Publisher's Synopsis
In 1956, Oxford University planned to confer upon former President of the United States of America, Harry Truman, an honorary degree eleven years after he had effectively brought the final stage of the Second World War to an end with the ordering of nuclear bombings on the populated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Proponents of the accolade were in the overwhelming majority. But, there were some dissenting voices. Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, the then teachers of Philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford, were two of just four academics who objected on the grounds that they believed Truman had blood on his hands. They felt that, regardless of the fact that he was instrumental in bringing the war to a close, he was also responsible for the mass murder of innocent Japanese civilians and, so, he should not be celebrated. And, with so few having expressed concern over the award-two philosophers, a classicist, and a historian2-one wonders, as Jonathan Glover wonders in his Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century, 'Apart from Philippa Foot [and Elizabeth Anscombe], where were the [other] philosophers?
