Modern Moral Philosophy Elizabeth Anscombe

Abstract

This article is by Elizabeth Anscombe, an English philosopher who taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, best known for her work in the philosophy of mind and for her editions and translations of Wittgenstein's later writings. Anscombe studied philosophy with Wittgenstein and became closely associated with him. Her first major work, Intention (1957), argues that the concept of intention is central to our understanding of ourselves as rational agents. In this paper, she argues that "Ought" statements make sense only in the context of a moral theology that grounds morality in divine commands. Since Western culture rejects this theology, it is no surprise that "modern moral philosophers" cannot find much sense in them, and they should be thus abandoned in favour of a return to older conceptions of practical rationality and virtue. Anscombe presents three theses: practicing moral philosophy is useless without an adequate philosophy of psychology; moral philosophers should abandon concepts such as obligation, duty, morally right, and morally wrong; and there are no important differences between the well–known English moral philosophers from Sidgwick onward.