The Somerville Two – Women Philosophers and the Ethics of Virtue
The Somerville Two – Women Philosophers and the Ethics of Virtue

Summary/Abstract: From Antiquity and until the second part of the last century, the philosophical reflection was largely seen in Europe as a realm reserved to men, an idea that twenty years ago was still accepted in Romania. This paper tells first how its author came to abandon this misconception as a result of reading the works of two women who, in the late ’50s, successfully managed to revive the interest for the forgotten tradition of virtue ethics: Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe and Philippa Foot or the Somerville two as they are also known. Secondly, the paper presents some philosophical relevant aspects from their biographies, insisting on their opposed attitudes towards religion, thirdly, it interprets Anscombe’s seminal article Modern Moral Philosophy as an attempt to save Catholic moral norms with the help of an Aristotelian ethical framework, and finally, it critically discusses the account of ‘human flourishing’ developed by Philippa Foot in Moral Beliefs.

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