From Parmenides to Wittgenstein

by G.E.M. Anscombe

Early work from a leader in analytic philosophy From Parmenides to Wittgenstein, Volume 1: Collected Philosophical Papers is part of a multi-volume publication of G.E.M. Anscombe's collected works. Writing on philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic, Anscombe is known as one of analytical Thomisms's most prominent figures. This collection includes her writing on the work of her teacher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, with whom she worked closely as co-editor and translator.

Genres: Philosophy

Paperback

First published September 17, 1981

About the author

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, better 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, above all his Philosophical Investigations. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and ethics. Her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the language of analytic philosophy; this and subsequent articles had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics. Her monograph Intention is generally recognized as her greatest and most influential work, and the continuing philosophical interest in the concepts of intention, action and practical reasoning can be said to have taken its main impetus from this work.

Reviews

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (1919-2001) was undoubtedly the most important woman philosopher in the Anglo-American Analytic tradition as it existed in the twentieth century. She was a student and close associate of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and translated and commented on many of his writings (the first thing I read by her almost fifty years ago was her Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus). She contributed articles to most of the analytic journals, either herself or later in collaboration with her husband, Peter Geatch. This book is the first volume of her collected papers, and is made up of analyses of arguments in the history of philosophy.

The book begins with an article on Parmenides, then has three each on Plato and Aristotle, one on Aquinas, two on Hume, one on Brentano, and ends with two on Wittgenstein. They were all written between 1953 and 1979. They approach the various arguments from an analytic standpoint and most are filled with symbolic logic; some are difficult to understand because they are replies to other philosophers' papers, which aren't included and which I haven't read. The most interesting was an interpretation of Plato's earlier theory of ideas as a form of set theory.

This would be of interest to anyone with an interest in the history of philosophy and a background in the analytic tradition; no one else should attempt it.

[T. Tokunaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

【From Parmenides to Wittgenstein / GEM Anscombe / 1981, Basil Blackwell Publisher】

--But food and so on change substantially when they get into Professor Popper, so his form (the flesh and bone of a living man, to put it roughly) does the marking off; and corresponds to the mile of river [of assumed lighted things 'taken' by Popper going around his body]. (P65, The Principle of Individuation)

Which would be a bridging discussion between Aristotelian natural science of identity (being made up of what's being taken) and the modern science, as well as a representative remark for this little-known philosopher (of course, outside academia). For sure, this remark would be too playful. But playfulness, or doubt in rigorous verificationism, is largely her trait as a twisty type of positivist:

--Again, if James' absence is a nothing when James is absent, how is it distinguished from John's absence, when John is absent as well? (P31, The New Theory of Forms)

As she put class as representing 'form' or 'idea' in Plato, this type of question about 'nothingness,' a really Continental way of thinking, has to be questioned this way.

--On the other hand a proof of a break in the continuity - a proof that this man was in New York in between, while that man was not - would destroy our belief in the identity [of a passerby]. (P89, Hume and Julius Caesar)

This proposition leads to enforcing our belief in continuity and history, and thus historical events incapable of being witnessed by ourselves, shows her strong grip on logical positivism but in a phase after Popper, as well as this:

--But at least the effect is of a quite different kind from the cause: the effect is a voluntary action taking place no doubt at a definite time; the cauzs, a state which lacks a central core and the assignment of which to a definite time, though sometimes possible, is by no means necessary. (P106, Will and Emotion)

Also, I must say that: Anscombe was actually one of the few authentic intellectual heirs to Wittgenstein, and her views on Wittgenstein now don't look new at all - because she's already written with higher precision, for example, what Kripke tried to explore.