Broadening Our View of Beasts: Mary Midgley on Myopia, Myths, and Why Animals Matter

In the philosophical work of Mary Midgley, one defining theme is a careful and steadfast resistance to varieties of myopic thinking: problematically partial ways of perceiving, thinking about, and understanding the world. I argue that active resistance to myopic thinking reveals a unity and continuity to most, if not all, of her concerns, projects, and interventions. This claim is defended by exploring Midgley’s active anti-myopia as it manifests in her various contributions to philosophical discussions of the ethics and epistemology of animal life.