VISIONARIES

MARY MIDGLEY Ethical Philosopher

"We cannot dismiss our emotions and the rest of our non-intellectual nature, along with the body and the earth it is fitted for, as alien, contingent stuff. We have somehow to operate as a whole, to preserve the continuity of our being.'

IKE ALL GOOD VISIONARIES, Seeing things in their context has enabled her Midgley has a habit of seeing the signifi- to show that apparently conflicting positions are L cance of things before the rest of us. At a in fact complementary aspects of a wider whole; time when ethical theory was still firmly and that these positions can and should be recon- entrenched behind human lines, she wrote Animals ciled. She has argued in this way against the and Why They Matter A Journey Around the Species polarisation of and environmental Barrier, joining in taking seriously the concerns which, tragically, have frequently been idea that ethical obligations extend beyond our own understood as presenting a need to take sides. species. Moreover, Midgley has addressed more Another example is found in Beast and Man. theoretical tasks, such as unravelling the implica- Here, Midgley uses a wider focus to reveal the tions for conventional Western approaches to ways in which philosophers have typically taken and trying to track down the intellectual confusions an excessively abstract approach to the human that lead to a denial of inter-species ethics. mind, hence obscuring important features of the Unusually for a professional philosopher, she way it functions. She shows us instead the constantly returns to the wider context, addressing human mind in its evolutionary context and, in questions such as the place of humans and their the process, forges a reconciliation between rea- activities (including, crucially, science) in the gen- son and emotion, and emphasises the impor- eral scheme of things, and in particular the rela- tance of imagination in our reasoning processes. tionship between humans and the environment. And she argues powerfully in recent books

62 MARY MIDGLEY

(Science and Poetry and The Myths We Live By) patiently opening it out to critical scrutiny is thus against the alleged opposition between science a crucial precursor to change—and is the point at and myth, and science and spirituality. which philosophy becomes truly political, in the In all these cases it is a mistake to be bullied broadest and most constructive sense. into the position of having to treat these as In the context of environmental and social jus- either/or choices. This, she argues, is "intellectual tice issues, the need for new mental models is as tribalism", where one perspective or dimension of crucial as new technology. Western societies still an issue is taken to be the whole story and is then struggle with corrosive forms of social atomism ranged in battle against other perspectives. This and individualism that militate against sustained mistake can only be noticed when the wider con- and concerted effort to deal with collective human text is brought into focus. Once this is done problems, for example, hunger, at a global level. bridge-building and reconciliations are possible, Helping us rethink these visions is perhaps and this in turn has tremendously constructive Midgley's most crucial contribution. Here, she implications, both practical and theoretical. draws on Gaia theory as a key source, giving us Midgley graduated from Oxford in Philosophy the conceptual wherewithal to adapt our back- and Ancient History in 1942. She was a civil ser- ground vision in ways that will not only be more vant and a teacher during the war, married in 1950 truthful but will afford profound understanding and moved to Newcastle, where she focused on of our environmental problems—and inspire us reviewing books and starting a family. In 1963 she to act. The Earth is not a lifeless jumble but an took up a lecturing position in the philosophy immense complexity of interrelated systems. department at . After 'retiring' And we are not independent from this living in 1980, Midgley stayed in Newcastle and contin- whole but deeply immersed in it. We are part of ues to work with great success as one of a very rare ecological systems and not apart from them. breed—a freelance philosopher. Once this simple truth is truly understood—emo- When 's book Gaia: A New tionally as well as intellectually, with imagination Look at Life on Earth was first published in 1979, as well as with reason—then our reasons for tak- it was widely considered to lie somewhere ing care of the environment as an overriding pri- between fantasy, lunacy and, worst of all, spiritu- ority become utterly and compellingly clear. ality. Midgley read it and immediately saw that it Midgley's work of re-evaluating our back- made sense. In Science and Poetry and in the ground visions reveals philosophy's potential as a Demos pamphlet Gaia: The Next Big Idea she radical activity, affording us the much needed argues that this way of looking at life on Earth ability to rethink our economic, social and politi- can provide a much needed prompt and source cal institutions when they become problematic as for challenging some of the assumptions behind well as the very patterns of thought that have led the practice of contemporary science. More gen- to these institutions and particular ways of life in erally, it can inspire us to rethink some of our the first place. Thinking about thinking' is thus a broadest patterns of thought. profoundly radical activity when approached in This brings us to the most literal sense in this way. which Midgley is a visionary. She is a person who Tragically, however, liberating philosophy's full works with visions. Her writing consistently potential often requires extracting it from its com- offers us a vivid understanding of the ways in monest setting—academic institutions—where it which our intellectual frameworks and patterns can, like all subjects, become excessively spe- of thinking affect the way we live and act. We live cialised and far removed from practical problems our entire lives against the background of a guid- in the real world. Midgley's philosophy is not about ing vision or worldview. This has immense impli- abstraction and playing intellectually beautiful but cations for how we behave, think and live. But it largely irrelevant games. It is about wisdom, and it is often an unnoticed part of the background to is about change. And it is absolutely necessary. our lives; and so, too, are the problems within it. Bringing to the surface any given vision and Kate Rawles