Mary Midgley (1919-2018) was a fantastic philosopher, a champion of public philosophy in the UK, and a wonderful character. An excellent project on her life and work - and that of her contemporaries, G.E.M. Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and Philippa Foot - is Women In Parenthesis. They offer excellent text, audio, and video resources on Midgley, Anscombe, Murdoch, and Foot. ​There's an excellent introduction to Midgley's philosophy by Greg MacElwain and an excellent book on the Quartet called The Women Are Up To Something by Benjamin Lipscombe. There are also several pertinent papers in vol. 87 of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, published July 2020.


My contributions to the nascent field of 'Midgley studies':

• A co-edited collection of memories of Mary Midgley.

• A paper on Midgley's metaphilosophy for an edited collection.


• A chapter on Midgley, Nietzsche, and Sartre for Matt Dougherty and Tom Whyman (eds.) The Wartime Quartet and European Philosophy, commissioned.

• A paper on Midgley on vices and human nature.

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• ‘Mary Midgley’, Mary Ellen Waite and Ruth Hagengruber (eds.), Encyclopedia of Women in the History of Philosophy, forthcoming.*

• ‘Conceptions of Philosophy and the Challenges of Scientism’, Moti Mizrahi (ed.) Scientism: For and Against (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), 75-86.
  • ​I spend a lot of this paper endorsing - and, hopefully, emulating - Midgley's engagements with scientism.

 

• ‘Antiscientism in Mary Midgley’, Mary Ellen Waite (ed.), Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers, DOI: 10.17619/UNIPB/1-678, n.d.

 

• ‘Scientism in Mary Midgley’, Mary Ellen Waite (ed.), Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers, DOI: 10.17619/UNIPB/1-677, n.d.

• 'Midgley on the 1980s Battle to Save Philosophy', In Parenthesis blog, 27 April 2021.

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• 'Obituary: Mary Midgley', Fortean Times 375 (2019): 31.
  
  
• 'Midgley, Myopia, and Superficiality', a talk given at a centenary event for Mary Midgley, Conway House, London, 7 September 2019.*

 

• 'Mary Midgley on our Need for (Good) Philosophy', In Parenthesis blog, 28 November 2018*.

 

• 'Thinking as Complex as the World: An Obituary for Mary Midgley (1919-2018): An Obituary', Daily Nous 15 October 2018.
  • First published on the Society for Women in Philosophy-UK blog (here), 14 October 2018.​

 

• ‪Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley‪, co-edited with Elizabeth McKinnell (London: Routledge, 2015).

 

• ‪‘Introduction’, Ian James Kidd and Elizabeth McKinnell (eds.), Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley (London: Routledge, 2015): 1-15.

 

• ‪‘Doing Science an Injustice: Midgley on Scientism’, Ian James Kidd and Elizabeth McKinnell (eds.), Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley (London: Routledge, 2015: 151-167.

 

• ‪‘The Works of Mary Midgley’, Ian James Kidd and Elizabeth McKinnell (eds.), Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley (London: Routledge, 2015), 233-243.
  • ​​The up-to-date bibliography is now hosted by the In Parenthesis Project.