Mary Midgley Quotes on Nature
Mary Midgley was a British moral philosopher and one of the small group of women who shaped Oxford philosophy during the Second World War, alongside Anscombe, Foot, and Iris Murdoch. This page collects quotes attributed to Mary Midgley on the topic of nature, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Mary Midgley:
“We are not just rational beings; we are also social and emotional beings.”
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Attributed to Mary Midgley:
“The notion of pure altruism is as much a myth as that of pure selfishness.”
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Attributed to Mary Midgley:
“Animals are not just things; they are members of our moral world.”
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“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”
We are not just rather like animals ; we are animals. Our difference from other species may be striking, but comparisons with them have always been, and must be, crucial to our view of ourselves. -
“Still, people have a lot of obvious and important things that other species do not–speech, rationality, culture and the rest. Comparison must deal with these. I have tried to discuss some of the most important of them, not attempting at all to deny their uniqueness, but merely to grasp how they occur in what is, after a primate species, not a brand of machine or a type of disembodied spirit. I have tried to show these capabilites as continuous with our animal nature, connected with our basic structure of motives.”
Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). -
“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”
Still, people have a lot of obvious and important things that other species do not–speech, rationality, culture and the rest. Comparison must deal with these. I have tried to discuss some of the most important of them, not attempting at all to deny their uniqueness, but merely to grasp how they occur in what is, after a primate species, not a brand of machine or a type of disembodied spirit. I hav -
“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”
Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not. -
“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”
Other areas were being mapped by anthropologists, who seemed to have some interest in my problem, but who were inclined (at that time) to say that what human beings had in common was not in the end very important; that the key to all the mysteries did lie in culture. This seemed to me shallow. It is because our culture is changing so fast, because it does not settle on everything that we need to g -
“Consideration of motives brings up the matter of free will. I had better say once, that my project of taking animal comparisons seriously does not involve a slick mechanistic or deterministic view of freedom. Animals are not machines; one of my main concerns is to combat this notion. Actually only machines are machines.”
Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). -
“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”
Consideration of motives brings up the matter of free will. I had better say once, that my project of taking animal comparisons seriously does not involve a slick mechanistic or deterministic view of freedom. Animals are not machines; one of my main concerns is to combat this notion. Actually only machines are machines.