Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock

Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock
Born	(1924-04-14) 14 April 1924 Winchester, Hampshire, England.
Alma mater	Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
Known for	Philosopher of morality, education and mind, and writer on existentialism.
Title	Baroness
Spouse	Geoffrey Warnock
Children	5

Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock, DBE, FBA (born 14 April 1924) is a British philosopher of morality, education and mind, and writer on existentialism.

Early life

Warnock was born Mary Wilson, in Meadow House in the city of Winchester, Hampshire, England on the 14th April, 1924, and was the youngest of seven children. Her mother was from a prosperous family, and her father, a Scotsman, Archie Wilson, was a housemaster and taught German at Winchester College. He caught diphtheria just before the school's summer holiday in 1923 at the time the bacterial infection was going around the school, and died of heart failure (a complication of diphtheria) after the school had broken up. His death occurred before Warnock was born, and so she was brought up by her mother and a nanny. She never knew her eldest sibling, Malcolm, who was severely mentally handicapped with autism and cared for in a nursing home, spending his last days in a Dorset Hospital. The third child, Sandy, died when very young. Her other brother, Duncan, became master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

When Warnock was seven months old the family moved to Kelso House, a three-floor Victorian house, now the music centre at Peter Symonds College. The nursery for the younger children was on the first floor and overlooked the gardens. Her nanny, Emily Coleman, who also lived on the first floor, provided consistency in the upbringing of Warnock and Stefana, the youngest two children, while their mother remained in the periphery of the care of her young children. Warnock chose to be educated as a boarder at St Swithun's School, Winchester when her mother allowed her bright youngest child to make her own choice of school.

In a BBC Radio 4 program broadcast in September 2008, Warnock said that when she was a child she was embarrassed by her mother, who looked different to most people, often by wearing long flowing dark red clothes and walking with turned out feet. However, when Warnock was about 15 years old, she began to admire her mother's eccentricity and independent thinking.

Career

Warnock studied at Lady Margaret Hall (LMH), Oxford, and was later made an Honorary Fellow in 1984. From 1949 to 1966, she was a Fellow and tutor in philosophy at St Hugh's College, Oxford. Then, from 1966 to 1972 she was Headmistress at the Oxford High School for girls. She was Talbot Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall (1972–76). From 1976 to 1984, she was a Senior Research Fellow at St Hugh's College, and was made an Honorary Fellow of the College in 1985. She then became Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge (1986–89). In 2000 Warnock was a visiting professor of rhetoric at Gresham College, London.

Warnock was a member of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) from 1973 to 1981. She was chair of the UK committee of inquiry into special education (1974–78), and from 1979 to 1985, she advised the UK committee on animal experiments. From 1982 to 1984 she chaired an inquiry into human fertilisation, the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology, whose final report is often called the Warnock report. She was created a life peer in 1985 as Baroness Warnock, of Weeke in the City of Winchester. She is a patron of The Iris Project.

Euthanasia

In September 2008, Warnock was accused of saying that dementia patients "have a duty" to be euthanised for the good of society because of the strain they put on their families and public services. In an interview given to the Church of Scotland's magazine Life and Work, she said:

"If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service. I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die."

She has never been recorded as saying that anyone had a duty to die. The origin of this accusation seems to have been the title of an article she wrote in a Norwegian periodical ("A Duty to Die?").

In January 2009, Warnock declared that doctors unwilling to assist a suicide (thereby violating the Hippocratic Oath) were "wicked".

"There are doctors, we know, who don't pay any attention (to those written wishes to be killed). But that seems to me a genuinely wicked thing to do--to disregard what somebody had quite explicitly said, that he wants to die …"

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, responded to the peer's comments:

"Lady Warnock demonstrates a shocking ignorance when espousing her highly insensitive view that people with dementia are 'wasting people's lives' and may have 'a duty to die.'

…

The solution to our dementia crisis is not euthanasia; the answer is more research so we can find new treatments, preventions and a cure."

Personal life

Warnock married Geoffrey Warnock, later Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, in 1949. They had two sons and three daughters.

Works

As chairwoman of committees of inquiry:

• The Warnock Report (1978): Special Educational Needs. London: HMSO (report by the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People)
• The Warnock Report (1984): Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology. London: HMSO
• Warnock, Mary (1978). Meeting Special Educational Needs: A brief guide by Mrs Mary Warnock to the report of the Committee of Enquiry into Education of Handicapped Children and Young People. London: HMSO

As author:

• Ethics Since 1900 , (Oxford University Press, 1960) ISBN 097536622X
• Existentialism , (Oxford Paperbacks, 1970) ISBN 0-19-888052-9
• Imagination, (1976)
• Schools of Thought, (Faber and Faber, 1977) ISBN 0-571-11161-0
• Memory, (1987)
• Imagination & Time, (Blackwell Publishers, 1994) ISBN 0-631-19019-8
• Mary Warnock: A Memoir – People and Places, (Duckworth, 2001) ISBN 0-7156-2955-7 & ISBN 0-7156-3141-1
• Making Babies: Is There a Right To Have Children?, (2001)
• The Intelligent Person's Guide to Ethics, (1998)
• Nature and Mortality: Recollections of a Philosopher in Public Life, (2004), ISBN 0-8264-7323-7
• An Intelligent Person's Guide to Ethics, (Duckworth, 2004) ISBN 0-7156-3320-1
• Easeful Death,(with Elisabeth MacDonald) (OUP, 2008)

See also

• List of Visiting Gresham Professors

External links

• Mary Warnock's Top Ten Philosophy Books
• The Practical Philosopher
• Ethics Bites interview on The Right to Have Babies

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