinating story of philosophical lives

A nice schematic look at the lives and works of four great philosophers who lead extraordinary and intertwined lives. I now want to read these women’s philosophical and literary works! Also, nicely written and very accessible, a great introduction to some key themes in 20th-century Anglophone philosophical ethics. I did not prefer the reader’s style, but it is professional and the recording is of good quality. Overall, a very worthwhile listen.