Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

by Clare Mac Cumhaill

When, as a young philosopher at Lady Margaret Hall, Dorothy Emmet found the ‘world of moral certainties’ described by her Realist lecturers unrealistic, her response was to seek a connection between morality and what is important in human life. But for Hare, thousands of miles from home and confronted with conditions and a set of values he could barely recognise, the existence of different moral certainties seemed fatal to the idea of universal, objective moral standards. ‘What must be understood about a prisoner-of-war community is that it is a society which has to be formed, and constantly re formed, out of nothing’, Hare recalled. There was no background, no shared understanding of what mattered, on which he could depend. In ‘this very strange, constantly disintegrating situation…one can never know from day to day whether personal survival – which seems in any case rather unlikely – is rendered more likely by cooperation with one’s fellow-prisoners or by looking out for oneself’.