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Human Life, Action and Ethics: Essays
This volume presents a collection of essays by the celebrated philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. This collection includes papers on human nature and practical philosophy, together with the classic 'Modern Moral Philosophy'.
298 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
G.E.M. Anscombe
58 books119 followersGertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, better known as Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. A student of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she became an authority on his work, and edited and translated many books drawn from his writings, above all his Philosophical Investigations. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and ethics. Her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the language of analytic philosophy; this and subsequent articles had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics. Her monograph Intention is generally recognized as her greatest and most influential work, and the continuing philosophical interest in the concepts of intention, action and practical reasoning can be said to have taken its main impetus from this work.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 30, 2018
This is an excellent collection of Anscombe's papers. Particularly, noteworthy are the essays "Practical Inference" and "Practice Truth." Both papers are necessary supplements to Anscombe's more well known book, Intention. Readers only familiar with Intention may get the impression that Anscombe thought that action could be understood in complete separation from ethics but as these paper make clear, this is not the case. Speaking of the externality of truth to validity (of theoretical inference) Anscombe (p. 146) says, "We know that the externality is not total. For truth is the object of belief, and truth-preservingness an essential associate of validity in theoretical reasoning. The parallel will hold for practical reasoning."
Thus practical inference is "good-preserving" and this means that we must understand the concept of good that gets practical inference going in the first place and which is preserved in practical inference. This is part of Anscombe's argument against deontological notions of the "moral ought" which claim to compel compliance on no further basis. For Anscombe we must understand the concept of a final end, which she follows Aristotle in characterizing as eupraxia, doing well, in order to understand the ultimate basis of practical reasoning, not some concept of oughtness that is not further analyzable.
Thus practical inference is "good-preserving" and this means that we must understand the concept of good that gets practical inference going in the first place and which is preserved in practical inference. This is part of Anscombe's argument against deontological notions of the "moral ought" which claim to compel compliance on no further basis. For Anscombe we must understand the concept of a final end, which she follows Aristotle in characterizing as eupraxia, doing well, in order to understand the ultimate basis of practical reasoning, not some concept of oughtness that is not further analyzable.
September 7, 2021
A collection of excellent and entertaining essays by one of the great philosophers of the mid-20th century Anglophone world.
Anscombe was an intellectual powerhouse: creative, sharp, with integrity and honesty.
Her paper on Truman and the discussions of some of the other moral issues are very clear sighted, and cut through the heavy historical-military-political propaganda that clouds and confuses so much of our life these days. A crime against humanity is a crime against humanity kids, even if a smart looking man in a suit says it isn't! ;)
Anscombe was an intellectual powerhouse: creative, sharp, with integrity and honesty.
Her paper on Truman and the discussions of some of the other moral issues are very clear sighted, and cut through the heavy historical-military-political propaganda that clouds and confuses so much of our life these days. A crime against humanity is a crime against humanity kids, even if a smart looking man in a suit says it isn't! ;)
September 3, 2014
An incredible, though short, collection of essays on intention, action, and ethics. Very good.
September 30, 2016
Classic Anscombe.
March 7, 2019
an excellent collection of essays by possibly the best female philosopher ever. thoughtful, clear and with that tasteful element of British dry wit, this was a volume worth chewing through
December 13, 2022
Review to follow. This is a collection of papers by Anscombe on Ethics, Action, and Intention. This is really stimulating work by a careful thinker.
October 5, 2024
This collection of essays by Anscombe covers human life, action, moral philosophy, and applied ethics. In the section on human life, the essay "Analytical Philosophy and the Spirituality of Man" features her property dualism. She points out that no bodily activity is thought or understanding. Yet nor has anyone observed thought being a bodily activity. Thinking about concepts is not a physical activity but of mental manipulation. In "Human Essence", Anscombe suggests that human essence as expressed by language comes from thinking humans that use language. What made such intelligent human beings that use language must be intelligent being(s) but not humans to avoid infinite regress of explanation. In "Were you a zygote" it is an interesting essay that suggests a zygote can be a human substance without being a human. A human being is a different substance than a zygote. This distinction offers a human life to manifest as different substances in different phases, and each regime is a different life. I don't know if she realises the implication of this approach in personal identity.
