Greg McElwain
Professor of Philosophy. Mainly animal/environmental ethics and Mary Midgley.
Author of Mary Midgley: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2020): tinyurl.com/Mary-Midgley & Mary Midgley on What Matters: Conversations on Science, Ethics, and Nature (2026).
- Reposted by Greg McElwainA CfA for the 2nd Predoctoral Conference on the quartet in Manchester in June: deadline 20 February. For more information about how to submit and attend please see our website: www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/news/
- Reposted by Greg McElwainA @inparenthesis.bsky.social update: Proud to be helping to organise this Symposium that builds on @domlash.bsky.social agenda setting work here. CfA The Quartet-in-Film Symposium: Vice & Violence Winchester in June @uniwinchester.bsky.social www.winchester.ac.uk/research/Our... #filmsky #philsky
- Reposted by Greg McElwainMary Midgley saw philosophy as mapping relationships between fields. Though she never fully critiqued economics, Nat Dyer argues her ideas on myths, reductionism & ecology offer a powerful challenge to today’s economic orthodoxy. youtube.com/watch?v=FYNCodkhbrk
- Reposted by Greg McElwainPlease enjoy this piece originally posted by PAN Works Fellow and Virtual Writer in Residence, Mara-Daria Cojocaru, PD Dr. phil., in which she discusses humans and wolves with Professor Greg McElwain. #animals #ethics #wellbeing #compassion #conservation #empathy #communities #intrinsicvalue
- Amazing!
- Reposted by Greg McElwainWe were pleased to welcome as one of our key note speakers @drelizabethmac1.bsky.social who spoke about the work of the philosopher Mary Midgley. #ThoughtfulConference2025 #PhilosophyMatters #WorldPhilosophyDay
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- Reposted by Greg McElwainMary Midgley and Jane Goodall in 1989. Goodall's influence is clear throughout Midgley's work and central to her claim that philosophy needs ethology
- Reposted by Greg McElwainWe're excited to announce our new Online Seminar Series for the 2025-6 academic year!! We have 5 fantastic talks coming up. For titles and abstracts see our website - and get the dates in your diary! www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/news/ #philsky #philosophy
- Reposted by Greg McElwainOne is the brilliant #EllieRobson @philosophellie.bsky.social on #MaryMidgley and #Animals! Not to be missed and again, what an incredible resource and gift #PhilosophyBites is #philosophy #philsky @inparenthesis.bsky.social #Midgley
- The wonderful @philosophellie.bsky.social on Mary Midgley’s animal thought.
- "I suppose in a very admirable and harmless way, I take science to have a religious aspect. That is, it involves people responding to the vastness of the universe." -Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction #marymidgley #philsky
- "We rejoice in the whole of nature and being part of it, as something to which we belong." -Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction #marymidgley #philsky
- Reposted by Greg McElwainBack at the very special #dewisacre for more #philosophyinthewild ‘finding hope in mixed communities’ & this time - with the adults! It means the world to us that the adults relished this event, fell in love with the wisdom of #MaryMidgley & that Ned the cat was so happy & involved too 1/3
- Back in the garden, for #philosophyinthewild, which has been a truly #mixedcommunity garden this week! 🐑 @stdavidscathedral.bsky.social @inparenthesis.bsky.social #PhilosophyMatters #MaryMidgley #Arts #Poetry #Hope #FindingHopeInMixedCommunities www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/philosophy-i...
- Reposted by Greg McElwainBack in the garden, for #philosophyinthewild, which has been a truly #mixedcommunity garden this week! 🐑 @stdavidscathedral.bsky.social @inparenthesis.bsky.social #PhilosophyMatters #MaryMidgley #Arts #Poetry #Hope #FindingHopeInMixedCommunities www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/philosophy-i...
- "Central to thinking about animals is the idea of community: a genuine unity of beings which are important to each other." -Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction #marymidgley #philsky
- "How to think involves how to live." -Mary Midgley, Mary Midgley: An Introduction #marymidgley #philsky
- "The world in which the kestrel moves, the world that it sees, is, and always will be, entirely beyond us. That there are such worlds all around us is an essential feature of our world." -Mary Midgley, Beast and Man #marymidgley #philsky
- “Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.” -Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By #marymidgley #philsky
- "The trouble with human beings ([Butler] said) is not really that they love themselves too much; they ought to love themselves more. The trouble is simply that they don’t love others enough." -Mary Midgley, Utopias, Dolphins, and Computers #marymidgley #philsky
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- Reposted by Greg McElwainUpcoming workshop on Susan Stebbing and Mary Midgley: ianjameskidd.weebly.com/midgley-steb... @philosophellie.bsky.social Ian Kidd Karl Egerton Me
- "Great philosophers, then, need a combination of gifts that is rare. They must be lawyers as well as poets. They must have both the new vision that points the way we are to go and the logical doggedness that sorts out just what is, and what is not, involved in going there." -Mary Midgley, UDC
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- Here is a piece on Mary Midgley that I wrote for the @apaphilosophy.bsky.social public philosophy blog! #marymidgley #philsky
- "Our need for each other – our need for all the normal intercourse of human life – is not a weakness but a strength...Of course our dependencies are dangerous, but who wants to live safely like a billiard ball or a doll that never leaves its package?" -Mary Midgley, The Solitary Self #philsky
- Specific grievances wear out; the unchangingness of group hostilities marks them as fraudulent. They are not responses to real external dangers, but fantasies. We erect a glass at the border of our own group, and see our own anger reflected against the darkness behind it. -Mary Midgley, Wickedness
- "We did not expect the earth to be vulnerable, capable of health or sickness, wholeness or injury. But it turns out that we were wrong: the earth is now unmistakably sick." -Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry #marymidgley #philsky #environment
- "It is not true, as has often been suggested, that we cannot be interested in anything unlike ourselves. Both poetry and science show us as being interested in all manner of unlike things." -Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter #marymidgley #philsky
- Reposted by Greg McElwainCall for Abstracts: Women in Parenthesis 2025-6 online Work in Progress series! We welcome talks on the Wartime Quartet and connected figures! Have a look at the link below for previous talks Send 250 words to anabarandalla@me.com by 31st July 2025! www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/news/ #philsky
- "Inequalities above one's own level tend to be visible: those below it to be hidden." -Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter #marymidgley #philsky
- Reposted by Greg McElwainReaching the final weeks of editing a 10 chapter collected volume for Palgrave MacMillan - ‘Midgley on Moral Philosophy and Ethics’ 🤯 Which means rereading 10 amazing chapters featuring Midgley on: wickedness, naturalism, Gaia, myopia, environments, the self Authors below! #philsky #philosophy
- Reposted by Greg McElwain'Humans have always lived in 'mixed community' with other animals' (Mary Midgley) - our new 'philosophy in the wild' project explores the nature of 'mixed community' across 13 global sites! Check it out and please share widely. Next stop Norway! www.notesfromabiscuittin.com
- "Obsessed with success, with examinations, tests, and record-breaking, with competitive sport, trade, and manufacture, we have drifted into behaving as if life were not worth living except at the top of the dominance hierarchy." -Mary Midgley, Beast and Man #marymidgley #philsky
- This was 1978!
