Re-writing C20th British Philosophy: Rachael Wiseman features on BBC3 Free Thinking
Reclaiming the role of women in C20th British philosophy
Rachael Wiseman joined Dr Clare Mac Cumhaill (Durham University) and the brilliant Dr Shahidha Bari live on air on BBC3’s Free Thinking. Clare and Rachael were there to talk about the Wartime Quartet – Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch. The four women are the subject of their British Academy funded project Women In Parenthesis.
The chance to spread the word about the Quartet was especially timely given Mary Midgley’s death, at the age of 99, this week. You can read Rachael and Clare’s memories of Mary here. The program included an excerpt from Midgley’s radio transcript, ‘Rings and Books’, submitted to the BBC in 1954 but never aired. The editor said it involved an unnecessary intrusion of the domestic into affairs that are properly intellectual. Time it got a fair hearing – wonderful to think of Mary’s words finally resounding across nation more than sixty years after they were written.
The Women In Parenthesis project is helping to bring along the next generation of female philosophers at University of Liverpool. Third-year student Alexandra McPartland is running a reading group to study the Quartet and open up conversations about women in philosophy today.