PHIL 5300 Women Virtue Ethicists

In 1958, G.E.M. Anscombe penned Modern Moral Philosophy, in which she argued that modern philosophical ethics would remain useless until it developed an adequate philosophical psychology, one that could explain the nature of virtues, among other things. This course focuses on the work of four women and friends who inaugurated, each in her own way, this new paradigm for moral philosophy: G.E.M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, and Mary Midgley. We will also read other major figures in this movement, which sometimes goes by the name virtue ethics, as well as Aristotle, whose philosophy has inspired many of these thinkers.