- Reposted by Greg McElwain‘To an adult in formal dress, engaged on his statesmanly interactions, the fence is an insuperable barrier. Down below, where it is full of holes, it presents no obstacle at all. The young Homo sapiens, like those of other species present, scurry through it all the time.’ 1/5
- Reposted by Greg McElwain"Philosophers like to talk a lot, but must take listening seriously" My interview with Mara-Daria Cojocaru about Team Wales for "Philosophy in the Wild" @inparenthesis.bsky.social #philsky substack.com/@thedrynosed...
- "Philosophy, in spite of all its tiresome features, is not a luxury but a necessity, because we always have to use it when things get difficult." -Mary Midgley, The Owl of Minerva #marymidgley #philsky
- Reposted by Greg McElwainWe are delighted to be working with philosopher-poet Mara-Daria Cojocaru (+dolphins, bison, bats & wolves) to explore Mary Midgley's #mixedcommunity. For 12-months an anthrozoological vasculum will collect multispecies poetry from 13 global sites. Find out more www.notesfromabiscuittin.com
- Reposted by Greg McElwainSome serious Midgley happening at the BSHP 2025 conference yesterday @enricogalvagni.bsky.social & @gsmcelwain.bsky.social #philsky
- "When the concepts we are living by work badly, they don’t usually drip audibly through the ceiling or swamp the kitchen floor. They just quietly distort and obstruct our thinking." -Mary Midgley, Utopias, Dolphins and Computers
- Looking forward to it!
- One week to go until some much needed time with #TeamMidgley at the @thebshp.bsky.social annual conference at @cambridgeuni.bsky.social @inparenthesis.bsky.social #philsky bshp.org.uk/events/bshp-...
- "Wisdom, and therefore philosophy, comes into its own when things become dark and difficult rather than when they are clear and straightforward. That -- it seems to me -- is why it is so important." -Mary Midgley, The Owl of Minerva
- Reposted by Greg McElwainA #PhilosophyMatters #PhiloFortnight #BPF2025 and early Mother’s Day blog post: The Case for Plato: Why Kids Need Philosophy (and Philosophy Needs Kids) Thank you to my own lovely children and all my students for the conversations. Philosophy happens with you - not at you! A fantastic quote 1/3
- "Everyday thinking – the thinking by which we live – does not just need to be described and recorded, it needs also to be criticized, to be examined, to be taken seriously, even in its most lurid or odious manifestations." -Mary Midgley, The Ethical Primate
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- "Is philosophy like plumbing? I have made this comparison a number of times, wanting to stress that philosophizing is not just grand and elegant and difficult, it is also needed. It isn’t optional." -Mary Midgley, Utopias, Dolphins and Computers
- Reposted by Greg McElwainA humble offering for #WorldBookDay #WBD from my amazing son, a budding young #changermaker, & I: ‘5 Books for Curious Thinkers &Changemakers.’ #Philosophy #CriticalAndCreativeThinking #BooksForThinking #BooksForChange #booksky #ReadingForChange www.catalyst.winchestercollege.org/blog/top-5-b... 1/2
- "On every side now we can see people busily engaged in sawing off the branches on which they (along with many others) are sitting, intent only on getting those branches to market before the price of timber falls." -Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion
- Weekly Midgley quote: "Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something we have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not." -Beast and Man
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- Reposted by Greg McElwainWe're new to bluesky 👋 (women) In Parenthesis is a global research centre exploring Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch and connected figures! We hold conferences, seminars and reading groups and are a growing network. Join in here: mappingthequartet.org #philsky
- Reposted by Greg McElwainOur ‘Mary Midgley Masterclass’ with the next generation of (women) in parenthesis students at Durham University 🔥 @peterwest23.bsky.social #philsky #philosophy
- I'm halfway through a sabbatical dedicated to writing a book based on my yearly interviews with Mary Midgley from 2011-18 for @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social. I'm curious about which topics people are most interested in? Feel free to DM!
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- First Bluesky post - looking forward to the fresh air and Mary Midgley-related posts
