Ellie Robson

Ellie is a Lecturer in Ethics at King's College, London, and a Postdoctoral fellow for the British Society for the History of Philosophy. Her work focuses on women philosophers writing in the early to late twentieth-century in Britain, focusing specifically on contemporary Aristotelian ethics through the lens of under-appreciated figures. She has written extensively on the place of Mary Midgley within the tradition of Aristotelian Naturalism.

Abstract: This project re-examines the history of 20th century Aristotelian ethics. I aim to identify social and historical factors that contributed to its re-emergence, including the impact of the two World Wars on moral philosophy and the (long-overdue) influence of women on British philosophy. By examining the lives and ideas of women like Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Susan Stebbing, Martha Nussbaum, and Rosalind Hursthouse, this project charts the rise of virtue ethics and a turn towards a more humanistic conception of ethics that such figures felt had been missing since Aristotle.