Engaging with the work of prominent thinkers, Midgley investigates the source of our current attitudes to the self and reveals how ideas, traditions and myths have been twisted to fit in, seemingly naturally, with science’s current preoccupation with the physical and material. Midgley shows that the subjective sources of thought – our own experiences – are every bit as necessary in helping to explain the world as the objective ones such as brain cells.
Are You an Illusion? offers a salutary analysis of science’s claim to have done away with the self and a characteristic injection of common sense from one of our most respected philosophers into a debate increasingly in need of it.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Stephen Cave.
Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was one of the leading moral philosophers of her generation and has been described by The Guardian as 'the foremost scourge of scientific pretension in this country'. Many of her books are available in Routledge Classics, including Beast and Man, Wickedness and The Myths We Live By.