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So Many Unmarried Men

For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners were bachelors

Writing many years later in an article for TheGuardian entitled ‘Proud Not to Be a Doctor’, Midgley describes her ‘luck’ in having dropped out of her PhD, even if that meant she would never receive ‘those magic letters that qualify one to teach in universities’ (namely, ‘P’, ‘h’ and ‘D’). Midgley appeared on the radio and wrote articles for TheGuardian with provocative titles like ‘Sneer Tactics’ and ‘Santa Pause’ (the former outlines the morally right circumstances in which one can make a joke at another’s expense, and the latter offers a Christmas wish for the correct use of the comma in contemporary literature). Perhaps it was writing from outside the conventional academy that allowed Midgley to make observations and interventions that wouldn’t have been tolerated within – in this case, by drawing attention to the dominance of unmarried philosophers who seemed to neglect bodily connections with our nature as social animals.

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