G. E. M. Anscombe | |
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| Born | Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (1919-03-18)18 March 1919 Limerick, Ireland |
| Died | 5 January 2001(2001-01-05) (aged 81) Cambridge, England |
| Other names | Elizabeth Anscombe |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 7 |
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| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | |
| Institutions | University of Oxford |
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Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret AnscombeFBA (/ˈænskəm/; 18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001), usually cited asG. E. M. Anscombe orElizabeth Anscombe, was a British[1]analytic philosopher. She wrote on thephilosophy of mind,philosophy of action,philosophical logic,philosophy of language, andethics. She was a prominent figure ofanalytical Thomism, a fellow ofSomerville College, Oxford, and a professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Cambridge.
Anscombe was a student ofLudwig Wittgenstein and became an authority on his work and edited and translated many books drawn from his writings, above all hisPhilosophical Investigations. Anscombe's 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the termconsequentialism into the language of analytic philosophy, and had a seminal influence on contemporaryvirtue ethics.[2] Her monographIntention (1957) was described byDonald Davidson as "the most important treatment of action sinceAristotle".[3][4] It is "widely considered a foundational text in contemporaryphilosophy of action" and has also had influence in the philosophy of practical reason."[5]
Anscombe was born to Gertrude Elizabeth (née Thomas) and Captain Allen Wells Anscombe, on 18 March 1919, inLimerick, Ireland, where her father had been stationed with theRoyal Welch Fusiliers during theIrish War of Independence.[6] Both her mother and father were involved with education. Her mother was a headmistress and her father went on to head the science and engineering side atDulwich College.[7]
Anscombe attendedSydenham High School and then, in 1937, went on to readliterae humaniores ('Greats') atSt Hugh's College, Oxford,[7] where her tutor was the archaeologistDorothea Gray.[8] She was awarded a second class in herhonour moderations in 1939 and (albeit it with reservations on the part of her Ancient History examiners[9]) afirst in her degree finals in 1941.[7]
While still at Sydenham High School, Anscombe converted toCatholicism. During her first year at St Hugh's, she was received into the Church, and was a practising Catholic thereafter.[7]
In 1941 she marriedPeter Geach. Like her, Geach was a Catholic convert who became a student ofLudwig Wittgenstein and a distinguished academic philosopher. Together they had three sons and four daughters.[7]
After graduating from Oxford, Anscombe was awarded aresearch fellowship forpostgraduate study atNewnham College, Cambridge, from 1942 to 1945.[7] Her purpose was to attend Wittgenstein's lectures. Her interest in Wittgenstein's philosophy arose from reading theTractatus Logico-Philosophicus as an undergraduate. She claimed to have conceived the idea of studying with Wittgenstein as soon as she opened the book inBlackwell's and read section 5.53, "Identity of object I express by identity of sign, and not by using a sign for identity. Difference of objects I express by difference of signs." She became an enthusiastic student, feeling that Wittgenstein's therapeutic method helped to free her from philosophical difficulties in ways that her training in traditional systematic philosophy could not. As she wrote:
For years, I would spend time, in cafés, for example, staring at objects saying to myself: 'I see a packet. But what do I really see? How can I say that I see here anything more than a yellow expanse?' ... I always hatedphenomenalism and felt trapped by it. I couldn't see my way out of it but I didn't believe it. It was no good pointing to difficulties about it, things whichRussell found wrong with it, for example. The strength, the central nerve of it remained alive and raged achingly. It was only in Wittgenstein's classes in 1944 that I saw the nerve being extracted, the central thought "I have got this, and I define 'yellow' (say) as this" being effectively attacked.
— Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind: The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Volume 2 (1981) pp. vii–x.
