Anscombe, G E M

▪ 2002

      British philosopher (b. March 18, 1919, Limerick, Ire.—d. Jan. 5, 2001, Cambridge, Eng.), was a close associate of Ludwig Wittgenstein and served as one of the executors of his literary estate; in addition, she was an important philosopher in her own right. Anscombe attended Sydenham School, London, and St. Hugh's College, Oxford. While working in the early 1940s as a research fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, she met Wittgenstein, to whom she became philosophically and personally close. She translated his late masterwork Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik (1956; Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics) and his Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953; Philosophical Investigations). Anscombe explicated the development of his philosophy in An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (1959). Her own work centred on questions of the philosophy of action and ethics. Intention (1957) stressed reasons rather than causes in the analysis of action. In the “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), she argued for a return to an Aristotelian notion of virtue over modern consequentialism. Anscombe converted to Roman Catholicism in 1940 and was an advocate of many of the church's philosophical and moral teachings. She condemned contraception in Contraception and Chastity (1975) and defended the ontological argument for the existence of God. Her acceptance of the Catholic notion of just war led her to criticize British entry into World War II and to oppose an honorary Oxford degree for former U.S. president Harry Truman in 1956. Anscombe was a research fellow of Somerville College, Oxford (1946–64), and she taught at the University of Chicago. In 1970 she was called to the chair of philosophy at Cambridge, where Wittgenstein had taught. Anscombe, who wore a tunic and trousers at a time when trousers were not completely acceptable for women, also sported a monocle and smoked cigars. She married (1941) philosopher Peter Geach, with whom she had seven children.

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