G.E.M. Anscombe’s Views Live O n, Decade After Her Death

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/us/08beliefs.html

Renaissance for Outspoken Catholic Philosopher
By MARK OPPENHEIMER
Published: January 7, 2011

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, the Catholic philosopher whose work on
subjects from Aristotelian ethics to the perils of birth control is enjoying
a renaissance, died 10 years ago this week in England, at 81. And obituary
writers remembered what she wore.

The Telegraph wrote, “Clad in leopard-skin trousers and a leather jacket,
she might sit in silence for minutes on end, puffing on a cigar, after one
of her students had finished reading out an essay.”

And The Guardian : “For a time she sported a monocle, and had a trick of
raising her eyebrows and letting it fall on her ample bosom, which somehow
made her yet more daunting.”

Miss Anscombe — the married mother of seven preferred “Miss” and was known
by her initials, G.E.M., or as Elizabeth — may have been an
independent-minded dresser. But it was her fearless thinking that made her,
some say, the greatest postwar English philosopher, and the greatest female
philosopher ever (a superlative she would loathe). Her philosophy continues
to pack the halls at conferences. Her uncompromising Christian writing is
why collegians name clubs after her.

Her views, however, are inseparable from her biography.

Miss Anscombe was born in 1919 and was a teenage convert to Roman
Catholicism. As an Oxford student, she befriended Iris Murdoch, Philippa
Foot and Mary Midgley — all future philosophy greats. (Ms. Midgley has
written that with young men off at war, women finally got attention.)

Miss Anscombe married Peter Geach, another Catholic convert, and was hired
at Oxford; later in her career, she moved to Cambridge. Mr. Geach taught
philosophy at less prestigious schools, first Birmingham and then Leeds; the
“Geachcombes,” as some called them, may have had one of the first academic
commuter marriages.

(He commuted.)

As a young philosopher, Miss Anscombe traveled regularly to Cambridge to
hear the lectures of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great Austrian philosopher.
She became a disciple, then one of his literary executors. She learned
German and in 1953 translated his “Philosophical Investigations.” After
Wittgenstein himself, she is most responsible for his fame in the
English-speaking world.

In 1956, Miss Anscombe riled colleagues by arguing that Oxford should not
award an honorary degree to former President Harry S. Truman, whom she
considered a mass murderer. Her pamphlet “Mr. Truman’s Degree” — a readable,
powerful antiwar tract — helped introduce Catholic theories of just and
unjust war to mainstream philosophy.

(Truman got his degree.)

The next year, she published “Intention,” which one philosopher called the
greatest work on the philosophy of action — a sub-field concerned with how
our brains cause our bodies to do things — since Aristotle.

And just one year later came “Modern Moral Philosophy,” which helped inspire
the major revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Virtue ethicists argue that
we ought to ask what virtues, like courage or patience, should be
encouraged, rather than focus on rules to obey.

In 1972, Miss Anscombe published “Contraception and Chastity,” a deeply
unfashionable, and still widely read, argument against birth control.

“Christianity,” Miss Anscombe wrote, “taught that men ought to be as chaste
as pagans thought honest women ought to be; the contraceptive morality
teaches that women need to be as little chaste as pagans thought men need
be.”

Meanwhile, she raised seven children. None of the three I found, including
one nun and one philosopher, would be interviewed. Nor will Mr. Geach, the
widower, according to his son Charles.

But the family of Anscombe followers keeps growing.

The University of Chicago philosopher Candace Vogler says that when she read
“Intention” in graduate school, the book was out of print, so they had to
rely on photocopies.

“But as of about the last five years, people are acting as if she’s this
new, important philosopher,” Professor Vogler said. Since 2007, there have
been Anscombe conferences in Rome; in Uppsala, Sweden; in Princeton, N.J.;
and in Chicago.

“We had room for 150 people, and we had people sitting outside the doors,”
Professor Vogler said of the 2008 Chicago conference, which she organized.
“People with no financial support to do so were flying in from places like
Australia and Switzerland. That is suggestive of a huge groundswell of
interest in her, that she is the next big thing.”

Philosophers are primarily interested in Miss Anscombe’s action theory. But
Professor Vogler says that a true appreciation of her includes the religious
writing.

An Anscombe strength is that “when she is writing for that Catholic
audience, she presumes they share certain fundamental beliefs,” but she is
equally willing to write for people who do not share her assumptions,
Professor Vogler said.

“For the general philosopher, she is like, ‘Look, by general agreement we’re
atheists.’ And that is for the most part true.”

At Princeton, 30 students have joined the Anscombe Society, which promotes
traditional sexual morality. Shivani Radhakrishnan, last semester’s
president, also admires Miss Anscombe’s ability to reach the irreligious.

“A good way to think about sexual ethics is to do so without, say,
presupposing the existence of God,” Ms. Radhakrishnan said. “And some of us
have spent time reading her article ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ or
‘Contraception and Chastity.’ ”

Cassandra L. Hough, who founded the Anscombe Society while at Princeton in
2005, now runs the Love and Fidelity Network, which supports students at 33
campuses who run similar groups or are trying to start them.

“Many of our students have read Anscombe’s work,” Ms. Hough said in an
e-mail. “There is no doubt that she speaks to anyone who wants to seriously
consider the questions she addresses, be they Catholic or not.”

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