Mary Midgley, who has died aged 99, was one of Britain’s leading moral philosophers, though she was more effective in wielding philosophical objections to other people’s beliefs than promoting a coherent philosophical viewpoint of her own.
She challenged the various reductionist fundamentalisms or myths – religious, political, social, but particularly scientific – which people use to interpret the world and as a basis for moral rules. Instead, she argued, we should accept that we must understand ourselves and the world from many different perspectives, which make it impossible to reduce moral questions to one simple synthesis.
