Philosopher
Philippa Foot
1920–2010
Also known as Philippa Ruth Bosanquet
British moral philosopher who defended the objectivity of morality, devised the trolley problem, and helped revive Aristotelian virtue ethics with her ethical naturalism.
Philippa Foot was born Philippa Bosanquet in Lincolnshire in 1920, a granddaughter of the American president Grover Cleveland, and was taught at home by governesses before winning a place at Somerville College, Oxford, to read philosophy, politics and economics. With Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch she belonged to the group of Oxford women philosophers known as the Quartet; Anscombe introduced her to Wittgenstein’s philosophy.
Her work ranged over metaethics, moral psychology and practical ethics, and she played a central part in the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics, though she resisted the label in its usual forms. She published her last article in 2004 and died on her ninetieth birthday, 3 October 2010.
Key ideas
- Natural goodness
- In Natural Goodness, building on her student Michael Thompson, Foot argued that to understand something as a living thing is already to judge it against the standard of its species. Human virtues are assessed the same way, so moral evaluation is a kind of natural goodness.
- The trolley problem
- Foot introduced the trolley problem to probe an apparent asymmetry: it seems permissible to turn a threat from five people onto one, but not to harm one person deliberately to save five.
- Against private moral criteria
- Against non-cognitivists and subjectivists, she attacked what she called a ‘private enterprise theory of moral criteria’, which made each person’s attitudes decide what counts as a moral judgement.
- Morality as hypothetical imperatives
- In a famous 1972 paper she argued that moral requirements might be hypothetical imperatives, giving reasons only to those with the relevant ends, a view she later revised.
- Tradition
- Western
- Region
- Oxford
- Branches
- Ethics
- Period
- Contemporary
- Themes
- The good life
Influences
Where these links come from
- Philippa Foot drew on Aristotle. Source: John Hacker-Wright, Philippa Foot, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Philippa Foot drew on Elizabeth Anscombe. Source: John Hacker-Wright, Philippa Foot, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Key works
- Virtues and Vices
- Natural Goodness, 2001
Sources
- John Hacker-Wright, Philippa Foot, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy