Out of the despair of WWII four brilliant women friends brought philosophy back to life and laid the foundation of today's ethical thinking. Fenella Woolgar reads.

Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe studied philosophy together at Oxford University during WWII when many male students and tutors were conscripted. Taught by refugee scholars, conscientious objectors and a number of women tutors the four friends were profoundly affected by the unprecedented horrors of war, especially the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In response they set out to make sense of the disorder and despair that followed, and developed a philosophy relevant to every day life, which went on to shape contemporary ethical thinking.

We meet the quartet at the start of their friendship, as they embark on their lives as undergraduates, and later as they take up jobs in the post war period. We encounter the philosophers who inspired their thinking from the brilliant but chaotic, Ludwig Wittgenstein to the superstar thinker, Jean-Paul Sartre. Later, we witness their theorising and thought as it evolved over the decades. All the while, we are with them as they go about the stuff of every day living, including the sometimes emotional and unconventional turmoil of their love lives.

Metaphysical Animals is vividly and expertly written by philosophy lecturers, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman who took their inspiration from their own friendship with one of the key players in this remarkable and little known story, Mary Midgley.

Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard Show less