After her fellowship at Cambridge ended, she was awarded a research fellowship atSomerville College, Oxford,[7] but during the academic year of 1946/47, she continued to travel to Cambridge once a week to attend tutorials with Wittgenstein that were devoted mainly to thephilosophy of religion.[10] She became one of Wittgenstein's favourite students and one of his closest friends.[11][12] Wittgenstein affectionately addressed her by the pet name "old man" – she being (according toRay Monk) "an exception to his general dislike of academic women".[11][12] His confidence in Anscombe's understanding of his perspective is shown by his choice of her as the translator of hisPhilosophical Investigations (for which purpose he arranged for her to spend some time in Vienna to improve her German).[13][6]
Wittgenstein appointed Anscombe as one of his three literary executors and so she played a major role in translating and spreading his works.[14]
Anscombe visited Wittgenstein many times after he left Cambridge in 1947, and Wittgenstein stayed at her house in Oxford for a period in 1950. She travelled to Cambridge in April 1951 to visit him on his deathbed. Wittgenstein named her, along withRush Rhees andGeorg Henrik von Wright, as hisliterary executor.[6][15] After his death in 1951 she was responsible for editing, translating, and publishing many of Wittgenstein's manuscripts and notebooks.[6][12]
Anscombe did not avoid controversy. As an undergraduate in 1939 she had publicly criticised Britain's entry into the Second World War.[16] And, in 1956, while a research fellow, she unsuccessfully protested against Oxford granting an honorary degree toHarry S. Truman, whom she denounced as a mass murderer for his use ofatomic bombs againstHiroshima andNagasaki.[17][18][19] She would further publicise her position in a (sometimes erroneously dated[20]) pamphlet privately printed soon after Truman's nomination for the degree was approved. In the same she said she "should fear to go" to theEncaenia (the degree conferral ceremony) "in case God's patience suddenly ends."[21] She would also court controversy with some of her colleagues by defending the Catholic Church's opposition tocontraception.[12] Later in life, she would be arrested protesting outside an abortion clinic, after abortion had been legalised inGreat Britain.[18][22]
Having remained at Somerville College since 1946, Anscombe was elected Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 1970, where she served until her retirement in 1986. She was elected afellow of the British Academy in 1967, and a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979.[23]
In her later years, Anscombe suffered from heart disease, and was nearly killed in a car crash in 1996. She never fully recovered and she spent her last years in the care of her family in Cambridge.[7] On 5 January 2001, she died fromkidney failure atAddenbrooke's Hospital at the age of 81, with her husband and four of their seven children at her bedside, just after praying theSorrowful Mysteries of therosary.[7][6][24] Anscombe's "last intentional act was kissing Peter Geach", her husband of sixty years.[25]
Anscombe was buried adjacent to Wittgenstein in theSt Giles' graveyard, Huntingdon Road, (now theAscension Parish burial ground). Her husband joined her there in 2013.[7][26]
As a young philosophy don, Anscombe acquired a reputation as a formidable debater. In 1948, she presented a paper at a meeting of Oxford'sSocratic Club in which she disputedC. S. Lewis's argument thatnaturalism was self-refuting (found in the third chapter of the original publication of his bookMiracles). Some associates of Lewis, primarilyGeorge Sayer andDerek Brewer, have remarked that Lewis lost the subsequent debate on her paper and that this loss was so humiliating that he abandoned theological argument and turned entirely to devotional writing and children's literature.[27] This is a claim disputed byWalter Hooper[28] and Anscombe's impression of the effect upon Lewis differed:
The fact that Lewis rewrote that chapter, and rewrote it so that it now has those qualities [to address Anscombe's objections], shows his honesty and seriousness. The meeting of the Socratic Club at which I read my paper has been described by several of his friends as a horrible and shocking experience which upset him very much. Neither Dr Havard (who had Lewis and me to dinner a few weeks later) nor Professor Jack Bennet remembered any such feelings on Lewis' part ... My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis' rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friends – who seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments or the subject matter – as an interesting example of the phenomenon called "projection".
— Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind: The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Volume 2 (1981) p. x.
As a result of the debate, Lewis substantially rewrote chapter 3 ofMiracles for the 1960 paperback edition.[29]
Some of Anscombe's most frequently cited works are translations, editions, and expositions of the work of her teacher Ludwig Wittgenstein, including an influential exegesis[30] of Wittgenstein's 1921 book, theTractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This brought to the fore the importance ofGottlob Frege for Wittgenstein's thought and, partly on that basis, attacked"positivist" interpretations of the work. She co-edited his posthumous second book,Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations (1953) withRush Rhees. Her English translation of the book appeared simultaneously and remains standard. She went on to edit or co-edit several volumes of selections from his notebooks, (co-)translating many important works likeRemarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956) and Wittgenstein's "sustained treatment" ofG. E. Moore's epistemology,On Certainty (1969).[31] She edited and translatedRemarks on the Philosophy of Psychology Vol 1. (1980).[32]
In 1978, Anscombe was awarded theAustrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class for her work on Wittgenstein.[33]
Her most important work is the monographIntention (1957). Three volumes of collected papers were published in 1981:From Parmenides to Wittgenstein;Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind; andEthics, Religion and Politics. Another collection,Human Life, Action and Ethics appeared posthumously in 2005.[13]
The aim ofIntention (1957) was to make plain the character of human action and will. Anscombe approaches the matter through the concept ofintention, which, as she notes, has three modes of appearance in the English language:
| She is X'ing intentionally | intentional action |
| She is X'ing with the intention of doing Y or ...She is X'ing to Y | intention with which or further intention in acting |
| She intends to Y or ...She has expressed the intention to do Y | expression of intention for the future; (whatDavidson later called a pure intending) |
She suggests that a true account must somehow connect these three uses of the concept, though later students of intention have sometimes denied this, and disputed some of the things she presupposes under the first and third headings. It is clear though that it is the second that is crucial to her main purpose, which is to comprehend the way in which human thought and understanding and conceptualisation relate to the "events in a man's history", or the goings on to which he is subject.
Rather than attempt to define intentions in abstraction fromactions, thus taking the third heading first, Anscombe begins with the concept of an intentional action. This soon connected with the second heading. She says that what is up with a human being is an intentional action if the question "Why", taken in a certain sense (and evidently conceived as addressed to him), has application.[34] An agent can answer the "why" question by giving a reason or purpose for her action. "To do Y" or "because I want to do Y" would be typical answers to this sort of "why?"; though they are not the only ones, they are crucial to the constitution of the phenomenon as a typical phenomenon of human life.[35] The agent's answer helps supply thedescriptions under which the action is intentional. Anscombe was the first to clearly spell out that actions are intentional under some descriptions and not others. In her famous example, a man's action (which we might observe as consisting of moving an arm up and down while holding a handle) may be intentional under the description "pumping water" but not under other descriptions such as "contracting these muscles", "tapping out this rhythm", and so on. This approach to action influenced Donald Davidson's theory, despite the fact that Davidson went on to argue for a causal theory of action that Anscombe never accepted.[36][37]
Intention (1957) is also the classic source for the idea that there is a difference in "direction of fit" between cognitive states likebeliefs andconative states likedesire. (This theme was later taken up and discussed byJohn Searle.)[38] Cognitive states describe the world and are causally derived from the facts or objects they depict. Conative states do not describe the world, but aim to bring something about in the world. Anscombe used the example of a shopping list to illustrate the difference.[39] The list can be a straightforward observational report of what is actually bought (thereby acting like a cognitive state), or it can function as a conative state such as a command or desire, dictating what the agent should buy. If the agent fails to buy what is listed, we do not say that the list is untrue or incorrect; we say that the mistake is in the action, not the desire. According to Anscombe, this difference in direction of fit is a major difference between speculative knowledge (theoretical, empirical knowledge) and practical knowledge (knowledge of actions and morals). Whereas "speculative knowledge" is "derived from the objects known", practical knowledge is – in a phrase Anscombe lifts from Aquinas – "the cause of what it understands".[40]
Anscombe made great contributions to ethics as well as metaphysics. Her 1958 essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" is credited with having coined the term "consequentialism",[41] as well as with reviving interest in and study ofvirtue ethics in Western academic philosophy.[42][43]
TheAnscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford is named after her, and conducts bioethical research in the Catholic tradition.[44]
Anscombe also introduced the idea of a set of facts being 'brute relative to' some fact. When a set of facts xyz stands in this relation to a fact A, they are a subset out of a range some subset among which holds if A holds. Thus if A is the fact that I have paid for something, the brute facts might be that I have handed him a cheque for a sum which he has named as the price for the goods, saying that this is the payment, or that I gave him some cash at the time that he gave me the goods. There tends, according to Anscombe, to be an institutional context which gives its point to the description 'A', but of which 'A' is not itself a description: that I have given someone a shilling is not a description of the institution of money or of the currency of the country. According to her, no brute factsxyz can generally be said to entail the factA relative to which they are 'brute' except with the proviso "under normal circumstances", for "one cannot mention all the things that were not the case, which would have made a difference if they had been."[45] A set of facts xyz ... may be brute relative to a fact A which itself is one of a set of facts ABC ... which is brute relative to some further fact W. Thus Anscombe's account is not of a distinct class of facts, to be distinguished from another class, 'institutional facts': the essential relation is that of a set of facts being 'brute relative to' some fact. Following Anscombe,John Searle derived another conception of 'brute facts' as non-mental facts to play the foundational role and generate similar hierarchies in his philosophical account ofspeech acts andinstitutional reality.[46]
Her paper "The First Person"[36] buttressed remarks by Wittgenstein (in his Lectures on "Private Experience"[47]) arguing for the now-notorious conclusion that the first-person pronoun, "I", does not refer to anything (not, e.g., to the speaker) because of its immunity from reference failure. Having shown by counter-example that 'I' does not refer to the body, Anscombe objected to the implied Cartesianism of its referring at all. Few people accept the conclusion – though the position was later adopted in a more radical form byDavid Lewis – but the paper was an important contribution to work onindexicals and self-consciousness that has been carried on by philosophers as varied asJohn Perry,Peter Strawson,David Kaplan,Gareth Evans,John McDowell, andSebastian Rödl.[48]
In her article, "Causality and Determination",[49] Anscombe defends two main ideas: that causal relations are perceivable, and that causation does not require a necessary connection and a universal generalization linking cause and effect. Regarding her idea that causal relations are perceivable, she believes that we perceive the causal relations between objects and events.
