Oxforder Materialismus - Zur kritischen Philosophie von Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley und G.E.M. Anscombe

The philosophical project of Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Elizabeth Anscombe is directed against analytic philosophy which, when they began their studies, had started to dominate the academic mainstream. The so-called Oxford Four try - each in their own way - to tackle logical abstraction by shifting the focus towards the concrete problems of everyday life. This paper is a short introduction into the positions of Foot, Murdoch, Midgley and Anscombe. It understands their overall philosophical move as a materialistic turn following late Wittgenstein's grounding of philosophy in social praxis. However, the claim of the Oxford Four is in some respect stronger than in Wittgenstein as their ethics boldly tries to conceptualize the Good (life). Comparable with Marx and Adorno they develop a critical, materialist philosophy.
Iris Murdoch, Die Souveränität des Guten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2023. 148 S. [= SdG] Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 232 S. [= VV]. -, Natural Goodness. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. 128 S. [= NG] Mary Midgley, Beast and Man. The Roots of Human Nature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. 377 S. [= BM] -, Utopias, Dolphins and Computers: Problems of Philosophical Plumbing, London: Routledge, 1996. 192 S. [= UDC] G.E.M. Anscombe, »Modern Moral Philosophy«, in: Human Life, Action and Ethics: Essays by G.E.M. Anscombe, hrsg. v. Mary Geach u. Luke Gormally. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006. 330 S. [= MMP] -, Intention. Harvard: Havard University Press, 2000. 106 S. [= I]