Women of Ideas

This book features 29 interviews from the podcast Philosophy Bites with leading women philosophers, beginning with an interesting chapter on what it is like being a woman in philosophy -- following in the footsteps of the likes of Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch, G.E.M. Anscombe and Simone de Beauvoir. Just under 30% of philosophers in UK universities are women, the lowest outside STEM subjects but still a considerable improvement on previous times. The coverage is wide and rigorous across a huge range of subjects such as the status of animals, blame and historic injustice, civility, trustworthiness, philosophy in Africa, Hume and Buddhism, and Merleau-Ponty on the body. Two chapters I found of particular interest were Onora O'Neill on medical consent and Mary Warnock on philosophy in public life. There has been a move from implicit to explicit consent and of particular relevance to current context is the Nuremberg code formulated after World War II and stipulating that consent implies that there has been no coercion, deception, or manipulation, all factors present in current vaccine mandates. Mary Warnock's thoughtful piece draws on her experience of chairing government commissions, where she observes that we need to distinguish between our gut reactions and whether something is actually harmful -- philosophers in the House of Lords are also well placed to exercise its function of scrutinising legislation. A highly informative volume.