Margaret Macdonald and Analytic Philosophy in the 1930s

Abstract Margaret Macdonald was a superb philosopher and made a significant mark on the British philosophical scene from her graduate student days in the 1930s to her early death in 1956. She also led an unusual and fascinating life, the first parts of it spent in an impoverished foster home, a tuberculosis sanatorium, and an orphanage. The fact that she found her way to doing a Ph.D. in philosophy and made a highly successful career in academia in an environment that was outright hostile to women and to those of her class (on top of it all, during an economic depression) is a story that is surprising and heartening. This book opens with a substantial biographical essay, which also sheds light on figures with whom Macdonald engaged (for instance, Susan Stebbing, Max Black, and Ludwig Wittgenstein), as well as on the place of women in the philosophy, politics, and culture of Britain during Macdonald’s lifetime. But the main point of this book is to restore Macdonald’s views to their rightful position in the history of philosophy. We have located, transcribed, and annotated Macdonald’s important letters to Max Black, written between 1932 and 1937. We have transcribed Macdonald’s paper on the philosophy of language of C. S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, published in a long-defunct journal Psyche. The book also contains two substantial essays, one on her work on pragmatism and its influence on Gilbert Ryle, and the other on her work on Wittgenstein.