Books by Mary Midgley

To look into the darkness of the human soul is a frightening venture, yet here Mary Midgley does so with her customary brilliance and clarity - to read Wickedness is to understand her reputation as one of the great moral philosophers.

Examines the barriers that our philosophical traditions have erected between human beings and animals and reveals that the too-often ridiculed subject of animal rights is an issue crucially related to such problems within the human community as racism, sexism, and age discrimination.

In this major work, Mary Midgley, one of our foremost intellectuals tells us that humans are rather more like animals than we have previously allowed ourselves to believe.

Explores the nature of our moral constitution to challenge the view that reduces human motivation to self-interest. This title argues that simple, one-sided accounts of human motives, such as the 'selfish gene' tendency in neo-Darwinian thought, may be illuminating but are always unrealistic.

Mary Midgley argues that our evolutionary origin, properly understood, both explains why and how human freedom and morality have come about.

In "Evolution as a Religion", Mary Midgley examines how science comes to be used as a substitute for religion and points out how badly that role distorts it. She exposes the illogical logic of poor doctrines that shelter themselves behind the prestige of science.

Midgley offers us an optimistic and holistic view of what it means to be human, acknowledging the complex interconnections of emotion and intellect, while presenting us with the freedom to be ourselves.

Why do the big philosophical questions so often strike us as far-fetched and little to do with everyday life? Mary Midgley shows that there is a need for philosophy in the real world.

Midgley notes how science has developed high spiritual ambitions. From prophetic physicists have come speculations that go beyond the claims of any religion.

Mary Midgley argues in her powerful new book that far from being the opposite of science, myth is a central part of it. A tour de force of clear thinking on why we are more than the sum of our molecules, The Myths We Live By is essential reading.

This treatise on the question of knowledge challenges readers to re-examine the protective barriers built to isolate "science" from other forms of enquiry. The author shows her concern with the plight of education and institutionalized knowledge, and the fate of learning in the future.