A review by theciz
The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics by Benjamin J B Lipscomb

challenging informative medium-paced

3.5

A biography of four female philosophers who were at Oxford together before and during World War II. The book sets up how the four were apparently pivotal to the development of ethics in philosophy - and there lies its biggest failing for me. Despite having read the whole thing, if you asked me what any of them thought and what their impact on the field was, I honestly couldn’t tell you. The discussion of their ideas and their impact is there, but it was so poor I couldn’t follow what it was supposed to mean at all (except one of them was very catholic and therefore anti-abortion). Was it just AJ Ayer says ethics doesn’t exist, but Anscombe, Foot, etc. thought it did? Surely there was more to it, but I couldn’t divine what that was.

So overall you could say it’s too focussed on their life stories, and very unclear (at least to me) on their ideas and legacy/context. Perhaps its the sort of thing you need to be already well versed in early-to-mid-century English academic philosophy discussions to fully grasp the relevance, but I got the impression it was supposed to be more general reader. A shame, as I was looking forward to reading it.