Table Of ContentTHE ANSCOMBEAN MIND
G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth
century. Known primarily for influencing research in action theory and moral philosophy,
her work also has relevance for metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind,
philosophy of religion, and politics.
The Anscombean Mind provides a comprehensive survey of Anscombe’s thought, not only
placing it in its historical context but also exploring its enduring significance for contempo-
rary debates. Divided into three clear parts and twenty-three chapters, an international array
of contributors address the following themes:
• ancient philosophy
• metaphysics
• mind and language
• Wittgenstein
• action and ethics
• politics
• religion and faith.
The Anscombean Mind is an indispensable resource for anyone studying and researching ac-
tion theory, ethics, moral philosophy, Wittgenstein, twentieth-century philosophy, and
Anscombe herself.
Adrian Haddock is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Stirling, UK. He has
written on action, perception, knowledge, and language.
Rachael Wiseman is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK.
She is the author of the Routledge Guidebook to Anscombe’s Intention (2016).
ROUTLEDGE PHILOSOPHICAL MINDS
In philosophy past and present there are some philosophers who tower over the intellectual
landscape and have shaped it in indelible ways. So significant is their impact that it is difficult
to capture it in one place. The Routledge Philosophical Minds series presents a comprehen-
sive survey of all aspects of a major philosopher’s work, from analysis and criticism of their
major texts and arguments to the way their ideas are taken up in contemporary philosophy
and beyond. Edited by leading figures in their fields and with an outstanding international
roster of contributors the series offers a magisterial and unrivalled picture of a great philo-
sophical mind.
THE SARTREAN MIND
Edited by Matthew C. Eshleman and Constance L. Mui
THE HUSSERLIAN MIND
Edited by Hanne Jacobs
THE GADAMERIAN MIND
Edited by Theodore George and Gert-Jan van der Heiden
THE LOCKEAN MIND
Edited by Jessica Gordon-Roth and Shelley Weinberg
THE ANSCOMBEAN MIND
Edited by Adrian Haddock and Rachael Wiseman
THE BERGSONIAN MIND
Edited by Mark Sinclair and Yaron Wolf
For more information on this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-
Philosophical-Minds/book-series/RPM
THE ANSCOMBEAN MIND
Edited by
Adrian Haddock and Rachael Wiseman
Cover image: British analytic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe
(G. E. M. Anscombe, 1919–2001), Cambridge, 1990.
(Photo by Steve Pyke/Getty Images)
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter Adrian Haddock and
Rachael Wiseman; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Adrian Haddock and Rachael Wiseman to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Haddock, Adrian, editor. | Wiseman, Rachael, editor.
Title: The Anscombean mind / edited by Adrian Haddock and Rachael Wiseman.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Routledge philosophical minds | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021023980 (print) | LCCN 2021023981 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138551367 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032131320 (pbk) |
ISBN 9780429198601 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Anscombe, G. E. M. (Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret)
Classification: LCC B1618.A574 A57 2022 (print) | LCC B1618.A574 (ebook) |
DDC 192—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023980
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023981
ISBN: 978-1-138-55136-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13132-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-19860-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429198601
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
Notes on contributors viii
Introduction 1
Adrian Haddock and Rachael Wiseman
1 Report to the Mary Somerville Fellowship Committee, May 1948 14
G.E.M. Anscombe
PART 1
From Parmenides to Wittgenstein 17
2 Anscombe’s Aristotelian metaphysics 19
Christopher Frey
3 The enigma of existence: Russellm? Kantfrege? Anscombe 37
Arindam Chakrabarti
4 Anscombe, Stenius, and Ramsey on the Tractatus 59
Peter Sullivan
5 Anscombe on Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: linguistic idealism,
world-pictures and scepticism 100
Andy Hamilton
v
Contents
PART 2
Metaphysics and the philosophy of mind 125
6 What is so necessary about the past? Anscombe asymmetrist 127
Anselm Winfried Müller
7 Temporal passage and being in time 154
Colin Johnston
8 Metaphysics and modals 174
Roger Teichmann
9 What do I really do? What do I really see? 187
Rachael Wiseman
10 On our relation to the world, and to others, in general 201
Adrian Haddock
11 How receptive knowledge relates to practical knowledge 213
John McDowell
12 What is the moral of Davidson’s carbon copier? Towards an
Anscombean account of practical knowledge 225
Eylem Özaltun
13 Anscombe and the difference rationality makes 241
Eric Marcus
14 The practicality of practical inference 253
Will Small
PART 3
Ethics, religion, and politics 291
15 Anscombe’s skepticism about the possibility of (Kantian) practical
syllogisms 293
Alexandra Newton
16 What is the bearing of thinking on doing? 312
Marshall Bierson and John Schwenkler
17 Human action 333
Valérie Aucouturier
vi
Contents
18 The elusiveness of the voluntary: Anscombe and the problem of
human agency 355
Jean-Philippe Narboux
19 Sensation in Intention 411
Clare Mac Cumhaill
20 Justice in criminal trials 428
R. A. Duff
21 Anscombe and the rules of ordinary practices 442
Peter Faulconbridge
22 Anscombe on the dignity of the human being 469
Matthias Haase
23 Practical knowledge and the spiritual nature of man 492
Evgenia Mylonaki
Index 517
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
Valérie Aucouturier is a professor of contemporary philosophy at Université Saint-Louis –
Brussels and a member of the Centre Prospéro. Langage, Image, Connaissance. Her research work
lies at the crossroads of several fields of philosophy: philosophy of mind and of psychology,
philosophy of action and philosophy of language. She is the author of L’intention en action
(Vrin, 2017), Qu’est-ce que l’intentionalité? (Vrin, 2012), Elizabeth Anscombe. L’esprit en pratique
(CNRS Editions, 2012), and the editor of a number of journals and books including Lectures
contemporaines de Elizabeth Anscombe (Klesis 35, 2016) and (with Marc Pavlopoulos) Agir et
penser: essais sur la philosophie d’Elizabeth Anscombe (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015).
