The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe

by Roger Teichmann

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.

Genres: Philosophy

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2008

About the author

I'm a philosopher and writer, living and working in Oxford. (I teach at the University.)

Philosophy: I'm a leading authority on the work of Elizabeth Anscombe and have written books and articles on ethics, action, psychology, language and Wittgenstein.

Fiction: My debut novel, Dog's Twilight, came out in February 2024, a crime/psychological thriller. A second novel, The Echo Dies, was published in October 2024.

For more details see https://rogerteichmann.com

Reviews

[Gui Nabais Freitas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goethe once described reading Kant like entering a "brightly lit room" - it takes time for the eyes to adjust to the illuminating knowledge contained within. I think something similar can be said about Elizabeth Anscombe's work.

Reading Teichmann's systematic account of Anscombe's philosophy is no exception; Teichmann remains faithful to the terse and fiercely precise prose which is the hallmark of the kind of analytical, linguistic philosophy which Anscombe subscribed to. It can often seem as though these philosophers are nitpicking at words and basic concepts - those who hope for some grand moral vision of society in Anscombe will be very disappointed to find pages on pages on the definition of 'promise' and whether they really function properly. Nevertheless, this type of philosophy has its place in encouraging us all to strive for conceptual and syntactical clarity, I think, even if some parts rival Plato in their discussion of semantics.

Teichmann offers a brilliant framework in which to consider Anscombe's thought; as he himself says, Anscombe did not see herself as a systematic thinker but one can bind her thoughts into a system of sorts. He illustrates her theory of intentions, and how she rejects the simplistic functionalist/behaviouralist account of intention. Functionalists argue that intention is attempting to do 'x intentionally' but as Anscombe points out this means that saying 'I'm picking up this pencil' and 'I will drink water at some point this month' are both seen as intentions with no difference between them (rather than the latter being a point of self-knowledge or habit). Similarly, he shows how Anscombe uses Wittgenstein's idea of language-games to question Humean psychology when it comes to the idea of 'promises' showing the way in which force/stop modals (used from childhood onwards) are able to give us an intelligible conception of promises.

He also shows how her theory of intentions has huge implications for meta-ethics (and a refutal of ethical relativism). He also deals with her own famous analysis of moral terms in 'Modern Moral Philosophy' like 'ought' (which she argues have a specific legalistic Judaeo-Christian heritage) and ought to be abandoned by secular thinkers - she argues that consequentialism precisely attempts to retain this language despite no longer believing in a legislator (i.e. God). Whilst Anscombe herself was a fervent Catholic who believed in a legalistic morality, her point is that secular thinkers cannot pick and choose which parts of moral terminology they want to use - Teichmann neatly links Anscombe to Nietzsche's use of the genealogy of moral terms to undermine certain moral positions. It is from this position that she nevertheless believes that secular moralists can derive ethical thinking through a consideration of Virtue Ethics (building from Aristotle) because, as Teichmann notes, Anscombe thought God is good and, therefore, his creation contains signs of that ethical goodness which human reason can grasp (of course building off the theological distinction between reason and revelation).

This is not an easy volume to read and I will definitely need to re-read various parts of it; Teichmann's great achievement, however, is precisely making one want to clarify and spend time thinking about Anscombe with the promise that the labour will reap abundant rewards.

[Alfredo Nicolás Dueñas]

This ol gal is a tough nut to crack, I'll tell you that much for free. This was a good first step, but reading it without reading her first might not have been the wisest move. Of course, I couldn't possibly have read everything that Teichmann references (he is digging really deep for some of these) but maybe I will need to revisit this after going through Intention and the Human Life papers again.

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giving 5 stars partly because this was written by my ex-tutor and also because Elizabeth Anscombe is a legend.

I must confess I did not understand around 40% of the book, but that which I did, I very much enjoyed and felt it expressed something true about language, ethics, causation, etc.

[Olivia]

reviewed in TLS, 2 April 2010