Scholarship and Christianity in Oxford – Online – CCCU GlobalEd
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A hundred years ago, British philosophy was dominated by a group of male scholars who would be later referred to as ‘analytic philosophers’; more specifically, they were associated with ‘ordinary language philosophy’, because of their focus on logic and ordinary language. Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein in Cambridge, and Gilbert Ryle, JL Austin and AJ Ayer in Oxford, defined the remit and methods of philosophy, for the better part of the 20th century. One would have to dig deep into the footnotes of an elaborate history of British philosophy, to find any reference to female intellectuals, like GEM Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, or Philippa Foot. And yet, it was these women who redefined moral philosophy, when it mattered most – in the post-war period. For them, defending the objectivity of morality was more than a matter of language, or argumentation. It was a matter of life and death.

In this course, you will have the opportunity to explore how each of these women solved the problem of good and evil; how they defended the rational roots of morality; and what their relationship with God was. You will learn that, although they had different religious commitments (or none), they all took the notion of metaphysical goodness seriously. For Anscombe, the anchor was always her Roman Catholic faith; for Murdoch – it was a belief in metaphysical values; similarly, for Foot – it was a conviction that one ought to be able to make ethical pronouncements, because there were such things as fundamentally good, bad, right, or wrong behaviour. In addition, we will explore the practical consequences of their philosophy on the public scene, for each of these women engaged with applied ethics in her own way, whether helping refugees (Murdoch), supporting Oxfam and writing on euthanasia (Foot), abortion and contraception (Anscombe).

While in Oxford, you might find yourself walking down the road between St Hugh’s (where Anscombe studied Classics) and Sommerville – the home of Foot and Murdoch; as you do, you might notice the Radcliffe Humanities building on your right, nowadays home to the Faculty of Philosophy. Walk in, and you will see pictures of all three women up on the wall, alongside those of more ‘representative’ figures of mainstream analytic philosophy.