In the second section of the collection, they are essays on action by first considering Chisholm on agent causation. In that essay, Anscombe answers Chisholm's question of what is left over if we subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm. It would be I undertook to make my arm go up. But that undertaking is not identical to physiological activities in the arm. Hence there must be some agent causality that is not even-event causality. In the "Causation of Action", Anscombe suggests the causal histories of human dealings at a macroscopic level is not determined by any specific chain of microscopic events. So it is a view against any radical physical determinism that affects human actions.
In the third section, it is a collection on ethics or moral philosophy. It includes Anscombe influential essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" which jump started modern analytic moral philosophy. In this essay, she suggested it was not profitable to do moral philosophy at the time without a proper understanding of philosophy of psychology and the concepts of moral obligation and duty. She offered a survey of different understanding of obligation or the notion of ought, to include ought as the need or good for something, e.g., plants need water; as law like obligation as in divine command theory; as contractual obligation, as norm in a human being with proper virtues for action (virtue theory) , and as obligation to do what is just. This essay is a lucidly written analysis of these notions of obligation and their relations. In "Good and Bad Human Action", Anscombe develops further her view on action as it applies to moral action. She suggests a moral action is voluntary and is a morally good or bad action qua human action that was good or bad to exercise some virtue or vice. It is to be distinguished from a mere action by a human that has no moral intent or just accidentally produce some good or bad effects. This is foundational essay for presenting moral acts. In "Action, Intention, the Double effect", Anscombe raises the importance of an action under different descriptions. For her, something is good if it is good by being good in every respect (or description), bad by being bad in any of the human action. So badness resulted from accidental action is not human action since it is involuntary, and the act was not human action. This reasoning applies to the double effect according to which prohibition against bad action does not cover harm as a side or double effect. There is also an essay on the definition of murder which suggests the wrong ness of murder cannot just be from a legal provision but from murder as wrong qua the nature of the action.
This collection is a useful collection to understand Anscombe moral philosophy and includes some hard to find essays on her views applying to specific issues
In the second section of the collection, they are essays on action by first considering Chisholm on agent causation. In that essay, Anscombe answers Chisholm's question of what is left over if we subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm. It would be I undertook to make my arm go up. But that undertaking is not identical to physiological activities in the arm. Hence there must be some agent causality that is not even-event causality. In the "Causation of Action", Anscombe suggests the causal histories of human dealings at a macroscopic level is not determined by any specific chain of microscopic events. So it is a view against any radical physical determinism that affects human actions.
In the third section, it is a collection on ethics or moral philosophy. It includes Anscombe influential essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" which jump started modern analytic moral philosophy. In this essay, she suggested it was not profitable to do moral philosophy at the time without a proper understanding of philosophy of psychology and the concepts of moral obligation and duty. She offered a survey of different understanding of obligation or the notion of ought, to include ought as the need or good for something, e.g., plants need water; as law like obligation as in divine command theory; as contractual obligation, as norm in a human being with proper virtues for action (virtue theory) , and as obligation to do what is just. This essay is a lucidly written analysis of these notions of obligation and their relations. In "Good and Bad Human Action", Anscombe develops further her view on action as it applies to moral action. She suggests a moral action is voluntary and is a morally good or bad action qua human action that was good or bad to exercise some virtue or vice. It is to be distinguished from a mere action by a human that has no moral intent or just accidentally produce some good or bad effects. This is foundational essay for presenting moral acts. In "Action, Intention, the Double effect", Anscombe raises the importance of an action under different descriptions. For her, something is good if it is good by being good in every respect (or description), bad by being bad in any of the human action. So badness resulted from accidental action is not human action since it is involuntary, and the act was not human action. This reasoning applies to the double effect according to which prohibition against bad action does not cover harm as a side or double effect. There is also an essay on the definition of murder which suggests the wrong ness of murder cannot just be from a legal provision but from murder as wrong qua the nature of the action.
This collection is a useful collection to understand Anscombe moral philosophy and includes some hard to find essays on her views applying to specific issues
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews