Professor Mary Margaret McCabe FBA, FKC

Professor Mary Margaret McCabe (‘MM’) works on ancient philosophy, ethics and epistemology, and on the philosophy of medicine.

She is the author of Plato on Punishment (1981), Plato’s Individuals (1994), Plato and his Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason (2000) and Platonic Conversations (2015); her Plato’s Euthydemus is in preparation for publication in 2024, and her Sather Lectures, Seeing and Saying, for publication in 2025. In 2024, she will give the Hagerström lectures at the University of Uppsala.

She came to King’s in 1990 and was Professor from 1998-2014, and Head of Department 1998-2003. She is now Professor of Philosophy Emerita and Fellow of King’s College London, a Fellow of the British Academy, and Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. In 2022-3 she was the President of the Aristotelian Society and the Honorary President of the Classical Association; she was previously President of the Mind Association (2016) and the British Philosophical Society (2009-12).

MM is a co-founder and the Chair of Trustees of the charity Philosophy in Prison, which provides and supports philosophical discussion for prisoners in the UK.

Expertise and public engagement

Philosophy in Prison: prison education and prison policy.

Podcasts

Professor McCabe has twice been featured on podcasts from Philosophy Bites:

• on the Socratic Method
• on the Paradox of Inquiry

She has also participated as an interviewee in Professor Peter Adamson's podcast 'The History of Philosophy... without any gaps'.

Selected publications

• 'Mornington Crescent', Presidential Address, Aristotelian Society, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (2022)
• Platonic Conversations (Oxford University Press 2015)
• Plato and his Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason (Cambridge University Press 2000)
• Plato’s Individuals (Princeton University Press 1994)
• Plato on Punishment (University of California Press 1981)