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  • The American Scholar

    MORALS, MEANING, AND NONSENSE

    Jun 01, 2022 3 minutes
    Review by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

    philosophers Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a captivating collective biography of four college friends who went on to become formidable figures in 20th-century moral thought: Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley (née Scrutton), Iris Murdoch, and Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet). The book follows their friendships, formed at Oxford in the late 1930s, as well as their crooked paths beyond the academy. The result is an illuminating portrait of philosophy in which irritable bowel syndrome, nappies, and love triangles—not to mention social networks, academic institutions, and geopolitical developments—are no mere

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