Inherited wealth enabled Warnock to enjoy a fine education, including, in 1942, at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she studied classics. From 1949 to 1966, Warnock was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at St Hugh’s College, Oxford while her husband, Geoffrey Warnock, was a fellow of Magdalen College. She participated in philosophical radio debates broadcast on the BBC Third Programme and was invited to write on contemporary ethics for a popular series published by Oxford University Press. This led her to the study of Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism and prompted her to publish three books on Existential philosophy between 1963 and 1970.
While Talbot Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall during 1972-1976, Warnock published a book titled Imagination (1976) and then worked at St. Hugh’s College as senior research fellow from 1976 to 1984, becoming an honorary fellow of the college in 1985 and mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1984 to 1991.
Warnock retired from teaching in 1992 but continued to write prolifically, publishing The Uses of Philosophy (1992), Imagination and Time (1994), and An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Ethics (1998). She delivered the Gifford Lectures, entitled “Imagination and Understanding,” at the University of Glasgow in 1992.
Warnock is an example of a philosopher who extensively applied her philosophical perspective to public service and the creation of public policy. Her interest in the philosophy of education led to her appointment in 1974 to chair a government inquiry on special education, and her 1978 report drove radical change in the field by emphasizing teaching learning-disabled children in mainstream schools.
From 1979 to 1984, Warnock served on a Royal Commission on environmental pollution and, during 1982-1984, chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology. Her report prompted passage, in 1990, of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which regulated human fertility treatment and experiments using human embryos. The act requires licensing for such procedures as in vitro fertilization and bans research on human embryos more than fourteen days old. During 1984-1989, Warnock chaired a Home Office Committee on animal experimentation. She subsequently served on an advisory panel on spoliation, and, in 2008, created controversy by proposing that people with dementia should be permitted an assisted suicide if they believed they presented a burden “to their family or the state.” Warnock died on March 20, 2019, at the age of ninetyfour
