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M. M. McCabe

British professor of ancient philosophy (born 1948)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ6712227
Source-derived summary

Mary Margaret Anne McCabe (born 18 December 1948), published as M. M. McCabe and before 1990 as M. M. Mackenzie, is emerita professor of ancient philosophy at King's College London. She has written books on Plato and other ancient philosophers, including the pre-Socratics, Socrates and Aristotle.

Early life

McCabe was educated at Oxford High School for Girls, and then studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, taking her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1977 in classics. Her doctoral thesis, Plato's Theory of Punishment and Its Antecedents, formed the basis of her first book, Plato on Punishment, published in 1981.

Academic career

From 1981 to 1990 McCabe was Fellow in Classics at New Hall, University of Cambridge. She joined King's College London in 1990 and retired from her chair in Ancient Philosophy in 2014. She is now Keeling Scholar and Honorary Professor in Philosophy at University College London, and a Bye-Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge.

In 2017 McCabe gave the Sather Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on the subject of 'Seeing and Saying: Plato on Virtue and Knowledge'.

McCabe was president of the British Philosophical Association from 2009 to 2012, and president of the Mind Association in 2016–2017.

In July 2017, McCabe was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “M. M. McCabe” as british professor of ancient philosophy (born 1948). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 1990, 1970, 1977—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where McCabe, British and professor can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british professor of ancient philosophy (born 1948). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6712227. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1990, 1970 and 1977.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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  2. Expand the search: follow M. M. McCabe primary sources, M. M. McCabe archive and McCabe research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from M. M. McCabe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.