Mary Midgley: a late stand for a philosopher with soul
The moral philosopher has, in her 10th decade, become rather fashionable, as her fight to defend human consciousness against the likes of Richard Dawkins gathers admirers around the world
Moral philosopher Mary Midgley at home in Newcastle. Photographed for the Observer by Gary Calton
For a subject that is supposed to grapple with timeless questions, philosophy is chronically vulnerable to changing fashions. Trends come and go, one philosopher is all the rage, then the moment passes, the once radical insights begin to look dated and the intellectual caravan moves on to some new, often more arcane, territory of thought.
The moral philosopher Mary Midgley has never enjoyed the popular renown of, say, an AJ Ayer or the professional respect of a Richard Rorty, let alone the cult status of the continental critical theorists. But it's fair to say that at 94, she is finally beginning to draw attention from further afield than the narrow confines of her discipline. She's noticed this herself, as she's suddenly fielding emails from people from many different backgrounds from all over the world.
Her latest book is provocatively titled Are You an Illusion? Like much of her previous work, it's an attack on what she views as the shibboleths of materialism – the notion that everything in the universe, including us, can ultimately be understood through its physical properties. But it focuses in particular on the thorny issue of the self or consciousness or even, as Midgley sometimes puts it, the soul.
And currently there is what might be called a battle for the human soul being fought between the humanities and the sciences over who is best placed to examine the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human. One recent typical skirmish was an ill-tempered exchange of essays between the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker and the literary critic Leon Wieseltier in the pages of the New Republic.
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Her latest book is provocatively titled Are You an Illusion? Like much of her previous work, it's an attack on what she views as the shibboleths of materialism – the notion that everything in the universe, including us, can ultimately be understood through its physical properties. But it focuses in particular on the thorny issue of the self or consciousness or even, as Midgley sometimes puts it, the soul.
And currently there is what might be called a battle for the human soul being fought between the humanities and the sciences over who is best placed to examine the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human. One recent typical skirmish was an ill-tempered exchange of essays between the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker and the literary critic Leon Wieseltier in the pages of the New Republic.
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