Episode 50, ‘The Golden Age of Female Philosophy’ with Rachael Wiseman (Part I)

Rachael Wiseman is a lecturer of philosophy at the University of Liverpool and previously an Addison Wheeler Research Fellow at Durham University. She, and her colleague Dr Clare MacCumhaill, are co-leaders on the British Academy funded project, In Parenthesis, which explores the work and friendship of the philosophical wartime quartet: Mary Midgley, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. Dr Wiseman, along with her colleague Professor Amber Carpenter, are also co-leaders of the Integrity Project, which looks at the meaning, relevance, and importance of ‘integrity’ across many spheres: moral, political, and even integrity in public philosophy. Dr Wiseman publishes research at the intersection of philosophy of mind, action and ethics, and has written on Elizabeth Anscombe’s approach to the hard problem of consciousness, the nature of the self and action, and a monograph on Elizabeth Anscombe’s own monograph, Intention.

In this episode, we will be talking to Dr Wiseman about her In Parenthesis project and the four female philosophers that she argues constitute a school of philosophy, one which is regularly omitted from the orthodox canon of ‘great thinkers’ or ‘schools of thought’. In the words of Rachael and here colleague Clare MacCumhaill:

The history of Analytic Philosophy we are familiar with is a story about men… [and] The male dominance is not just in the names of the ‘star’ players. Michael Beaney’s 2013 Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy begins by listing the 150 most important analytic philosophers. 146 of them are men. For women who wish to join in this conversation, the odds seem formidably against one.