Philippa Foot (1920-2010) was a renowned moral philosopher. Born Philippa Bosanquet, her father was British and her mother was American, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland. Philippa Bosanquet had very little formal education but attained a place to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Somerville in 1939, and took a First in 1942. She was one of four philosophers (Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch) associated with Somerville who would go on to have a significant and lasting impact on philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. After a period of war service, Philippa Foot returned to Somerville, becoming the college’s first Tutor in Philosophy in 1950, a post she held until 1969. She then taught in the United States before returning to live in Oxford in 1991. Her time teaching philosophy at Somerville coincided with the presence of another acclaimed philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe. As friends and colleagues, they spent hours discussing philosophy together in the fifties and sixties.
The liberation of the concentration camps at the end of the Second World War made Foot question the subjectivist moral philosophy then taught in Oxford. She believed morality should have an objective foundation. Foot was able to develop her theory of ethics over decades, documenting its evolution in articles, her collected essays Virtues and Vices and Moral Dilemmas, and culminating in her monograph Natural Goodness, published in 2001.
The Philippa Foot Collection comprises materials relating to her work, family and friends, including copies of papers by Elizabeth Anscombe and a selection of books from Foot’s library.
Provenance of the collection
Philippa Foot’s papers were left to Somerville College after her death.
Using the collection
Access to the collection is by permission of Philippa Foot’s literary executor.
Permission for any use of the materials in the collection must be obtained from the literary executor as well as Somerville College.
The finding aid can be requested from the archivist at archives@some.ox.ac.uk. To consult the collection, please complete the application form found on the library and archives website here.
Limitations on use
Foot left instructions that none of her unpublished work was to be published after her death. Permission to reproduce published work is standardly granted. Researchers may consult her unpublished drafts, journal entries and so forth, and her literary executor may give a researcher permission to cite their contents or to refer to Foot’s remarks, but in general researchers are not permitted to reproduce or quote verbatim from her unpublished philosophical writings.
Philippa Foot’s works will remain in copyright until the end of 2080.
Associated collections
The Iris Murdoch Collection is at Kingston University London.
The Mary and Geoff Midgley Papers are at Durham University Library.
Elizabeth Anscombe’s Archive is at the Collegium Institute in Pennsylvania.