Greg McElwain

Mary Midgley and Jane Goodall in 1989.

Goodall's influence is clear throughout Midgley's work and central to her claim that philosophy needs ethology

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We're excited to announce our new Online Seminar Series for the 2025-6 academic year!! We have 5 fantastic talks coming up. For titles and abstracts see our website - and get the dates in your diary!

www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/news/

#philsky #philosophy

A little early! Sep 13 😊

One is the brilliant #EllieRobson @philosophellie.bsky.social on #MaryMidgley and #Animals! Not to be missed and again, what an incredible resource and gift #PhilosophyBites is #philosophy #philsky @inparenthesis.bsky.social
#Midgley

The wonderful @philosophellie.bsky.social on Mary Midgley’s animal thought.

A good religion/science question since some historical traditions did see the universe as much more limited in scope/structure (e.g. the firmament).

"I suppose in a very admirable and harmless way, I take science to have a religious aspect. That is, it involves people responding to the vastness of the universe."

-Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction

#marymidgley #philsky

"We rejoice in the whole of nature and being part of it, as something to which we belong."

-Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction

#marymidgley #philsky

Back at the very special #dewisacre for more #philosophyinthewild ‘finding hope in mixed communities’ & this time - with the adults! It means the world to us that the adults relished this event, fell in love with the wisdom of #MaryMidgley & that Ned the cat was so happy & involved too 1/3

Back in the garden, for #philosophyinthewild, which has been a truly #mixedcommunity garden this week! 🐑
@stdavidscathedral.bsky.social @inparenthesis.bsky.social
#PhilosophyMatters #MaryMidgley #Arts #Poetry #Hope #FindingHopeInMixedCommunities
www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/philosophy-i...

"Central to thinking about animals is the idea of community: a genuine unity of beings which are important to each other."

-Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction

#marymidgley #philsky

"How to think involves how to live."

-Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction

#marymidgley #philsky

"The world in which the kestrel moves, the world that it sees, is, and always will be, entirely beyond us. That there are such worlds all around us is an essential feature of our world."

-Mary Midgley, Beast and Man

#marymidgley #philsky

Indeed! And I'm especially attached to that edition because it's a copy that Midgley gave me in 2012. Had an extra copy laying around!

“Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.”

-Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By

#marymidgley #philsky

"The trouble with human beings ([Butler] said) is not really that they love themselves too much; they ought to love themselves more. The trouble is simply that they don’t love others enough."

-Mary Midgley, Utopias, Dolphins, and Computers

#marymidgley #philsky

The philosopher Mary Midgley undergirds a lot of my thinking (even about economics)

I just reread this piece I wrote about her in 2020 and it still holds up pretty well

philosophynow.org/issues/140/M...

Midgley, Stebbing, and the History of Philosophy A workshop devoted to the work of Susan Stebbing (1885-1943) and Mary Midgley (1919-2018) and their place in and relation to the history of philosophy. ​ When : 17th July 2025 Where : Monica...

Upcoming workshop on Susan Stebbing and Mary Midgley: ianjameskidd.weebly.com/midgley-steb...

@philosophellie.bsky.social
Ian Kidd
Karl Egerton
Me

"Great philosophers, then, need a combination of gifts that is rare. They must be lawyers as well as poets. They must have both the new vision that points the way we are to go and the logical doggedness that sorts out just what is, and what is not, involved in going there."

-Mary Midgley, UDC

Thanks, Amy - writing it has been very enjoyable!

Mary Midgley and The Necessity of Philosophy Mary Midgley has become an increasingly prominent name in recent years. This could be attributed to her passing in 2018, which, along with the rise in Midgley and “Wartime Quartet” scholarship, has dr...

We are naturally connected: to the wild world, animals, one another. @gsmcelwain.bsky.social has an excellent overview of Mary Midgley's work, which is always relevant and increasingly prominent. From the APA blog. #philsky

Thanks, Joseph! She's an important thinker.

Absolutely!

Thank you, Chris!

Mary Midgley and The Necessity of Philosophy Mary Midgley has become an increasingly prominent name in recent years. This could be attributed to her passing in 2018, which, along with the rise in Midgley and “Wartime Quartet” scholarship, has dr...

Here is a piece on Mary Midgley that I wrote for the @apaphilosophy.bsky.social public philosophy blog!

#marymidgley #philsky

😄 Good point, being slammed around all the time. Less obvious than dolls in packages. I suppose it's because of the confined, limited existence?

"Our need for each other – our need for all the normal intercourse of human life – is not a weakness but a strength...Of course our dependencies are dangerous, but who wants to live safely like a billiard ball or a doll that never leaves its package?"

-Mary Midgley, The Solitary Self

#philsky

Specific grievances wear out; the unchangingness of group hostilities marks them as fraudulent. They are not responses to real external dangers, but fantasies. We erect a glass at the border of our own group, and see our own anger reflected against the darkness behind it.

-Mary Midgley, Wickedness

"We did not expect the earth to be vulnerable, capable of health or sickness, wholeness or injury. But it turns out that we were wrong: the earth is now unmistakably sick."

-Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry

#marymidgley #philsky #environment

"It is not true, as has often been suggested, that we cannot be interested in anything unlike ourselves. Both poetry and science show us as being interested in all manner of unlike things."

-Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter

#marymidgley #philsky