British Journal for the History of Philosophy

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rbjh20

Mary Midgley’s Beast and man: the roots of human

nature (1978): a re-appraisal

Ellie Robson

To cite this article: Ellie Robson (2024) Mary Midgley’s Beast and man: the roots of human
nature (1978): a re-appraisal, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 32:4, 903-912, DOI:
10.1080/09608788.2023.2278065

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2023.2278065

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa

UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group

Published online: 11 Dec 2023.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1960

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rbjh20
BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
2024, VOL. 32, NO. 4, 903–912
https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2023.2278065

REVIEW ARTICLE

Mary Midgley’s Beast and man: the roots of human

nature (1978): a re-appraisal
Ellie Robson
Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
ARTICLE HISTORY Received 16 August 2023; Revised 16 October 2023; Accepted 26 October 2023

In the words of Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley’s Beast and Man built “an urgently
needed bridge between science and philosophy”.1 While science and philos­
ophy have never been entirely remote, Murdoch was right to observe the
achievement of her friend, Midgley, in drawing a new and insightful connec­
tion between these disciplines. A bridge, more specifically, between scientific
investigations into human and animal behaviour, and philosophical enquiries
into the concept of human nature. A moral philosopher by trade, Midgley
imbues the neo-Aristotelian understanding of man as a ‘rational animal’
with the many traits (she argues) we share with our diverse earthly neigh­
bours – nonhuman animals.
In the 1980s, Midgley’s bridge received attention owing to a boom of inter­
est in a new kind of scientific enquiry into human nature – the study of certain
aspects of human behaviour practiced under the name of ‘sociobiology’.
Sociobiology was particularly concerned with the social aspects of behaviour
in humans and animals, as revealed by certain biological aspects of species
(including their ecology and evolutionary history). Midgley’s Beast and Man,
at the time, offered an alternative to a purely biological account of human
social behaviour, which in many cases, was being used as a guide to our
ethical and moral behaviour. In an early review of Beast and Man for the
London Review of Books, Stuart Hampshire credits “Mrs Midgley” with
[stepping] into the controversy surrounding these large claims [concerning the
nature of ethics] as a judicious and temperate sceptic, rejecting the extravagant
confusions of the sociobiologists, but agreeing that the study of animal behav­
iour has produced results which have some interesting implications for morality
(Hampshire, Human Nature, 1)

CONTACT Ellie Robson [email protected] University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

1
Murdoch’s review was written on the back cover of the first edition of Beast and Man in 1978.
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the
posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
904 E. ROBSON

While Beast and Man was noticed by philosophers engaged in scientific

debates about morality (such as Peter Singer), its potential to contribute a
robust and novel concept of human nature in ethics went largely overlooked
within moral philosophy.2 What’s more, Midgley claims that attention within
the “noisy clash” of the sociobiology debate served only to “distort my
message, distracting the reader from what I had meant to be the central
topic” (The Owl of Minerva, 191). In this re-appraisal, I want to re-centre the
reader’s attention to what Midgley describes as the “core of the book”
(Beast and Man, xxii). In particular, I want to draw out Midgley’s important phi­
losophical aim, namely, to clarify the concept of human nature as a kind of
animal nature. In the course of this appraisal, I will also make remarks
about the appropriate sub-discipline of reception for Beast and Man within
philosophy specifically – once the diluting effects of the sociobiology have
been addressed.