Marshall Bierson is a doctoral candidate in the philosophy department of Florida State
University, where he focuses on the intersection of ethics and philosophy of action.
Arindam Chakrabarti was trained in both contemporary Western philosophical logic and
classical Indian logic and epistemology, in twentieth-century Anglophone philosophy, as well
as in Sanskrit aesthetics and Buddhist philosophy of mind, and did his BA and MA in Presi-
dency College, Kolkata. For his DPhil at Oxford University, he was supervised by Sir Michael
Dummett and Sir Peter Strawson. After teaching for several years in the UK and the US, he
returned to India to take up a professorship in philosophy at University of Delhi. Since 1997,
he has been at University of Hawaii; between 2018 and 2020, he occupied the Nirmal and
Augustina Mattoo Chair in Indic Humanities at the department of philosophy, Stony Brook
University, New York. He has edited or authored 14 books (in English, Sanskrit, and Bengali),
and has published more than 100 papers and reviews in refereed journals or anthologies. In
2019, Bloomsbury London published his largest work: Realisms Interlinked: Objects, Subjects and
Other Subjects. The Book of Questions: Indian Philosophical Analysis, forthcoming from Penguin
Random House, India, and a larger book on the moral psychology of emotions are in the pipe-
line. One of his six books in Bengali, on the philosophy of body, food, and clothing is currently
being translated for a Columbia University Press translation series.
R. A. Duff is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Stirling: he previously
taught at Stirling and at the University of Minnesota Law School. He works on the philos-
ophy of criminal law.
viii
Contributors
Peter Faulconbridge completed his PhD in philosophy at University College London
(UCL). His research concerns intersections between philosophy of action, social ontology,
and philosophy of social science, focusing in particular on the relationships between agency
and culture.
Christopher Frey is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University
of South Carolina. He received his PhD in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He
works primarily in the history of ancient Greek philosophy with a focus on Aristotle’s natu-
ral philosophy and metaphysics. He also publishes in contemporary philosophy of mind and
action. He is currently writing a book about Aristotle’s concept of life entitled The Principle
of Life: Aristotelian Souls in an Inanimate World.
Matthias Haase is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He held
previous appointments at the Philosophisches Seminar at Universität Basel and the Institut
für Philosophie at Universität Leipzig. His research is focused on foundational topics at the
intersection of ethics and philosophy of mind.
Adrian Haddock is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Stirling. Between
2017 and 2019 he was a Senior Research Fellow in the Forschungskolleg Analytic German
Idealism (FAGI) at Leipzig University. His work centres on the idea of subjectivity and on its
significance for understanding the fundamental concerns of philosophy. He has written on
action, perception, knowledge, and language.
Andy Hamilton teaches philosophy at Durham University, specialising in aesthetics, phi-
losophy of mind, political philosophy, and history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
philosophy, especially Wittgenstein. His monographs include Aesthetics and Music (Contin-
uum, 2007), The Self in Question: Memory, the Body and Self-Consciousness (Palgrave, 2013),
and Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and On Certainty (2014). He also teaches
aesthetics and history of jazz at Durham, and published Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Im-
proviser’s Art (University of Michigan Press, 2007).
Colin Johnston is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Stirling. His principal
area of research is the history of early analytic philosophy, in particular, Frege and the Tractatus.
Recently, he has also been working on the philosophy of time, action, and the first person.
Clare Mac Cumhaill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. She has
broad interests in perception, action, aesthetics, and in the history of philosophy. Recent
work, in collaboration with Rachael Wiseman, has focused on the Wartime Quartet of Eliz-
abeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch.
Eric Marcus is Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. He works chiefly in the
philosophy of mind and action, but has also published widely in epistemology, metaphysics,
aesthetics, and the philosophy of language. He is the author of two books: Rational Causation
(Harvard University Press, 2012) and Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind (Oxford
University Press, forthcoming).
John McDowell is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh.
Before coming to Pittsburgh in 1986, he taught at University College, Oxford. His major
ix
