Mary Midgley

Quotes

• “We are not just rather like animals; we are animals. Our difference from other species may be striking, but comparisons with them have always been, and must be, crucial to our view of ourselves.”
• “Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not.”
• “Other areas were being mapped by anthropologists, who seemed to have some interest in my problem, but who were inclined (at that time) to say that what human beings had in common was not in the end very important; that the key to all the mysteries did lie in culture. This seemed to me shallow. It is because our culture is changing so fast, because it does not settle on everything that we need to go into these questions.”
• “Consideration of motives brings up the matter of free will. I had better say once, that my project of taking animal comparisons seriously does not involve a slick mechanistic or deterministic view of freedom. Animals are not machines; one of my main concerns is to combat this notion. Actually only machines are machines.”
• “Philosophy, in spite of all its tiresome features, is not a luxury but a necessity, because we always have to use it when things get difficult.”

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Key dates

Born

3 September 1919

Died

10 October 2018

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Wikidata facts

Instance of

human

Given name

Mary

Gender

female

Citizenship

United Kingdom

Place of birth

London

Place of death

Jesmond

Occupation

ethicist

Educated at

Newcastle University

Employer

University of Reading

Languages spoken

English language

Native language

English language

Award

Doctor of Letters

Field of work

evolution

Image

Mary Midgley.JPG

Residence

Newcastle upon Tyne

via Wikidata · CC0