1. “Urgent and fashionable” sociobiology

It is first worth considering why Beast and Man gained traction within debates
about sociobiology in the 1980s. One possible explanation is that Midgley
spoke in terms the sociobiologist recognized; her at-times witty prose
lacked philosophical jargon, aiding her entry into the interdisciplinary conver­
sation. Midgley also grappled with the same central question as sociobiolo­
gists, namely what is the nature of man? She even shared with them an
answer (in part) – the nature of man can be studied by biology.
Where Midgley found fault was with an all-encompassing nature of the
biological solution offered by the sociobiologist. A famous instance of this
was Edward Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), in which he
defined sociobiology as “the systematic study of the biological basis of all
social behaviour” (Sociobiology, 4). It was indeed systematic. Wilson
accounted for all forms of human social behaviour (e.g. altruism, aggression,
kinship etc.) by appeal to genes, evolution, and other biological processes. He
argued that like other animals, humans are genetically determined by their
nature as a kind of fleshy, earthly creature. In short, faced with the question
‘nature or nurture?’, Wilson chose ‘nature’. Incidentally, this is the point of
departure for Midgley.
In Beast and Man, Midgley covered much of the same ground as Wilson did
in Sociobiology. Her subject matter was human nature conceived as earthly
and biological (among other things) and instructed by scientific investigation
(among other things). In particular, Midgley and Wilson shared an enthusiasm
for ethology – the close scientific study of animals’ behaviour in their natural
environment. However, Midgley offered a different conceptual framework to
2
Singer cites Beast and Man in the opening remarks of his book The Expanding Circle: Ethics and
Sociobiology.
 BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 905

Wilson and argued that Wilson did not use the correct concepts to suit his
subject “matter” (Midgley, Beast and Man, 87). Midgley argued that,
Edward Wilson, though he wants the study of people to be linked with that of
other species quite as much as I do, wishes to turn the resulting subject into a
‘science’ in the exclusive sense
(Beast and Man, 87).

By “exclusive sense”, Midgley is referring to the strictly biological sense which,

she argues, sacrifices investigation of anything internal or psychological – like
a given creature’s purpose or motive. On Midgley’s view, human nature is a
cluster of things; we are biological, but we are also cultural, creative, and
conflicted creatures with many motives and emotions that are inaccessible
from a purely biological viewpoint (for Midgley, nature versus nurture is a
false dichotomy). Hence, here and in her wider methodology, Midgley
argues that human nature is a complex subject matter, and our investigation
must therefore take on complex forms. The central philosophical mistake in
sociobiology, then, was an attempt to “cannibalize” all modes of investigation
into human nature into a reductive biological method (Beast and Man, Intro­
duction to 2nd Edition, ii).
Notably, the original manuscript of Beast and Man, submitted to Cornell
University Press in 1975, made no mention of the sociobiology debate what­
soever. It was only upon the editor’s request that Midgley “put in the socio­
biology” (a word she admits was then “quite new to me”), that she read
Wilson’s book (The Owl of Minerva, 191). In the following years, Midgley duti­
fully added three chapters to the final thesis (found in Part II of the book, Art
and Science in Psychology). Later reflecting on the reception of Beast and Man,
she remarked that,
My book undoubtedly sold better because it dealt directly with this urgent and
fashionable topic [of sociobiology.] […] But the need to follow up points that
had interested Wilson still seemed to distort my message, distracting the
reader from what I had meant to be the central topic
(Beast and Man, 191).

If Midgley’s critique of sociobiology was a “distraction”, we might wonder

what her central topic was. In her memoir, The Owl of Minerva (2005),
Midgley later clarified this, stating that in Beast and Man, she was “trying to
bring back the notion of human nature itself […] well developed in our tra­
dition by philosophers such as Aristotle and Bishop Butler […] as an essential
tool, not only for thinking about morals but more generally for a reasonably
balanced view of the world” (The Owl of Minerva, 192). The novelty of Midg­
ley’s approach to human nature as a “tool” was its synthesis. She took what
many great philosophers have to say about the concept and connected it
with empirical insights from other disciplines (e.g. ethology, zoology, anthro­
pology etc.). While this project no doubt involved discrediting misuses of the
906 E. ROBSON

term ‘human nature’ by thinkers like Wilson, to view this as the main contri­
bution of the book would be a disservice to Midgley. In what remains, I
explore the Midgleyan concept of human nature found in Part VI of Beast
and Man, “Marks of Man” – which Midgley described as the “trunk out of
which all my various later ideas have branched” (The Owl of Minerva, 192).

