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Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1919–2001)

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-DD081-1
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DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-DD081-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/anscombe-gertrude-elizabeth-margaret-1919-2001/v-1

2. Other works

Much of Anscombe’s ethical work also concerns the notion of intention and the relationship of thought to action. In ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958) she argues that contemporary thought on these matters is so wide of the mark that there is no point in practising moral philosophy at all. A naïve philosophy of mind and action has led, for example, to what she calls ‘consequentialism’ - the view that whether a person intends something or not is irrelevant to the question whether he is responsible for it (see Consequentialism §1). (In ‘Mr. Truman’s Degree’ (1957b) she claims that the familiar justifications for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which she argues was murderous, presuppose just such thinking.) She also maintains that the programme of attempting to elucidate the ‘moral sense of “ought”’ must be jettisoned: it presupposes a theory of ethics as founded in divine law. Only an Aristotelian ethical theory, she thinks, can be given an intelligible secular development. But this would require clarification of such concepts as ‘virtue’, ‘human nature’ and ‘human flourishing’, and thus renewed inquiry into philosophy of mind and action (see Virtue ethics §2).

In ‘Causality and Determination’ (1971), Anscombe attacks the notion that ‘if an effect occurs in one case and a similar effect does not occur in an apparently similar case, there must be a relevant further difference’ (1971: 133). Having attacked this view, she attempts to show how freedom of the will, which she argues is incompatible with it, is to be understood in the light of its rejection. An event not explicable in terms of prior determining physical causes may yet, she argues, be subject to other forms of explanation.

Much of Anscombe’s work on the general philosophy of mind attempts to extend and clarify the teachings of Wittgenstein (§14). Her boldest claims are found in ‘The First Person’ (1974). There she argues that the word ‘I’ is not a referring term, that self-consciousness is not awareness of an object (a ‘person’ or ‘self’), and that if either of these things were the case then the object of reference and awareness would have the character of a Cartesian ego.

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Citing this article:
Thompson, Michael. Other works. Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1919–2001), 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-DD081-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/anscombe-gertrude-elizabeth-margaret-1919-2001/v-1/sections/other-works-3.
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