Oxford, May 1, 1956. In the solemnity of the Bodleian Library, the university faculty has met to decide whether to grant an honoris causa to former United States President Harry S. Truman. One of the people present, the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, vehemently opposes it, because she believes that this recognition should not be granted to someone who, by ordering the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was guilty of the death of thousands of innocent people. At a time when philosophy had turned towards the analytical and scientific methods of logical positivism, she and her Oxford colleagues and friends Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch and Mary Midgley, under the impact of the Second World War, considered that philosophy should face again the big ethical questions: what is morally right? What moral principles should we follow? Is there an objective criterion of morality? This book reconstructs the vital and intellectual adventures of these four women who left their mark on philosophy, at a time when this discipline was dominated by men.