2. Midgley on human (animal) nature

Beast and Man is not a book of straightforward natural science. Rather than
examining the natural origins of human’s ethical behaviour, Midgley
advances recommendations for ethical theories by informing them of impor­
tant facts about human nature and our status as animals. In doing so Midgley
rules out those ethical theories that are based on incorrect understandings of
human nature as revealed by the various sciences. In this sense, she provides
some recommendations for what ethicists should focus on as the ‘roots’ of
the human capacity for ethics, given our nature as a kind of animal.
In Part VI, beginning with the chapter “Speech and Other Excellences”,
Midgley defends an account of human nature by a two-fold argument.
First, she collapses a conceptual distinction between ‘humans’ and
‘animals’ (or ‘man’ versus ‘beast’) found prevalent in the history of ethics.
Within this tradition, the various capacities offered as potential human excep­
tions from other animals – language-use, culture, or rationality – are de-
bunked. For example, Midgley is critical of traditionally Aristotelian attempts
to define human nature by classification according to their genus and differ­
entia. In particular, she argues that the definition of man as a ‘rational’ (differ­
entia) and ‘animal’ (genus) is erroneous due to over-simplification. Any tactic
of classification according to singular excellence or function, such as ration­
ality, argues Midgley, reduces those “possibilities open to humanity” and
“obscures our truly characteristic richness and versatility” (Beast and Man, xiii).
In place of the human versus animal distinction, Midgley posits a non-
homogenous category of ‘animal’ which includes a rich variety of species,
including the human animal. This is the second fold of Midgley’s argument
in Part VI, summarized by first line of Beast and Man, “[w]e are not just
rather like animals; we are animals” (Beast and Man, xiii). To bolster this
claim, Midgley demonstrates that we stand to better understand human
nature by comparing – and not just contrasting – it with the natures of
other animals. She finds that the traditional philosophical understanding of
human nature is impoverished by a lack of context. Context, that is, gathered
from the natural (non-human) world of which we are a part. “Looking at other
species enables us to put something human in a wider context that explains
it” hence, “comparisons with [other species] have always been, and must be,
crucial to our view of ourselves” (Beast and Man, 314, xiii). Many of the pos­
sibilities revealed by a “wider context” are capacities that we share with
 BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 907

some nonhuman animals, including our emotional, affectionate, instinctive,

and social capacities. For this reason, Beast and Man is rich in its appeal to
ethological studies drawn from the work of famous ethologists and zoologists
like Jane Goodall, Konrad Lorenz, and Niko Tinbergen.
The resulting picture of human nature is a complex cluster of properties
which together form a distinctive and organized whole. As Midgley puts it,
“the nature of a species […] consists in a certain range of powers and ten­
dencies, inherited and forming a fairly firm characteristic pattern” (Beast
and Man, 58). Though it is not in Midgleyan spirit to offer an exhaustive
account of the properties that make up human nature, some of the natural
properties she includes in Beast and Man are “forming families” and “our
strong and special affection for our children”, “[l]oyalty and friendship”,
alongside “space around one, or sexual activity” (Beast and Man, 76-77).
Humans “want deep and lasting relationships […] And because these are
often difficult, we ‘bind ourselves’ in all sorts of ways to go through with
whatever we have started” (Beast and Man, 320).
Each species’ nature is distinct, but this does not exclude the possibility of
shared or overlapping goods, on Midgley’s view. “What is special about each
creature is not a single unique quality but a rich and complex arrangement of
powers and qualities, some of which it will certainly share with its neighbours”
she tells us (Beast and Man, 206, emphasis mine). While Midgley does not
endorse the Aristotelian method of genus-differentia classification of man as
essentially a rational animal, the idea of properties overlapping between
species is a familiar one in Aristotle’s zoological works.3 For example, in the
Generation of Animals, Aristotle argues that many species of nonhuman
animal display loving, caring feelings for the young, including the desire to
train them. Many animals are also social or “gregarious” including bees and
cranes (History of Animals, I.1, 488a7).4 Likewise, Midgley posits overlapping
interspecies traits. Her concept draws on ethological study emphasizing, for
example, the importance of care for the young in all kinds of animals, and
the importance of training “[…] by having ones who do something about
the next generation” (Beast and Man, 92).
Furthermore, in Part VI of Beast and Man Midgley does not deny that the
various properties of human animals proposed (e.g. by Aristotle) as our ‘excel­
lence’ or ‘function’ are important to our species’ nature; her point is rather
that these things alone neither define nor separate our species from the
rest.5 In Midgley’s words, “the various things that have been proposed as
differentia for man – conceptual thought or reason, language, culture, self-
consciousness, tool-using, productivity, laughter, a sense of the future, and

