Clare Mac Cumhaill – författare

”Mac Cumhaill och Wiseman är helt klart överlägsna stilister. Deras bildrika, berättande prosa slungar läsaren rakt in i händelseförloppet”Expressen

"Fenomenalt välskrivet bok om fyra vänner som bröt filosofins barriärer"UNTAndra världskriget rasar, och på filosofiska institutionen i Oxford har många av de manliga studenterna och lärarna försvunnit. Fram träder då fyra kvinnliga forskare som delar inte bara skor, soffor och älskare utan framför allt idéer. Tillsammans förnyar de det filosofiska tänkandet och tar debatten med berömdheterna. Möt deras äventyrliga liv och deras inspirerande tankar om frihet, verklighet och godhet i denna flerfaldigt prisnominerade kollektivbiografi – naturligtvis skriven av två filosofer och vänner.

”Att läsa den här boken är en påminnelse om att ens inre liv kan vara lika äventyrligt och händelserik som våra vänskapsrelationer” Guardian ”Oemotståndlig och tankeväckande” London Review of Books 

WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWNAN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOKA FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDElizabeth Anscombe: defiantly brilliant, chain-smoking, trouser-wearing Catholic and (eventual) mother of seven.Philippa Foot: pathalogically discreet, quietly rebellious granddaughter of a US president.Mary Midgley: witty scholar and careful observer of humans and animals alike.Iris Murdoch: aspiring novelist and Francophile with the power to seduce (almost) anyone.Written with expertise and flair, Metaphysical Animals is a vivid portrait of the endeavours and achievements of these four remarkable women. As undergraduates at Oxford during the Second World War, they shared ideas (as well as shoes, sofas and lovers). From the disorder and despair of war, they went on to breathe new life into philosophy, creating a radically fresh way of thinking about freedom, reality and human goodness that is there for us today.'Evocative and sparkling' New York Times'A triumph' Mail on Sunday

Most research on perception has focused on the perceptual experience of three-dimensional, solid, bounded, and coherent material objects - items like tables and tomatoes. But as well as having perceptual experience of such objects, we also experience such aspects of the world as, for instance, rainbows and surfaces, shadows and absences: things that are ephemeral by contrast with material objects. This book presents fifteen new essays on the perceptual experience of such ephemera. The editors' introduction provides a detailed guide to the topic as a whole, setting out the thematic background to this emerging area of research in contemporary philosophy of perception. The volume winds a path through the ephemeral, considering such topics as sounds, smells, transparency, reflection, camouflage, solidity, and ambient vision. A general aim of the volume is to make a case that the broad range of ephemera it catalogues is far from marginal, or insubstantial with respect to their philosophical interest and value. Philosophical attention to perceptul ephemera may well suggest novel routes to arriving at a more developed understanding of perceptual experience at large and its characteristic features.