G. E. M. Anscombe facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
G. E. M. Anscombe
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Anscombe as a young woman
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Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe
18 March 1919 Limerick, Ireland
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| Died | 5 January 2001 (aged 81) Cambridge, England
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| Other names | Elizabeth Anscombe |
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| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
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Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (born March 18, 1919 – died January 5, 2001), often called G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a very important British philosopher. She wrote about the philosophy of mind (how our minds work), philosophy of action (why we do things), logic, philosophy of language (how language works), and ethics (right and wrong). She was a leading expert in a field called analytical Thomism. She was also a Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford and a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.
Anscombe was a student of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. She became an expert on his ideas and helped edit and translate many of his writings, especially his book Philosophical Investigations. In 1958, her article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the word consequentialism into philosophy. This article also greatly influenced the modern study of virtue ethics, which focuses on character and virtues. Her book Intention (1957) was called "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle" by another philosopher, Donald Davidson. This book helped start the modern interest in understanding concepts like intention, action, and practical reasoning (how we decide what to do).
Contents
Her Life
Anscombe was born on March 18, 1919, in Limerick, Ireland. Her father was a soldier, and both her parents worked in education. Her mother was a headmistress, and her father later led the science and engineering department at Dulwich College.
Anscombe went to Sydenham High School. In 1937, she began studying classics and philosophy at St Hugh's College, Oxford. She earned top grades in her degree in 1941.
While still in high school, Anscombe became a member of the Catholic Church. She remained a practicing Catholic throughout her life.
In 1941, she married Peter Geach, who was also a Catholic convert and became a respected philosopher. They had seven children together: three sons and four daughters.
After Oxford, Anscombe received a special scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1942 to 1945. She wanted to attend Ludwig Wittgenstein's lectures. She became a dedicated student and a close friend of Wittgenstein. He trusted her understanding of his ideas so much that he chose her to translate his important book Philosophical Investigations. He even arranged for her to spend time in Vienna to improve her German for this task.
Anscombe visited Wittgenstein many times after he left Cambridge. She was with him when he passed away in 1951. Wittgenstein chose her, along with two others, to manage and publish his writings after his death. She was responsible for editing, translating, and publishing many of his notes and manuscripts.
Anscombe was not afraid to speak her mind. In 1939, as a student, she publicly disagreed with Britain joining the Second World War. In 1956, she strongly protested against Oxford University giving an honorary degree to Harry S. Truman. She believed he was responsible for the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She even wrote a pamphlet saying she would be afraid to attend the ceremony "in case God's patience suddenly ends."
Anscombe stayed at Somerville College until 1970. Then, she became a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where she taught until she retired in 1986. She received many honors for her work.
In her later years, Anscombe had heart problems and was in a serious car accident in 1996. She never fully recovered. She passed away peacefully on January 5, 2001, at the age of 81. Her husband and four of their children were with her. She was buried near where Wittgenstein had been buried decades earlier, in the Ascension Parish burial ground in Cambridge.
Debate with C. S. Lewis
As a young philosophy teacher, Anscombe was known as a very strong debater. In 1948, she gave a paper at a meeting where she disagreed with C. S. Lewis's argument about naturalism. Some people close to Lewis said that he lost the debate and that it was so difficult for him that he stopped writing about theology and focused more on religious books and children's stories.
Because of this debate, Lewis rewrote a chapter of his book Miracles for a later edition.
Her Work
On Wittgenstein
Many of Anscombe's most important works are her translations and explanations of her teacher Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas. She wrote an important explanation of Wittgenstein's 1921 book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This work showed how important the philosopher Gottlob Frege was to Wittgenstein's thinking. She also helped edit Wittgenstein's second book, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations (1953). Her English translation of this book is still used today. She also edited and translated other important works by him.
In 1978, Anscombe received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art for her work on Wittgenstein.
