Metaphysical Animals Audiobook By Clare Mac Cumhaill, Rachael Wiseman cover art

Metaphysical Animals

How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Metaphysical Animals

By: Clare Mac Cumhaill, Rachael Wiseman
Narrated by: Alex Dunmore
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.00

Buy for $18.00

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A vibrant portrait of four college friends—Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley—who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away fighting World War II.

The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch were philosophy students at Oxford when most male undergraduates and many tutors were conscripted away to fight in the Second World War. Together, these young women, all friends, developed a philosophy that could respond to the war’s darkest revelations.

Neither the great Enlightenment thinkers of the past, the logical innovators of the early twentieth century, or the new Existentialist philosophy trickling across the Channel, could make sense of this new human reality of limitless depravity and destructive power, the women felt. Their answer was to bring philosophy back to life. We are metaphysical animals, they realized, creatures that can question their very being. Who am I? What is freedom? What is human goodness? The answers we give, they believed, shape what we will become.

Written with expertise and flair, Metaphysical Animals is a lively portrait of women who shared ideas, but also apartments, clothes and even lovers. Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman show how from the disorder and despair of the war, four brilliant friends created a way of ethical thinking that is there for us today. Philosophy Women Metaphysical Thought-Provoking War Literary History & Criticism Middle Ages Metaphysical Animal
All stars
Most relevant
I’ve long been a student of Iris Murdoch’s philosophical work. She opened a space for me to engage crucial moral questions of attention, love, unselfing and just vision, which were otherwise ignored in my analytic education. hearing the story of her colleagues in the wider context of their setting was a pleasure. The narrator brings their voices to life, even adjusting her accent so we can hear Murdoch, Anscombe, Midgley and Foot in their particularity. Delightful!

A crucial story for moral philosophy

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed the book a great deal. Learned quite a bit about how these four women philosophers, among others, ventured into the oftentimes uncomfortable if not inhospitable male bastions of academic excellence that were and are Oxford & Cambridge. As a parent of three daughters I was rooting for them from the start. Each of the four, Murdoch, Middleton, Anscombe & Foot, made their mark in no small ways in the 20th century field of philosophy.

Four fascinating female philosophers.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is incredible, I’m utterly convinced that these women were the greatest minds of their generation in philosophy. Also Alix Dunmore is SPECTACULAR.

I love the book as much as I love the performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Outstanding depth of knowledge, ethical values, and superb intellect, exercised by fearless human beings. Writing from the midst of rich living.

Essential reading to live honorably in these complex times, 2026.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The revival of Metaphysics by these four women philosophers is a service to post war philosophy. A service that lives on today. They are also pioneers for equal opportunity. The Audible performance was one of the best I have heard. The content was a necessary balance between their humanity and their work. Excellent.

Important

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews