5 passages in English
· 1919–2001 · Analytic Philosophy.
Overview
G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) was a British analytic philosopher whose Intention and “Modern Moral Philosophy” reshaped action theory and revived virtue ethics. A student and literary executor of Wittgenstein, she taught at Oxford and Cambridge and combined rigorous conceptual analysis with a Thomistic moral outlook.
Main ideas
Anscombe argues that intention is understood through the descriptions under which an agent acts, not through mysterious inner pushes. In ethics she criticizes consequentialism and the modern sense of “morally ought,” urging a return to thick concepts such as justice and the virtues once a lawgiver framework is absent.
Major works
Intention
Modern Moral Philosophy
Collected Philosophical Papers
Legacy
She stands behind late-twentieth-century virtue ethics and remains central to philosophy of action; debates on double effect and moral vocabulary continually return to her essays.
The concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of "ought," ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible.
It would be a great improvement if, instead of "morally wrong," one always named a genus such as "untruthful," "unchaste," "unjust."
What distinguishes actions which are intentional from those which are not? The answer that I shall suggest is that they are the actions to which a certain sense of the question "Why?" is given application.
Intentional action is action with a certain description under which it is intentional.
The greater part of modern moral philosophy derives from Sidgwick and is utilitarian or consequentialist.