G. E. M. Anscombe

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Western philosophy
20th Century
Name: G. E. M. Anscombe
Birth: 18 March 1919
Death: 5 January 2001
School/tradition: Analytic Philosophy
Main interests: Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of language
Notable ideas: consequentialism, "brute facts"
Influences: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Influenced: Peter Geach (husband)

G. E. M. Anscombe (18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001) (born Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, also known as Elizabeth Anscombe) was a British analytic philosopher. A student of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she became an authority on his work, and edited and translated many books drawn from his writings. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, logic, semiotics, language theory, and theology. Her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the English language; this and subsequent articles had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics.

Contents

[edit] Life

G. E. M. Anscombe was born to Gertrude Elizabeth Anscombe and Alan Wells Anscombe, on 18 March 1919, in Limerick, Ireland (where her father had been posted as an officer in the British army).

She graduated from Sydenham High School in 1937, and went on to read "Mods & Greats" (a course of study in classics, ancient history, and philosophy) at St Hugh's College of the University of Oxford, graduating with a First in 1941. During her first undergraduate year she converted to Roman Catholicism, and remained a lifelong devout Catholic. She garnered controversy when she publicly opposed Britain's entry into World War II, although her father had been a soldier, and her brother was to serve during World War II.

She married Peter Geach, like her a Roman Catholic convert, a student of Wittgenstein, and a distinguished British academic philosopher. Together they reared three sons and four daughters.

After graduating from Oxford, Anscombe was awarded a research fellowship for postgraduate study at Newnham College, Cambridge from 1942 to 1945. While studying at Cambridge she began to attend Ludwig Wittgenstein's lectures. She became an enthusiastic student, feeling that Wittgenstein's therapeutic method helped to free her from philosophical boggles in ways that her training in traditional systematic philosophy could not. As she wrote (in Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, pp. vii-ix, quoted in Monk, 1990, p. 497):

   
“
 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 hated phenomenalism 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 which Russell 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.
   
”

After her fellowship at Cambridge ended, she was awarded a research fellowship at Somerville College, Oxford, but during the academic year of 1946 - 1947, she continued to travel to Cambridge once a week, together with her fellow student W. A. Hijab, to attend tutorials with Wittgenstein on the philosophy of religion. She became one of Wittgenstein's favorite students and one of his closest friends (Monk [1990] 497-498).

Anscombe visited with Wittgenstein many times after he left Cambridge in 1947, and traveled to Cambridge in April 1951 to visit him on his deathbed. Wittgenstein named her, along with Rush Rhees and Georg Henrik von Wright, as his literary executor, and after his death in 1951, she was responsible for editing, translating, and publishing many of Wittgenstein's manuscripts and notebooks.

Anscombe remained at Somerville College from 1946 to 1970. She was also known for her willingness to face fierce public controversy in the name of her Catholic faith. In 1956, while a research fellow at Oxford University, she protested against Oxford's decision to grant an honorary degree to Harry S. Truman, whom she denounced as a mass murderer for his use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

She scandalized liberal colleagues with articles defending the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to abortion and contraception, and was arrested twice while protesting outside an abortion clinic in Britain, after abortion had been legalized (albeit with restrictions).

Anscombe was elected Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University in 1970, where she served until her retirement in 1986.

In her later years, Anscombe suffered from heart disease, and was nearly killed by an automobile accident in 1996. She spent her last years in the care of her family in Cambridge. She died, aged 81, with her husband and four of their seven children at her bedside, on 5 January 2001.

[edit] Defeating C. S. Lewis

As a young philosophy don, Anscombe acquired a reputation as a formidable debater. In 1948 she won a debate against C. S. Lewis at Oxford's Socratic Club over Lewis's argument that naturalism was self-refuting (found in the third chapter of original publication of his book Miracles). Some associates (primarily George Sayer and Derek Brewer) remarked that this loss was so humiliating for Lewis that he abandoned theological argument and turned entirely to devotional writing and children's literature, even though Anscombe herself objected to this portrayal. As a result of the weaknesses pointed out in the contest, Lewis substantially rewrote the chapter for future editions of the book. Anscombe's comments on the matter were thus:

   
“
 The fact that Lewis rewrote that chapter, and rewrote it so that it now has those qualities [to meet 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 Harvard (who had Lewis and me to dinner a few weeks later) nor Professor Jack Bennet remembered any such feelings on Lewis's part [...] My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis's 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 of the subject-matter—as an interesting example of the phenomenon called projection. —from the introduction to her Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, 1981. [1]
   
”

[edit] Work

In 1942 Anscombe became a postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge, where she met Ludwig Wittgenstein, of whom she became one of the foremost interpreters. She wrote a substantial introduction (1959) to his pre-war Tractatus. Her translation of his other master work, Philosophical Investigations (1953), remains the standard edition in English; she also translated several of his other, lesser works. Her own books include Intention (1957) and three volumes of collected papers, published in 1981: From Parmenides to Wittgenstein; Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind; and Ethics, Religion and Politics.

She was for many years the Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, a position to which she was elected in 1970.

Anscombe is credited with having coined the term "consequentialism". In her 1958 essay "Modern Moral Philosophy", Anscombe wrote:

   
“
 The denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one 'method of ethics'; he made this important move on behalf of everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old-fashioned Utilitarianism and the consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and every English academic moral philosopher since him.
   
”

Anscombe also coined the term "brute facts", as opposed to institutions. The term had a major role to play in John Searle's philosophy and speech act theory.

Her paper "The First Person" follows up remarks by Wittgenstein, coming to the now-notorious conclusion that the first-person pronoun, "I", does not refer to anything (not, e.g., to the speaker). Although few people accept the conclusion, the paper was an impetus for important work on indexicals and on self-consciousness by philosophers as varied as John Perry, Peter Strawson, David Kaplan, Gareth Evans, and John McDowell.

[edit] Selected bibliography

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Sources

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