Author Guide · Moral Philosophy
Books Written by
Mary Midgley published her first book, Beast and Man, in 1978, when she was 59. “I wrote no books until I was a good 50,” she said later, “and I’m jolly glad because I didn’t know what I thought before then.” She had studied at Somerville College, Oxford, alongside Iris Murdoch, in the wartime generation that also produced Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, and she taught philosophy at Newcastle University until 1980. Most of her books came after she retired: on human nature and other animals, on where wickedness comes from, and on what happens when science is asked to do the work of a religion. In 1979 she took on Richard Dawkins over The Selfish Gene, an argument that ran for decades. Her last book appeared in September 2018, weeks before she died at 99. This guide covers her 11 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 11 key books · 1978–2018 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Mary Midgley’s best-known books are Beast and Man (1978), Wickedness (1984), Evolution as a Religion (1985) and The Myths We Live By (2003); her last was What Is Philosophy For? (2018). Start with Beast and Man, which she called the trunk from which all her later ideas branched.
Where to Start with Mary Midgley
If you want her foundational book
→ Beast and Man (1978) — humans as animals, and what that does and does not explain.
If you want her on the problem of evil
→ Wickedness (1984) — why ordinary people do terrible things.
If you want short essays first
→ The Myths We Live By (2003) — nearly thirty pieces on the images that shape our thinking.
If you want her side of the Dawkins argument
→ The Solitary Self (2010) — a short book on Darwin, Hobbes and selfishness.
11 Mary Midgley Books, in Order
Beast and Man
Her first book, which grew out of a conference she organised as a visiting scholar at Cornell and was revised after E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology (1975) appeared. It argues that humans are animals with an evolved nature, while warning that “human nature” invites cure-all explanations. A revised edition followed in 1995.
Animals and Why They Matter
A book on the moral standing of animals that links the barrier drawn between humans and other species to exclusions within human society, including racism, sexism and age discrimination. It also covers vegetarianism, pets, and the old opposition between reason and emotion in moral thought.
Wickedness
An essay on where human wrongdoing comes from. Midgley looks for the immediate sources of evil in people rather than asking why God permits it, treats vice as a failure of capacities we also need for virtue (“we are capable of vice because we are capable of virtue”), and rejects a forced choice between social and individual causes.
Evolution as a Religion
A critique of popular writing that turns evolution into a creation myth: either an escalator of progress “from gas to genius” or a tooth-and-claw story in which social feeling is an illusion. It is dedicated “To the Memory of Charles Darwin Who Did Not Say These Things”. A reissue with a new introduction appeared in 2002.
Science as Salvation
Based on her Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 1989–90. It examines the hope that science can answer questions about the meaning of life and the future of humanity, and the beliefs about matter, origins and destiny that have grown up around the natural sciences.
Science and Poetry
A book on the place of imagination in human thought. It criticises materialism and fatalism, discusses physics and religion, and defends the philosophical side of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis.
The Myths We Live By
Nearly thirty short, linked essays. By “myth” she means an imaginative pattern, not a lie, and her targets include the image of society as atoms making a contract, nature and people seen as machines, the idea of “memes”, and the claim that neuroscience can replace ordinary talk about the mind. Different explanations, she argues, are like maps made for different purposes.
The Owl of Minerva
Her autobiography, from a childhood in Cambridge, Greenford and Ealing to Oxford during the Second World War, marriage to the philosopher Geoffrey Midgley, and the late start to her writing. In it she describes Beast and Man as “the trunk out of which all my various later ideas have branched”.
The Solitary Self
A short book arguing that the picture of humans as isolated, self-interested competitors runs from Hobbes through Thomas Huxley to Richard Dawkins, and that it misrepresents Darwin, whose account of morality starts from social feeling. She points to cooperation in nature, such as the origin of complex cells, against a purely competitive view.
Are You an Illusion?
A reply to scientists and philosophers who say the self is an illusion, or no more than a jumble of cells. Midgley defends the value of subjective experience and argues that such claims gloss over problems of causality and free will.
What Is Philosophy For?
Written in the last year of her life and published by Bloomsbury in September 2018, less than three weeks before her death. It argues that philosophy’s job is to relate the different ways we think and talk about the world, rejects scientism, and says the “hard problem” of consciousness looks intractable mainly because it is framed in materialist terms.
In What Order to Read Mary Midgley
Nothing in Midgley depends on reading an earlier book first; she returned to the same few themes all her life, so any of them can be read alone. Publication order shows a shift of emphasis: the books of the late 1970s and 1980s are about human nature, animals and evil, and from Evolution as a Religion onwards she writes more and more about how science is used in public argument.
Beast and Man is the longest and densest. If you would rather start short, The Myths We Live By works in brief essays and The Solitary Self is a compact version of her argument about selfishness. Read The Owl of Minerva whenever you want the life behind the books.
A reading path
1. The Myths We Live By (2003)
2. Beast and Man (1978)
3. Wickedness (1984)
4. Evolution as a Religion (1985)
5. What Is Philosophy For? (2018)
Everything Else Mary Midgley Published
Beyond the 11 key books: 8 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other books
5
5 books · 1981–1996
- 1981Heart and Mindsubtitled The Varieties of Moral Experience
- 1983Women’s Choiceson philosophical problems facing feminism, written with Judith Hughes
- 1989Wisdom, Information and Wondersubtitled What Is Knowledge For?