Intention
Her most famous book is Intention (1957). In this book, she wanted to explain what human action and will are like. Anscombe looked at the idea of intention, which appears in our language in three ways:
| She is X'ing intentionally | This means doing something on purpose. |
| She is X'ing with the intention of doing Y or ... She is X'ing to Y |
This means having a goal or reason for doing something. |
| She intends to Y or ... She has expressed the intention to do Y |
This means planning to do something in the future. |
She believed that a good explanation of intention must connect these three uses. She started by looking at intentional actions. She said that an action is intentional if you can ask "Why?" about it, and the person doing it can give a reason or purpose. For example, if someone is moving their arm up and down while holding a handle, they might be "pumping water." This action is intentional under the description "pumping water," but not under "contracting these muscles." Anscombe was the first to clearly explain that actions are intentional only under certain descriptions.
Intention (1957) also explains that there's a difference in "direction of fit" between things like beliefs and desires. Beliefs try to describe the world as it is. Desires, however, aim to change the world. Anscombe used the example of a shopping list. If your list says "milk" but you don't buy milk, we don't say the list is wrong. Instead, we say your action (not buying milk) was wrong. This is because the list, in this case, acts like a desire or a command, telling you what to do. This difference is key to understanding the difference between knowing facts (theoretical knowledge) and knowing how to act (practical knowledge).
Ethics
Anscombe made big contributions to the study of ethics, which is about what is right and wrong. She is known for creating the term "consequentialism". This idea says that whether an action is right or wrong depends on its results or consequences.
Her article "Modern Moral Philosophy" helped bring back interest in virtue ethics in Western philosophy. Virtue ethics focuses on developing good character traits (virtues) rather than just following rules or looking at consequences.
The Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, which studies ethical issues in medicine and biology, is named after her.
Brute and Institutional Facts
Anscombe also introduced the idea of facts being 'brute relative to' other facts. Imagine you pay for something. The 'brute facts' might be that you handed over money or a check. These simple actions lead to the fact that you 'paid for something'. This idea often involves an "institutional context," like the system of money. The act of giving someone a shilling isn't a description of the whole money system itself. Anscombe explained that simple facts don't always lead to a bigger fact unless "under normal circumstances." This means many things that didn't happen could have changed the outcome. This idea helps us understand how simple actions fit into larger social systems.
First Person
In her paper "The First Person," Anscombe discussed the word "I." She argued that "I" doesn't refer to a specific thing, like your body or a separate "self." This is because when you say "I," you can't be wrong about who you are referring to. For example, you can be wrong about whether your body is moving, but you can't be wrong about who is thinking "I am thinking." This idea was important for later philosophers studying how we understand ourselves and use words like "I."
Causality
In her article "Causality and Determination," Anscombe talked about how things cause other things. She defended two main ideas:
- We can actually see causal relationships.
- Causation doesn't always mean there's a necessary connection or a universal rule linking a cause and its effect.
To explain that we can see causal relationships, Anscombe asked: "How do we first learn about causality?" She suggested two answers:
- By learning to speak, we learn words for many causal ideas, like "scrape," "push," or "knock over." These words describe actions that cause something to happen.
- By watching actions, we can see cause and effect. For example, we can observe someone pushing a block and see it move.
Her second idea was that causation doesn't always require a "necessary connection." This means that just because one thing causes another, it doesn't mean it had to happen that way every single time.
Views of Her Work
Philosopher Candace Vogler said that Anscombe's strength was that she could write for different audiences. When writing for Catholics, she assumed they shared certain beliefs. But she was also happy to write for people who didn't share her views. In 2010, philosopher Roger Scruton called Anscombe "perhaps the last great philosopher writing in English." Mary Warnock described her as "the undoubted giant among women philosophers." John Haldane said she "certainly has a good claim to be the greatest woman philosopher of whom we know."
Images for kids
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Anscombe as a young woman
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In Spanish: Elizabeth Anscombe para niños
