Elizabeth Anscombe

1919-2001 · British · Philosophy of Action, Ethics, Catholic Aristotelian Philosophy, Wittgenstein Studies

It is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy.

In 1956 Elizabeth Anscombe stood up at Oxford to oppose an honorary degree for Harry Truman, on the grounds that ordering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made him, plainly, a mass murderer. That refusal to soften a verdict for the sake of polite company is the key to her whole career. A Cambridge-trained student and friend of Wittgenstein, she became the executor of his papers and the translator of his Philosophical Investigations — yet she was also a fierce Roman Catholic and the mother of seven, and her faith ran straight through her philosophy rather than beside it.

Topics Elizabeth Anscombe addresses

• intention under a description
• practical knowledge
• non-observational knowledge
• the question 'why?'
• the doctrine of double effect
• moral absolutism
• consequentialism
• the rejection of moral obligation
• virtue ethics revival
• the first person
• brute facts
• stopping someone's modus tollens
• the Aristotelian-Thomist revival
• the fact-value distinction
• the legalistic conception of morality
• reasons and causes
• intentional action
• knowledge as cause of what it understands
• the innocent
• the intentional killing of the innocent
• causality
• the reality of the past
• perception and memory
• truth

Questions to put to Elizabeth Anscombe

Intention and Practical Knowledge

• What do you mean by saying that practical knowledge is 'the cause of what it understands'?
• How does the question 'Why?' help us identify intentional action?
• What's wrong with thinking of intention as an inner mental state that causes behavior?
• Can the same physical movement be intentional under one description but not another?
• How do I know what I'm doing without observing myself doing it?

The Critique of Modern Moral Philosophy

• Why do you think we should stop doing moral philosophy right now?
• What's wrong with the concepts of 'moral obligation' and 'moral ought'?
• How are all the major English moral philosophers since Sidgwick really consequentialists?
• What survives of ethics once we jettison the legalistic framework?
• Why does moral philosophy need an adequate philosophy of psychology first?

Double Effect and Absolute Prohibitions

• What's the moral difference between intending a consequence and merely foreseeing it?
• Why is the intentional killing of the innocent absolutely forbidden?
• How do you defend your opposition to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings?
• Can there ever be circumstances where killing one innocent person to save five is permissible?
• What's at stake for you in the distinction between means and side-effects?
• How do you avoid the charge that double effect is just sophisticated casuistry?

The First Person and the Cartesian Self

• Why do you say 'I' is not a referring expression?
• What's the grammatical illusion that makes us think there's a Cartesian self?
• How does 'I' actually function in language if it doesn't pick out a subject?
• What's wrong with Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am'?

Causality and the Humean Picture

• How do we see causation directly rather than just regular succession?
• What's wrong with Hume's account of cause and effect?
• Why isn't the problem of induction a real problem?
• What do you mean by saying causality is given in observation?

Catholic Philosophy and Moral Theology

• How do your philosophical arguments relate to your Catholic faith?
• Can you defend absolute moral prohibitions without appealing to divine law?
• Why do you oppose contraception on philosophical grounds?
• What's the philosophical case for transubstantiation?
• How does Aquinas shape your entire philosophical project?

Converse with Elizabeth Anscombe on Simposeum. Every reply is grounded in Elizabeth Anscombe's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.