In defending her idea that causal relations are perceivable, Anscombe poses a question "How did we come by our primary knowledge of causality?".[49] She proposes two answers to this question:
In proposing her first answer, that by "learning to speak, we learned the linguistic representation and application of a host of causal concepts", Anscombe thinks that by learning to speak we already have a linguistic representation of certain causal concepts and she gives an example of transitive verbs, such as scrape, push, carry, knock over.
Example: I knocked over a vase of flowers.
In proposing her second answer, that by observing some actions we can see causation, Anscombe thinks that we cannot ignore the fact that certain actions, which produced a certain event are possible to observe.
Example: a cat spilled milk.
The second idea that Anscombe defends in the article "Causality and Determination"[49] is that causation requires neither a necessary connection nor a universal generalization linking cause and effect.
Anscombe states that it is assumed that causality is some kind of necessary connection.[49]
The philosopherCandace Vogler says that Anscombe's "strength" is that"'when she is writing for [a] Catholic audience, she presumes they share certain fundamental beliefs,' but she is equally willing to write for people who do not share her assumptions."[50] In 2010, philosopherRoger Scruton wrote that Anscombe was "perhaps the last great philosopher writing in English".[51]Mary Warnock described her as "the undoubted giant among women philosophers"[52] whileJohn Haldane said she "certainly has a good claim to be the greatest woman philosopher of whom we know".[42]
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Anscombe's paper was rightly credited with having helped start up the renewed interest in Aristotelian ethics, an interest which produced what is now often called 'virtue ethics'.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)The philosophy examiners wanted to give her a First ... but the ancient history examiners would agree to this only on condition that she showed a minimum knowledge of their subject in a viva voce (oral) examination. Anscombe's performance ... was less than spectacular... To the last two questions she answered 'No', these being 'Can you give us the name of a Roman provincial governor?' and (in some desperation) 'Is there any fact about the period you are supposed to have studied which you would like to tell us?' The examiners cannot have been well pleased, but somehow or other ended up being persuaded by the philosophers ... As Michael Dummett writes in his obituary ... 'For the [ancient historians] to have yielded, her philosophy papers must have been astonishing'.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)In the autumn of 1939, while still an undergraduate, she and a friend wrote a pamphlet entitled The Justice of the Present War Examined. In this, Elizabeth Anscombe argued that while Britain was certainly fighting against an unjust cause, it was not fighting for a just one. ... Subsequently, the Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham told the two students to withdraw the pamphlet because they had described it as Catholic without getting a Church licence.
Anscombe ... opposed Britain's entry into World War II on the grounds that fighting the war would certainly involve killing non-combatants. When Oxford decided to award the U.S. president Harry Truman an honorary degree in 1956, Anscombe protested vigorously, arguing that the atomic bombing of innocent civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki disqualified him for such an honour.
Anscombe ... was a vigorous opponent of the use of nuclear weapons and led a protest of Oxford's awarding a degree to President Harry Truman on the grounds that a mass-murderer should not be so honoured. She was also a fierce opponent of abortion; on one occasion late in her life, she had to be dragged bodily by police away from a sit-in at an abortion clinic.
On 1st May 1956, Oxford University's Convocation ...considered nominations for honorary degrees ... One of the nominations was Harry S. Truman ... Anscombe ..."caused a small stir" ... by arguing that the nomination should be rejected on the grounds that Truman was guilty of mass murder ... Anscombe's speech did not persuade ...The House was asked to indicate its attitude toward the nomination, and showed overwhelming support. ... On 20th June, Truman was awarded his honorary degree
when writing my C. S. Lewis: a Companion and Guide (1996). Lewis told me in 1963 that he thought he won the debate with Anscombe at the Socratic Club in 1948. However, he accepted that he had been unclear and revised Chapter III of the book. Ironically, many philosophers disagree with Anscombe's argument, and maintain that the original chapter was philosophically sound, and that Lewis did not need to rewrite it. It is also not true that Lewis "never again wrote straightforward polemics for Christianity". In 1952, he revised his BBC wartime broadcasts asMere Christianity. That book has probably caused more people to accept the faith than any other philosophical tome of the last century. Lewis was a man of such titanic imagination that he didn't need to go over and over the same ideas. It was not fear of Anscombe or anyone else that caused him to write the seven incomparable Chronicles of Narnia in the 1950s. Three theological works followed them.
the undoubted giant among women philosophers, a writer of immense breadth, authority and penetration.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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