Elizabeth Anscombe

In 1956 Oxford University awarded an honorary degree to the former US president Harry S. Truman for his role in ending the Second World War. One philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919 - 2001), objected strongly. She argued that although dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have ended the fighting, it amounted to the murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. It was therefore an irredeemably immoral act. And there was something fundamentally wrong with a moral philosophy that didn’t see that. This was the starting point for a body of work that changed the terms in which philosophers discussed moral and ethical questions in the second half of the twentieth century. A leading student of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Anscombe combined his insights with rejuvenated interpretations of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas that made these ancient figures speak to modern issues and concerns. Anscombe was also instrumental in making action, and the question of what it means to intend to do something, a leading area of philosophical work.

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Guests

• Rachael Wiseman No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool
• Constantine Sandis No other episodes
  Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, and Director of Lex Academic
• Roger Teichmann No other episodes
  Lecturer in Philosophy at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford

Reading list

• Intention
  G.E.M. Anscombe (Harvard University Press, 2000) Google Books →
• Mr Truman's Degree
  G.E.M. Anscombe (privately published pamphlet, 1957) Google Books →
• Modern Moral Philosophy
  G.E.M. Anscombe ( 1958)
• The Women are up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics
  Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb (Oxford University Press, 2021) Google Books →
• Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life
  Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman (Chatto, 2022) Google Books →
• The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir
  Mary Midgley (Routledge, 2007) Google Books →
• Anscombe's Intention: A Guide
  John Schwenkler (Oxford University Press, 2019) Google Books →
• The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe
  Roger Teichmann (Oxford University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• The Oxford Handbook of Elizabeth Anscombe
  Roger Teichmann (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2022) Google Books →
• Logos and Life: Essays on Mind, Action, Language and Ethics
  Roger Teichmann (Anthem Press, 2022)
• Are There Any Intrinsically Unjust Acts?
  Roger Teichmann (Zeitschrift fur Ethik und Moralphilosophie, Oct. 2018)
• A Memoir: People and Places
  Mary Warnock (Duckworth, 2002) Google Books →
• Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Anscombe's Intention
  Rachael Wiseman (Routledge, 2017) Google Books →
• Philosophical Investigations
  Ludwig Wittgenstein (eds. P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m001n1yy

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n1yy

Auto-category: 170 (Ethics)