No Morality, No Self


Book Description

Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” and “The First Person” have become touchstones of analytic philosophy but their significance remains controversial or misunderstood. James Doyle offers a fresh interpretation of Anscombe’s theses about ethical reasoning and individual identity that reconciles seemingly incompatible points of view.




Anscombe's Moral Philosophy


Book Description

G.E.M. Anscombe (1919-2001) was one of the most important, outspoken, and misunderstood philosophers of the twentieth century. More than anyone else she revived virtue ethics and the philosophy of action. She was also almost alone in publicly opposing Oxford University's decision to award an honorary degree to President Truman. She regarded his decision to authorize bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as murderous. Some liberals admire her for this stand, but conservatives also admire her for her opposition to abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage. Clearly her values were not those of her times. This led her to reflect on the differences, producing such works as Modern Moral Philosophy, in which she rejected all modern theories of ethics. In this paper she coins the term 'consequentialism' to describe the dominant view, which she rejects, that what matters morally is the results of what one does. Put crudely, the ends can justify the means. If enough lives can be saved by targeting civilians, then civilians should be targeted. Against this, Anscombe insisted that certain actions are forbidden, which prompted her interest in the nature of action and its relation to a person's character. Whether one agrees with her or not, these are all issues that continue to be relevant and on which Anscombe's views are always strong and intelligently defended. Her presentation of these views, unfortunately, is often dense, and they are often badly misunderstood even by some very able minds. Anscombe's Moral Philosophy clarifies what Anscombe thought about ethics, showing how her different ideas connect and how she supported them. It also evaluates her reasoning, showing that it is stronger in some parts than in others. The five main chapters of the book deal in turn with her work on military ethics (including the so-called doctrine of double effect), her rejection of consequentialism, her attack on the modern, atheist notion of moral obligation, her analysis of intention and its relevance for ethics, and her controversial ideas about sex.




Ethics after Anscombe


Book Description

The outstanding features of this book are that it directly confronts the challenge posed by G.E.M. Anscombe in Modern Moral Philosophy of how moral philosophy can be done, it makes a significant contribution to the debate on virtue theory and anti-theory in ethics, and it shows the relevance of such theoretical discussion by grounding it in, and applying it to, contemporary moral issues such as abortion, suicide, and the moral status of animals. No other book currently available covers this ground. The book is aimed primarily at upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and faculty in philosophy, but it should be accessible to anyone with an interest in practical ethics or the philosophy of Wittgenstein.




Modern Moral Philosophy


Book Description

Collection of original essays by leading researchers on current approaches to moral philosophy.




The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe


Book Description

One of the most important philosophers of recent times, Elizabeth Anscombe wrote books and articles on a wide range of topics, including the ground-breaking monograph Intention. Her work is original, challenging, often difficult, always insightful; but it has frequently been misunderstood, and its overall significance is still not fully appreciated. This book is the first major study of Anscombe's philosophical oeuvre. In it, Roger Teichmann presents Anscombe's main ideas, bringing out their interconnections, elaborating and discussing their implications, pointing out objections and difficulties, and aiming to give a unified overview of her philosophy. Many of Anscombe's arguments are relevant to contemporary debates, as Teichmann shows, and on a number of topics what Anscombe has to say constitutes a powerful alternative to dominant or popular views. Among the writings discussed are Intention, 'Practical Inference', 'Modern Moral Philosophy', 'Rules, Rights and Promises', 'On Brute Facts', 'The First Person', 'The Intentionality of Sensation', 'Causality and Determination', An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, 'The Question of Linguistic Idealism', and a number of other pieces, including some that are little known or hard to obtain. A complete bibliography of Anscombe's writings is also included. Ranging from the philosophy of action, through ethics, to philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and the philosophy of logic and language, this book is a study of one of the most significant bodies of work in modern philosophy, spanning more than fifty years, and as pertinent today as ever.




Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On to Ethics


Book Description

In Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On to Ethics, Cora Diamond follows two major European philosophers as they think about thinking, as well as about our ability to respond to thinking that has miscarried or gone astray. Acting as both witness to and participant in the encounter, Diamond provides fresh perspective on the importance of the work of these philosophers and the value of doing philosophy in unexpected ways. Diamond begins with the Tractatus (1921), in which Ludwig Wittgenstein forges a link between thinking about thought and the capacity to respond to misunderstandings and confusions. She then considers G. E. M. Anscombe’s An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1959), in which Anscombe, through her engagement with Wittgenstein, further explores the limits of thinking and the ability to respond to thought that has gone wrong. Anscombe’s book is important, Diamond argues, in challenging contemporary assumptions about what philosophical problems are worth considering and about how they can be approached. Through her reading of the Tractatus, Anscombe exemplified an ethics of thinking through and against the grain of common preconceptions. The result drew attention to the questions that mattered most to Wittgenstein and conveyed with great power the nature of his achievement. Diamond herself, in turn, challenges Anscombe on certain points, thereby further carrying out just the kind of ethical work Wittgenstein and Anscombe each felt was crucial to getting things right. Through her textured engagement with her predecessors, Diamond demonstrates what genuinely independent thought is able to achieve.




Human Life, Action and Ethics


Book Description

A collection of essays by the celebrated philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. This collection includes papers on human nature and practical philosophy, together with the classic 'Modern Moral Philosophy'




Intention


Book Description

Intention is one of the masterworks of twentieth-century philosophy in English. First published in 1957, it has acquired the status of a modern philosophical classic. The book attempts to show in detail that the natural and widely accepted picture of what we mean by an intention gives rise to insoluble problems and must be abandoned. This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.




Anscombe's Intention


Book Description

Written against the background of her controversial opposition to the University of Oxford's awarding of an honorary degree to Harry S. Truman, Elizabeth Anscombe's Intention laid the groundwork she thought necessary for a proper ethical evaluation of actions like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devoutly Catholic Anscombe thought that these actions made Truman a murderer, and thus unworthy of the university's honor-but that this verdict depended on an understanding of intentional action that had been widely rejected in contemporary moral philosophy. Intention was her attempt to work out that understanding and argue for its superiority over a conception of intention as an inner mental state. Though recognized universally as one of the definitive works in analytic philosophy of action, Anscombe's book is often dismissed as unsystematic or obscure, and usually read through the lens of philosophical concerns very far from her own. Schwenkler's Guide offers a careful and critical presentation of Anscombe's main lines of argument at a level appropriate to advanced undergraduates but also capable of benefiting specialists in action theory, moral philosophy, and the history of analytic philosophy. Further, it situates Intention in a context that emphasizes Anscombe's debts to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Wittgenstein, and her engagement with the work of contemporaries like Gilbert Ryle and R.M. Hare, inviting new avenues of engagement with the ideas of historically important philosophers.




Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Anscombe's Intention


Book Description

G. E. M. Anscombe’s Intention is a classic of twentieth-century philosophy. The work has been enormously influential despite being a dense and largely misunderstood text. It is a standard reference point for anyone engaging with philosophy of action and philosophy of psychology. In this Routledge Philosophy GuideBook, Rachael Wiseman: situates Intention in relation to Anscombe’s moral philosophy and philosophy of mind considers the influence of Aquinas, Aristotle, Frege, and Wittgenstein on the method and content of Intention adopts a structure for assessing the text that shows how Anscombe unifies the three aspects of the concept of intention considers the influence and implications of the piece whilst distinguishing it from subsequent work in the philosophy of action Ideal for anyone wanting to understand and gain a perspective on Elizabeth Anscombe’s seminal work, this guide is an essential introduction, useful in the study of the philosophy of action, ethics, philosophy of psychology and related areas.