3
Which typically include History of Animals (HA), Generation of Animals (GA), Movement of Animals (DM),
Parts of Animals (PA). D. Balme 1987; D. M. Balme 1977; 1992; D. M. Balme and Gotthelf 2002.
4
Henceforth, HA.
5
This idea is examined and challenged by Ian Ground in his paper “Minding Animals”.
908 E. ROBSON

all the rest – form part of such a cluster, but none of them can monopolize it
or freeze it into finality” (Beast and Man, 206).
While this Midgleyan move represents another decisive break from the tra­
dition which has tended to emphasize the rational parts of human nature, it
does not exclude her from endorsing a brand of Aristotelianism in Beast and
Man. In Midgley’s words, “[Aristotle] stands as the biologist among philoso­
phers – indeed as the inventor of the biological attitude […] this is beyond
praise [and] his method in the Nicomachean Ethics is exactly the one I am
trying to follow here” (Beast and Man, 262, fn 1). As I noted previously, this
is not the kind of ‘exclusive’ use of biology we find employed by the sociobiol­
ogist, but rather a biology used in tandem with other modes of enquiry which
best revealed the complex subject of human and animal nature.

3. Rationality, integration and ethics

In Chapter 11 of Beast and Man (still within Part VI), Midgley accounts for the
place of rationality within human nature. As I noted above, she primarily
seeks to recognize the importance of rationality within the web of other non­
rational human natural powers and capacities, such that our rationality
cannot be independent from our animality. In her most precise discussion
of the concept, Midgley argues that “[t]here are […] two distinct elements
in rationality: cleverness and integration” (Beast and Man, 262). By cleverness
Midgley means “calculating power, the sort of thing that can be measured by
intelligence tests” (Beast and Man, 260). Cleverness is a kind of means-to-an-
end reasoning, enabling a creature to solve a specific problem in a particular
situation. Integration, on the other hand, involves a wider perspective, it
involves “having a character, acting as a whole, having a firm and effective
priority system” (Beast and Man, 260). In short, integration involves grasping
what is good all-things-considered, from the point of view of a species’ nature.
To be rational then, Midgley argues, a creature needs both elements of cle­
verness and integration. Describing an action as ‘clever’ does not entail that it
is a rational action, nor does it imply that cleverness is an excellence without
qualification. An action that is purely clever lacks a connection to the whole
life of the being in question, and hence cannot tell us about the good for that
being, on Midgley’s view. An artificial intelligence can effectively work
through premise-based arguments, or complete highly technical mathemat­
ical formulas, but it would not be described as ‘rational’ according to Midgley,
insofar as its action is isolated from a broader consideration of appropriate
context, reasons, and character. Hence, Midgley argues that integration is a
necessary condition of cleverness.
Midgley’s account of integration can be likened to Aristotle’s distinction
between phronesis and cleverness. Phronesis, like integration, involves speci­
fying the ends, including what the good life for the human (or animal, in
 BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 909

Midgley) consists in, while also working out what to do in a particular situ­
ation. Cleverness, by contrast, is instrumental, or means-to-end reasoning.
In Aristotle’s words,
[t]here is a capacity, called cleverness, which is such as to be able to do the
actions that tends to promote whatever goal is assumed and to achieve it. If
then, the goal is fine, cleverness is praiseworthy, and if the goal is base, clever­
ness is unscrupulousness; hence both intelligent and unscrupulous people are
called clever
(Nicomachean Ethics, VI.13, 1144b24-9).

Midgley gives a recognizably Aristotelian ethic in her account of human inte­

gration by specifying that each person has a responsibility to rationalize the
kinds of needs, wants, and desires placed upon them by their nature (and
their upbringing). In this sense, human nature operates via integration to
provide a guide to the good life as the kind of being that we are, while in
turn also guiding us within the specifics of a particular case. It is interesting
to note that for neither Aristotle nor Midgley is phronesis/integration a
capacity exclusive to the human animal. Midgley again comes close to Aris­
totle in claiming that some nonhuman animals are also capable of inte­
gration. Indeed, according to Aristotle each animals has its own
phronesis – but humans are the most ‘phronimos’ animal.

