- Lived:
- 1919–2018 · London, Oxford, and — for nearly seventy years — Newcastle upon Tyne
- Tradition:
- Twentieth-century British moral philosophy; naturalist ethics and the critique of scientism
- The Big Idea:
- We are animals — a particular, complicated kind of animal — and understanding the world we belong to takes many maps, not one; philosophy's job is to keep those maps, and the concepts under them, in working order.
- In their words:
- "Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous."
- If you remember one thing:
- She published her first book at fifty-nine and her last at ninety-nine — and spent those forty years arguing that morality isn't a thin coat of paint over our animal nature, but part of the equipment that nature gave us.