Interrupting the conversation: The philosophical pedagogy of Donald MacKinnon, wartime tutor of Anscombe, Midgley, Murdoch and Foot.

Clare MacCumhaill (Durham University) and Rachael Wiseman (Liverpool University)

5.30-7.00 pm
For further inquiries: p.standish@ucl.ac.uk

The background paper is attached here.

Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch and Philippa Foot – four of the most distinguished moral philosophers of the last century – all studied at Oxford during the Second World War. One of their wartime tutors was Donald MacKinnon. Our talk will chart, very broadly, the structure of MacKinnon’s philosophical outlook as it was developing in those years. Four talks from 1938-1941 – ‘And the Son of Man That Thou Visiteth Him’ (1938), ‘What Is a Metaphysical Statement? (1941), ‘The Function of Philosophy in Education’ (1941) and ‘Revelation and Social Justice’ (1941) – offer a foretaste of his conception of moral philosophy as it was later articulated in his 1957 A Study of Ethical Theory. We suggest that aspects of MacKinnon’s philosophical outlook and unusual treatment of method are likely to have shaped his philosophical pedagogy and we offer reasons for thinking that traces of his pedagogical, and hence perhaps philosophical influence, can be variously glimpsed in the work of at least Midgley, Murdoch and Foot, all of whom studied with him from Trinity Term 1940 until their finals in 1942. In case of Anscombe, though she was taught (Plato) by MacKinnon only briefly, both moved in shared intellectual circles and there is reason to think that some of the forces which shaped MacKinnon’s outlook also shaped hers.

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