Anscombe on Brute Facts and Human Affairs

2020 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 85-99
Author(s):  
Rachael Wiseman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

AbstractIn ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Anscombe writes: ‘It is not profitable at present for us to do moral philosophy. It should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking’. In consideration of this Anscombe appeals to the relation of ‘brute-relative-to’ which holds between facts and descriptions of human affairs. This paper describes the reorientation in philosophy of action that this relation aims to effect and examines the claim that this reorientation makes possible the sort of philosophy of psychology that can provide a starting point for ethics.

scholarly journals The Soul, the Virtues, and the Human Good: Comments on Aristotle's Moral Psychology

Labyrinth ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Kathi Beier
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Ethical Inquiry ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

In modern moral philosophy, virtue ethics has developed into one of the major approaches to ethical inquiry. As it seems, however, it is faced with a kind of perplexity similar to the one that Elisabeth Anscombe has described in Modern moral philosophy with regard to ethics in general. For if we assume that Anscombe is right in claiming that virtue ethics ought to be grounded in a sound philosophy of psychology, modern virtue ethics seems to be baseless since it lacks or even avoids reflections on the human soul. To overcome this difficulty, the paper explores the conceptual connections between virtue and soul in Aristotle's ethics. It claims that the human soul is the principle of virtue since reflections on the soul help us to define the nature of virtue, to understand the different kinds of virtues, and to answer the question why human beings need the virtues at all. 

Modern Moral Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 33 (124) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. M. Anscombe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

I will begin by stating three theses which I present in this paper. The first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of “ought,” ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it. My third thesis is that the differences between the wellknown English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance.

Reason, Intention, and Choice An essay in Practical Philosophy

2004 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 265-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Action Intention ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy ◽  
Psychological Concepts

It is the famous first thesis of Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ that we should lay aside moral philosophy—indeed ‘banish ethics totally from our minds’! (p. 38, paragraph 36)—‘until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology’. By a ‘philosophy of psychology’ I understand Anscombe to mean grammatical investigations into various psychological concepts that hold the key to ethics. Anscombe herself instances ‘action’, ‘intention’, ‘pleasure’, ‘wanting’ (‘more will probably turn up if we start with these’). Without such an understanding, she thinks we will simply go astray.

Modern Moral Philosophy and the Problem of Relevant Descriptions

2004 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 301-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onora O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

Anscombe's indictment of modern moral philosophy is full-blooded. She began with three strong claims:The first is that is not profitable to do moral philosophy… until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation and duty… and of the moral sense of ‘ought’, ought to be jettisoned… because they are derivatives… from an earlier conception of ethics… and are only harmful without it. The third thesis is that the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present are of little importance.

Ethics and psychology

2000 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 125-136
Author(s):  
Roger Teichmann
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Ethics And Psychology ◽  
Action Intention ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

… it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking.These words state one of the principal theses of Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958). Later in the article, the point is reiterated more specifically and with more force:is it not clear that there are several concepts that need investigating simply as part of the philosophy of psychology and – as I should recommend – banishing ethics totally from our minds? Namely – to begin with: ‘action’, ‘intention’, ‘pleasure’, ‘wanting’. More will probably turn up if we start with these.

Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1919–2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Wiseman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Mental Event ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

G.E.M. Anscombe (1919–2001) is recognized as one of the most brilliant philosophers of the twentieth century. She is also well known as the translator and editor of Wittgenstein’s later writings, including his Philosophical Investigations. The work Anscombe undertook between 1956 and 1958, during which time she was concerned with the content and foundations of moral philosophy, has been extremely influential in philosophy of action and ethics. Her 1957 monograph, Intention, seeks to give an account of the psychological concepts she thought necessary for moral philosophy to be possible – intention, desire, reason, motive – and is one of the most significant philosophical works on action. Her much anthologized paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958) marks the beginning of the revival of virtue ethics. Anscombe’s work attempts to recover for a contemporary audience the premodern conception of human nature, action and ethics that is found in the writings of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas. Anscombe held that the bifurcation of man into mind and body which arose during the seventeenth century – and replaced the Aristotelian dichotomy of form and matter – had disastrous consequences in the philosophy of psychology and ethics. She subjected concepts along the fault line created by this change – cause, substance, mental event, intention, subject, object, freedom, sensation, self-consciousness – to detailed analysis using the method of grammatical enquiry. This method, learnt from Wittgenstein, involves describing the complex use of language in the context of our human form of life. In Anscombe’s work, this analysis reveals that the picture of the human subject that our Cartesian intellectual inheritance makes intuitive is profoundly mistaken.

Absolute Prohibitions without Divine Promises

2004 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabina Lovibond
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
The State ◽  
Great Good ◽  
Authoritative Text ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ is read and remembered principally as a critique of the state of ethical theory at the time when she was writing—an account of certain faulty assumptions underlying that theory in its different variants, and rendering trivial the points on which they ostensibly disagree. Not unreasonably, the essay serves as a starting point for the recent Oxford Readings collection on ‘virtue ethics’, and as an authoritative text on the failings of other approaches with which philosophy students have to acquaint themselves. Yet what really commands attention on rereading it is Anscombe's denunciation of the impotence of current moral philosophy to generate resistance to certain quite specific forms of wrongdoing. The question that provides a kind of gold standard here, recurring several times in the course of the discussion, is that of the killing (or judicial execution or other ‘punishment’) of the innocent in order to avoid some putatively greater evil, or to bring about some sufficiently great good.

Elizabeth Anscombe versus the World

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-170
Author(s):  
Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Honorary Degree ◽  
The World ◽  
Harry Truman ◽  
Radio Broadcast ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

This chapter chronicles the philosophical development of the abrasive, brilliant Elizabeth Anscombe and her contribution to her friends’ implicit project of reshaping mid-century ethics: her all-out attack against “Oxford Moral Philosophy” epitomized by R.M. Hare, and her publication of the influential “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Anscombe was Wittgenstein’s apprentice and translator for much of her early career, rarely publishing original work. She was, nonetheless, a fearsome adversary of anyone she saw as glib or insufficiently serious, including C.S. Lewis and J.L. Austin. Anscombe’s real engagement with ethics began with her attempt to stop Oxford from bestowing an honorary degree on Harry Truman; she abhorred his decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She was invited to give a radio broadcast, “Oxford Moral Philosophy: Does It Corrupt the Youth?”—the opening salvo in a fight with R.M. Hare, which resulted in her influential essay “Modern Moral Philosophy.”

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