- 1994The Ethical Primatesubtitled Humans, Freedom and Morality
- 1996Utopias, Dolphins and Computerssubtitled Problems of Philosophical Plumbing
Edited volumes and pamphlets
3
3 books · 2001–2007
- 2001Gaia: The Next Big Ideaa pamphlet for the think tank Demos
- 2005The Essential Mary Midgleya selection of her writing, edited by her son David Midgley
- 2007Earthy Realismessays on the meaning of Gaia, edited by Midgley
The years · 1919–2018
Quick facts about Mary Midgley
- Known for
- Arguing that humans are animals with a real nature while attacking the use of science as a replacement religion, most famously in her long dispute with Richard Dawkins.
- 1919
- Born in Dulwich, London
- 1950
- Marries the philosopher Geoffrey Midgley
- 1978
- Beast and Man
- 2018
- Dies in Newcastle, aged 99
- Born
- Mary Beatrice Scrutton, 13 September 1919, Dulwich, London
- Died
- 10 October 2018, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, aged 99
- Education
- Somerville College, Oxford, first-class degree in Mods and Greats; no doctorate
- Taught
- Newcastle University until 1980, as senior lecturer in philosophy
- Married
- The philosopher Geoffrey Midgley, in 1950; three sons
- Lectures
- Gifford Lectures, University of Aberdeen, 1989–90
- Honours
- Honorary degrees from Durham (1995) and Newcastle (2008)
The red mark is 1978: Beast and Man, her first book, published when she was 59.
How Mary Midgley Writes: Many Maps
Midgley’s recurring image is the map: no single map shows everything, so a geological map and a road map do not compete. She applies this to explanation itself, arguing that physics, biology, psychology and ordinary talk about motives describe the same world for different purposes, and that trouble starts when one of them claims to be the whole picture. That is the root of her objection to what she called “academic imperialism” and to scientism.
She writes plainly, for general readers, and much of her work is close reading of other people’s language. In “Gene-Juggling” and later books she took apart the shifting uses of “selfish”; in The Myths We Live By she examined images such as the social contract and the machine. Her method was to find the picture behind an argument and ask what it leaves out.
Animals are never far away. From Beast and Man onwards she drew on ethology, the study of animal behaviour, to argue that human emotions and morality grow from an evolved social nature, and she treated the line between humans and other species as a moral question in its own right, not a fixed boundary.
Watch
Mary Midgley on Science, Scientism and the Self
Mary Midgley gives a talk on science, scientism and the self at the Ian Ramsey Centre’s Humane Philosophy Project seminar, a theme of her book Are You an Illusion?; posted in November 2015. From the official Ian Ramsey Centre channel.
Frequently asked questions about Mary Midgley’s books
How many books has Mary Midgley written?
Around twenty, counting edited volumes. Eleven are the key books on this page, from Beast and Man (1978) to What Is Philosophy For? (2018). The others include Heart and Mind (1981), Women’s Choices (1983, with Judith Hughes), Can’t We Make Moral Judgements?, The Ethical Primate (1994) and Utopias, Dolphins and Computers (1996).
What are Mary Midgley’s books in order?
Beast and Man (1978), Animals and Why They Matter (1983), Wickedness (1984), Evolution as a Religion (1985), Science as Salvation (1992), Science and Poetry (2001), The Myths We Live By (2003), The Owl of Minerva (2005), The Solitary Self (2010), Are You an Illusion? (2014) and What Is Philosophy For? (2018).
Where should I start with Mary Midgley?
Beast and Man (1978), her first book and the one she called the trunk of all her later ideas. If you want something shorter first, try the essays in The Myths We Live By (2003).
What is Mary Midgley’s most famous book?
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1978). Her other most widely read books are Wickedness (1984) and Evolution as a Religion (1985).
What was the dispute between Mary Midgley and Richard Dawkins?
In 1979, in the journal Philosophy, Midgley published “Gene-Juggling”, a reply to J. L. Mackie’s praise of Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976). She called Dawkins an “uncritical philosophic egoist” and criticised his use of the word “selfish”. Dawkins replied in the same journal in 1981 with “In Defence of Selfish Genes”, saying her article was hard to match “for its patronising condescension toward a fellow academic”; in the 1989 edition of his book he called it “highly intemperate and vicious”. Midgley returned to the argument in later books, including The Solitary Self (2010).
What is Wickedness by Mary Midgley about?
Wickedness (1984) asks where human wrongdoing comes from. Rather than asking why God allows evil, Midgley looks at its sources in people, and argues that we are capable of vice because we are capable of virtue, so that evil is a failure of capacities we need, and that social and individual causes work together.
Is Mary Midgley still alive?
No. She died on 10 October 2018 in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, aged 99, less than three weeks after her last book, What Is Philosophy For?, was published.
Who were the Oxford women philosophers Mary Midgley studied with?
At Oxford during the Second World War she was a contemporary of Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot and Iris Murdoch, with whom she studied Mods and Greats at Somerville. The four are the subject of the In Parenthesis project at Durham University, which also holds her papers.
Did Mary Midgley have a PhD?
No. She began graduate work on Plotinus at Oxford in 1947 but never finished the thesis, and later called herself unqualified “and grateful for it”. She received honorary doctorates from Durham in 1995 and Newcastle in 2008.
Did Mary Midgley write about animals?
Yes, throughout her career. Beast and Man (1978) uses the study of animal behaviour to think about human nature, and Animals and Why They Matter (1983) is about the moral standing of animals and the barrier drawn between species.
Footnotes
- Mary Midgley — Wikipedia
- Mary Midgley obituary — The New York Times, via WRAL, 2018
- Thinking as complex as the world: an obituary for Mary Midgley — Ian James Kidd, Daily Nous, 2018
- Mary Midgley — Gifford Lectures
- The Solitary Self — Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
- What Is Philosophy For? — Philosophy Now review
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all hers.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I keep thinking that I shall have no more to say, and then finding some wonderfully idiotic doctrine which I can contradict.”
— Mary Midgley, interviewed in The Guardian (2001)
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