The moral philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe : virtue, action, language

Elizabeth Anscombe, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th Century, has worked on many topics in philosophy. The purpose of this work is to study her moral philosophy, especially how it relates to her work on other topics. This work starts with the three theses presented in her paper “Modern Moral Philosophy”, her most well-known paper in moral philosophy, first presenting that Anscombe’s discussion of moral philosophy involves action theory, philosophy of language, virtue ethics, and so on, and suggesting that her moral philosophy should be studied in the historical context in which she writes. After introducing Truman’s case, the consequentialism prevalent among her contemporaries, and her friends during her studies and work at Oxford (Chapter 1), I discuss how Anscombe’s writings on Aristotelian virtue ethics (Chapter 2), action theory (Chapter 3), and philosophy of language (Chapter 4) shaped her moral philosophy from different perspectives. Then, I examine the role of “Modern Moral Philosophy” as a contemporary revival of virtue ethics, in order to show that neither Anscombe nor her followers have taken Aristotle exclusively as the resource for their ethics, and that only ethicists who devote themselves to explaining how intentional actions are linked to thoughts about good and bad have truly inherited Anscombe’s ideas. At last, I conclude that Anscombe’s work on moral philosophy does not form a system, but it represents a female perspective of doing philosophy (Chapter 5).