Elizabeth Anscombe, action and reaction

Famous in the circle of philosophers, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) remains unknown to the general public, particularly in France. While thousands of specialized studies are devoted to her work, mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world, many educated French speakers are unaware of her existence, although she has now appeared, for two years, in the list of authors of the bac. Among contemporary women philosophers, who are legion, she is an exception – both for the singularity of her philosophical positions and for her radical religious commitments.

A classic of contemporary analytical philosophy

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret was born in Ireland, in Limerick, in 1919. She studied in Cambridge in the 1940s with Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Philosophy became his favorite disciple, and Elizabeth Anscombe was, after the master’s death, one of his three executors. The young woman worked on publishing the posthumous works of Wittgenstein, translated some of his books into English, and published an introduction to the Tractatus logico-philosophicuswhich traces the evolution of the philosopher’s thought.

It obviously did not content itself with making known and understanding the intellectual upheavals wrought by Wittgenstein. She pursued them, extended them, deepened them, in an original way. In 1956, she published The intention (Gallimard, 2002; recently published in paperback, Folio, “Essays”, 224 pages, 7.80 euros), which has since become one of the great classics of contemporary analytical philosophy. In a dense style, an inimitable mixture of concrete examples and conceptual analyses, she mainly shows, over the course of fifty-two subtle paragraphs, that the “intention” that we have to do this or that does not really constitute a ” mental state” apart, distinct from actions, as we tend to mistakenly believe, victims of a biased psychology that breeds false problems.

Far from predicting what will happen in the future, intention, according to Anscombe, describes the present state of the speaker’s mind, his reasons for acting or hesitating, his deliberations. It should therefore be reintegrated into the sphere of action, abandoning the current definition of intention, which is only a mirage. This analysis paved the way for a rehabilitation of “practical reasoning”, neglected since Aristotle, which has developed widely since then.

“virtue ethics”

The influence of the article “Modern Moral Philosophy” (published in English, in 1958) was not less. Anscombe is radically opposed to this “consequentialists” (a term she coined), which make the results of an act the sole criterion of its morality. In his eyes, such a position is unacceptable: it can lead to committing a few murders to avoid many others. On the contrary, it judges that certain actions are absolutely prohibited in all circumstances. Our time, which no longer adheres to the idea of ​​a divine law which justified these prohibitions, should develop a “virtue ethics”, in the wake of Aristotle, again. The lesson was heard: this reflection has experienced a huge boom.

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