4. Ethical naturalism and Aristotle’s biology

If sociobiology was not Midgley’s primary audience for Beast and Man, then
what was? Undoubtably Midgley’s answer would not be singular. Her book
was interdisciplinary, and this is exactly how she wanted it to be read.
Having re-centred the reader’s focus to a Midgleyan account of human
nature, I now want to suggest one plausible avenue for Midgley’s reception:
meta-ethical debates in ethical naturalism.6 In particular, Midgley’s contri­
bution to ongoing contemporary discussions, which began in the 1980s,
about the concept of human nature and its relevance to ethics. Such conver­
sations were engaged in by many of Midgley’s contemporaries and interlocu­
tors – in particular, Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson, Elisabeth Anscombe,
Rosalind Hursthouse, and Alastair MacIntyre.7
Foot’s book Natural Goodness (2001) was seminal in the development of
Neo-Aristotelian naturalism. In it she argues that the word ‘good’, used in
judgements of ethical or practical normativity, has a shared grammar with
6
For methodological reasons, Midgley never explicitly calls herself a naturalist, she only ever describing
herself as a “pluralist” (sourced in personal correspondence with Gregory McElwain).
7
Elisabeth Anscombe’s paper ‘“Modern” Moral Philosophy’ (1958) is largely credited with inspiring the
Neo-Aristotelian focus on human nature and objectivity in ethics. Seminal Neo-Aristotelian texts of
Foot, MacIntyre, and Hursthouse were all published within two years of one another – MacIntyre’s
On Dependent Rational Animals (1999), Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics (1999), and Foot’s Natural Good­
ness (2001).
910 E. ROBSON

judgements of natural normativity. As such, flourishing and defect in the

lives of plants and non-human animals (e.g. this sunflower has lush green
leaves and is therefore flourishing as a sunflower), are analogous to judge­
ment of evaluative or ethical goodness and defect in human animals (e.g.
this human is kind, patient, and courageous, and is therefore flourishing
as a human). It is notable that Foot’s meta-ethical view was explicitly non-
empirical; Foot wanted to set up a grammar of goodness, using only our
pre-empirical, common-sense assessments of living things. Though
Midgley also sets up a grammar of goodness, her empiricism – particularly
her use of ethology – places her closer to the work of MacIntyre who, like
Midgley, used animal study to draw comparisons between humans and
nonhuman animals.
Some of the immediate reception of Beast and Man situated her within the
revival of a focus on human nature of the kind found in the work of other
Neo-Aristotelian Naturalists. The earliest example of philosophers associating
Midgley with the development of a form of naturalism inspired by Aristotle is
John Cottingham’s paper “Neo-Naturalism and its Pitfalls”. In 1983, Cotting­
ham describes “the recent work of one of the most eloquent spokespersons
for the new naturalism, Mary Midgley”,
In her recent and much acclaimed Beast and Man […] Midgley acknowledges
her general debt to the Aristotelian approach […] An analysis is offered
which focuses on certain human wants and needs; and conclusions are
drawn about “the good for man”. In undertaking such an enterprise, Midgley
expressly states that “we can and must reason from facts to values”
(Cottingham, Neo-Naturalism Pitfalls, 456).

Two years after Cottingham, Gordon Graham states,“[i]t is well known, I

suppose, that Aristotelian biology, or rather the Aristotelian/biological
approach to moral philosophy, is undergoing something of a revival. The
best-known recent work of this sort is Mary Midgley’s Beast and Man”
(Graham, Progress, 339). Given that the renewal or revival of interest in
Neo-Aristotelianism surged in the 1980s, and the decades surrounding it,
these early references to Midgley place the publication of Beast and Man,
in 1978, at the very beginning of this trend.8
The decades that follow saw Midgley fall almost completely out of dis­
cussions of naturalism and Aristotelianism in ethics. This is perhaps because
people did not see Beast and Man for its contribution to philosophy, and
instead as a piece of science – a view compounded by its reception in
sociobiology debates.9 This is evidenced by the reception of Midgley’s

