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Philippa Foot

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most notable philosophers of the 20th century, who explored why it mattered to be moral and why humans needed virtues to flourish.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010). Her central question was, β€œWhy be moral?” Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, Foot spent her life working through her instinct that there was something lacking in the prevailing philosophy of the 1950s and 1960s which held that values could only be subjective. Could there really be no objective response to the horrors of the concentration camps that she had seen on newsreels, no way of saying that such acts were morally wrong? Foot developed an ethics based on virtues, in which humans needed virtues to flourish as surely as plants needed light and water. While working through her ideas she explored applied ethics and the difference between doing something and letting it happen, an idea she illustrated with what became The Trolley Problem.

With

Anil Gomes
Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of Oxford

Sophie Grace Chappell
Professor of Philosophy at the Open University

And

Rachael Wiseman
Reader in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool

Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Studios Audio Production

Reading list:

Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford University Press, 1978)

Philippa Foot, Moral Dilemmas (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford University Press, 2001)

John Hacker-Wright, Philippa Foot's Moral Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013)

Benjamin Lipscomb, The Women Are Up To Something (Oxford University Press, 2021)

Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life (Chatto, 2022)

Dan Russell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press), especially β€˜Virtue Ethics in the Twentieth Century’ by Timothy (now Sophie Grace) Chappell

Available now

58 minutes

Last on

Sun 19 May 2024 23:00

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Guests and related links

Contributors:

-Μύ of the Open University

-Μύ of the University of Oxford

-Μύ of the University of Liverpool


Related links:

Μύ

Broadcasts

  • Thu 16 May 2024 09:00
  • Sun 19 May 2024 23:00

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