Gertrude Elizabeth Mary Anscombe, philosopher, born March
18 1919; died January 5 2001| An exhilarating philosopher, she took to sporting a monocle and smoking cigars |
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Elizabeth Anscombe, who has died aged 81, was considered by
some to be the greatest English philosopher of her generation.
She was professor of philosophy at Cambridge from 1970 to
1986, having already, as a research fellow at Oxford in the 50s,
helped change the course of moral philosophy. Also influential in
philosophy of mind, she pioneered contemporary action theory,
and the pre-eminent philosopher Donald Davidson called her
1957 monograph Intention the best work on practical reasoning
since Aristotle. The philosophical world owes her an enormous
debt, too, for bringing Wittgenstein, probably the greatest
philosopher of the 20th century, to public knowledge.
Anscombe went to Sydenham high school, where her reading
between the ages of 12 and 15 led her to convert to Roman
Catholicism. She got a first in Greats at St Hugh's College,
Oxford, but came to inveigh against the dryness of Oxford
philosophy. This was because she had come under the spell of
Ludwig Wittgenstein, for whose classes she travelled to
Cambridge every week. She became Wittgenstein's close friend
and proselytiser, even adopting his mannerisms - the anguished
head in hands, furrowed brow, long silences - and the tinge of an
Austrian accent.
After his death in 1951 (she was at his deathbed), she became
one of his three notoriously intractable literary executors, and
co-edited his posthumous works. Her translation of his greatest
work, the Philosophical Investigations, was remarkable. It is
quoted all over the world as if it were verbatim Wittgenstein
rather than a translation, being written in an English style which
is itself compelling.
Wittgenstein famously said "philosophical problems arise when
language goes on holiday", and spoke of trying to cure such
problems by examining the way we use concepts. Anscombe
applied a Wittgenstein-type analytic therapy to philosophy of
mind. But her application was far more systematic and
thoroughgoing than Wittgenstein's cryptic, suggestive hints, and
was also distinctively her own. In Intention, she criticised the
way philosophers since Descartes have had a conception of
knowledge, even knowledge of one's own actions, as
"incorrigibly contemplative", passive, speculative. In fact, she
said, we know what our intentions are without observation; and
between someone observing, and someone intending and
performing, an action, there is what she called a difference in the
"direction of fit" (of action to thought).
She gives the famous illustration of the contents of a basket
which a shopper fills according to a list, and which a detective
compiles a list of. If the shopper finds any discrepancy between
his list and what is actually in the basket, he rectifies this not by
altering the list (practical thought) but by altering what's in the
basket (the action performed). If the detective wants to rectify
discrepancies between his list (observational thought) and
what's in the basket (the other's action observed), then he can
indeed do so merely by altering the list. But our actions are
intentional only under a description, said Anscombe, so that
under one description ("I wanted to help") an action may be
intentional, under others ("I interfered", "I stopped play")
unintentional.
Anscombe thought that modern philosophy had also
misunderstood ethics. In her seminal paper Modern Moral
Philosophy (1958), she argued that notions like "moral
obligation", "moral duty", "morally right", and "morally wrong",
are now vacuous hangovers from the Judaeo-Christian idea of a
law-giving God. Anscombe, of course, firmly believed in God
herself, but she was examining the way language was actually
used, and ethics done. She argued that "ought" has become "a
word of mere mesmeric force", since it no longer has the
corollary "because we are commanded by God".
Philosophers, however, have tried to find content in the
deracinated ethical concepts, and failing to, have been induced
to supply "an alternative (very fishy) content", such as that the
right action is the one that produces the best possible
consequences. However purportedly different, in fact, all
contemporary moral philosophies lead to this sort of
"consequentialism" (it was Anscombe who coined that
now-indispensable term), which blithely countenances the
execution of an innocent person as a potentially right action.
Anscombe famously asserted of someone who thought in this
way, "I do not want to argue with him: he shows a corrupt mind."
She urged the abandonment of "the law conception of ethics"
and a return to the avowedly secular Aristotelian concepts of
practical reasoning and virtue. And she insisted that it was no
longer possible to do moral philosophy without doing philosophy
of mind, thoroughly investigating concepts such as "action",
"intention", and "pleasure" in their non-moral sense.
Two years earlier, in 1956, she had demonstrated in a very
practical way her opposition to consequentialism. When it was
proposed that Oxford should give President Truman an honorary
degree, she and two others opposed this because of his
responsibility for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Although overruled, they forced a vote, instead of the customary
automatic rubber-stamping of the proposal. "For men to choose
to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder,"
declared Anscombe's pamphlet, Mr Truman's Degree. It
sarcastically condoled with the Censor of St Catherine's for
having to make a speech "which should pretend to show that a
couple of massacres to a man's credit are not exactly a reason
for not showing him honour".
Anscombe was never afraid to voice unpopular views,
scandalising liberal colleagues such as Bernard Williams with
her paper against contraception (later published in revised form
by the Catholic Truth Society) and condemnation of
homosexuality.
Outspoken, often rude, she was sometimes dubbed "Dragon
Lady". For a time she sported a monocle, and had a trick of
raising her eyebrows and letting it fall on her ample bosom,
which somehow made her yet more daunting. But, while giving
short shrift to pretension and pomposity, she took endless pains
with those students she considered serious. Her exhilarating
tutorials went on for hours, leaving everyone exhausted;
students could drop into her house at any time to discuss
philosophy among the dirty nappies. Married to Peter Geach, a
fellow-philosopher and Catholic, she was always called "Miss
Anscombe", which caused some consternation at the Radcliffe
Infirmary whenever she turned up to give birth (she had seven
children).
Perhaps Anscombe's best work was done in the 50s, but her
three-volume Collected Philosophical Papers (1981) contain
trenchant papers on epistemology, metaphysics, history of
philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Causality and
Determination, her inaugural lecture on becoming professor of
Cambridge in 1970, presented an extraordinarily original and
controversial view of causation.
An affectionate tribute on her retirement in 1986 called her "a
modern Daniel in the lions' den", but, although doggedly
Catholic, Anscombe could also be radical and was never
straitlaced. She was notorious for a forthright foulmouthedness
which was only enhanced by the beauty of her voice. When
presenting a paper on pleasure, she distinguished extrinsic
pleasures - things we enjoy because of the description they fall
under - and intrinsic pleasures - things we enjoy regardless of
how they are described; and she cited, as an example of the
latter, "shitting", strongly pronouncing the double "t", and with
such sternness that her academic audience were too daunted to
laugh. (Unfortunately this was probably one of the many papers
she threw away as insufficiently good.)
Once, threatened by a mugger in Chicago, she told him that that
was no way to treat a visitor. They soon fell into conversation
and he accompanied her, admonishing her for being in such a
dangerous neighbourhood. She chain-smoked for some years,
but bargained with God, when her second son was seriously ill,
that she would give up smoking cigarettes if he recovered.
Feeling the strain of this the following year, she decided that her
bargain had not mentioned cigars or pipes, and took to smoking
these.
Except when pregnant, she wore trousers, often under a tunic,
which, in the 50s and 60s, was often disapproved of. Once,
entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies
were not admitted in trousers. She simply took them off. When
she threatened one of her children, "If you do that again, I'll put
you on the train to Bicester", and he did, she felt obliged, given
her views on fulfilling promises, actually to put him on the train.
Bluff, courageous, determined, loyal, she argued that the word
"I" does not refer to anything, but she certainly believed in the
soul.
She is survived by her husband and their four daughters and
three sons. | 
