G. E. M. Anscombe

G. E. M. Anscombe

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001), FBA better known as Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. Born in Ireland, she was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein and 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. Anscombe's 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the language of analytic philosophy; it had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics, as did some of her subsequent articles. Her monograph Intention is generally recognised 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.