8
As Julia Peters observes, it “[t]he 1970s, 80s and 90s were particularly productive decades for the devel­
opment of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics” (Peters, Aristotelian Ethics in Contemporary Perspectiv, 1).
9
During this time, Midgley also engaged with topics seen to be outside of mainstream interests – such as
environmental ethics and animal ethics. This may have contributed to her oversight from meta-ethics
(e.g. if she was seen to be contributing to applied or practical ethics, instead of normative ethics).
 BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 911

philosophy at Cornell University Philosophy department. Following the

publication of Midgley’s paper “The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy,
Ethics and Animal Behaviour” (1973) in the journal Philosophy, Professor
Max Black of Cornell invited Midgley to attend “some discussions about
the meaning of the species barrier” held at Cornell’s Science, Technology,
and Society programme (Midgley, The Owl of Minerva, 191). Midgley
recalls that Black’s programme was a “very inclusive sort of science and
philosophy organization. It was quite separate from the Cornell philosophy
department who didn’t wish to know about [her paper]” (laughter follows)
(Midgley, Life Story Interviews, 61).
It does not seem far-fetched to suggest that the reaction of Cornell’s Phil­
osophy Department had something to do with the interdisciplinary nature of
Midgley’s paper, which provided the framework for Beast and Man. Her then-
unconventional use of empirical and social science to illuminate moral phil­
osophy allowed her novel bridge between disciplines to be overlooked.
However, as I have proposed in this re-appraisal, this does not mean that
Midgley’s concept of human nature cannot provide genuinely philosophical
insight into important areas of ethics.

Conclusion
Contrary to the climate of its early reception, Beast and Man had the potential
to do much more than contribute to the ongoing sociobiology debate preva­
lent in the 1980s. It offers the reader an empirically-informed understanding
of humans, resulting in a thoroughly anti-Cartesian approach to the human as
a kind of animal, continuous with the world. What’s more, Midgely prompts
us to re-think our relationship with the natural world, suggesting that
humans and animals are not as different as the history of philosophy has
taught us.
What would Beast and Man look like without this intrusion of sociobiology?
A republication of the text, including only those topics Midgley was truly con­
cerned about, would provide an answer – and, as I have argued, would be a
welcome addition to ongoing meta-ethical debates about human nature.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to the journal editor and an anonymous referee for constructive comments on
previous drafts and to Gregory McElwain and Alex Douglas for thoughts on earlier
drafts.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
912 E. ROBSON

Bibliography
Anscombe, Elizabeth. “Modern Moral Philosophy”. Philosophy 33, no. 124 (1958): 1–19.
Balme, D. M. “Aristotle’s Use of Division and Differentiae”. In Philosophical Issues in
Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf, and James G. Lennox, 69–89.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Balme, D. M., ed. De Partibus Animalium I and de Generatione Animalium I. Vol. 94.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Balme, D. M., and Allan Gotthelf. Aristotle: Historia Animalium’: Volume 1, Books I-X: Text.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Blame, D. M. “Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I”.
Journal of the History of Biology 10, no. 2 (1977): 366–366.
Cottingham, John. “Neo-Naturalism and Its Pitfalls”. Philosophy 58, no. 226 (1983):
455–70.
Graham, Gordon. “Progress”. Philosophy 61, no. 237 (1986): 331–43.
Ground, Ian. “Minding Animals”. In Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics;
Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley, edited by Ian James Kidd, and Elizabeth McKinnell,
129–48. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999.
MacIntyre, Alastair. On Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the
Virtues. London: Duckworth. 1999.
Midgley, Mary. “The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy, Ethics and Animal Behaviour”.
Philosophy 48, no. 184 (1973): 111–35.
Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1978.
Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. 2nd ed. London; New York:
Routledge, 1995.
Midgley, Mary. The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Midgley, Mary. “Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum” in Life Story Interviews.
British Library. 2015.
Peters, Julia. Aristotelian Ethics in Contemporary Perspective. New York: Routledge,
2013.
Singer, Peter. The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1981.
Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Oxford: Belknap Harvard University
Press, 1975.