Collected Philosophical Papers
Anscombe's 1981 three-volume Collected Philosophical Papers
Tradition: Analytic philosophy / Catholic-Aristotelian ethics / philosophy of mind / Wittgenstein scholarship
Anscombe's 1981 three-volume Collected Philosophical Papers — From Parmenides to Wittgenstein; Metaphysics; Ethics, Religion and Politics
Published by Blackwell in 1981 in three volumes — 'From Parmenides to Wittgenstein' (vol. 1), 'Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind' (vol. 2), and 'Ethics, Religion and Politics' (vol. 3) — this collection gathers nearly three decades of Anscombe's published papers (1953-1981). Anscombe wrote the introductions to each volume, explaining her own retrospective view of the papers. Major essays include: 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958, in vol. 3 — coined the term 'consequentialism' and prompted the modern virtue-ethics revival, arguing that contemporary moral philosophy lacks the metaphysics of human nature on which alone moral judgement could rest); 'Causality and Determination' (1971, the inaugural Cambridge lecture, vol. 2 — argues that causation is not regular-succession but the productive power of specific causes); 'The First Person' (1975, vol. 2 — on the self-referential character of 'I' and the so-called 'no-self' theories of personal identity); 'Memory, the History of Memory, and Mental Faculty' (vol. 2 — on the philosophy of memory); 'War and Murder' (1961, vol. 3 — defending the moral distinction between killing combatants and killing non-combatants in just-war theory); 'Mr Truman's Degree' (1956, vol. 3 — Anscombe's protest against the Oxford honorary degree for Harry Truman, the man who had ordered the atomic bombing of Japanese civilians); and dozens of others on Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Wittgenstein, intention, identity, and moral theology. The three volumes are the principal reference for Anscombe's work outside her books ('Intention', 'Three Philosophers', 'Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus').
Editions cited
- Collected Philosophical Papers, 3 vols (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1981)
- Vol. 1: From Parmenides to Wittgenstein; Vol. 2: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind; Vol. 3: Ethics, Religion and Politics
- Individual papers all originally published in journals or anthologies before 1981
- Critical context: Mary Geach and Luke Gormally, eds., Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics by G. E. M. Anscombe (Imprint Academic, 2008); Roger Teichmann, The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe (Oxford, 2008)
School Embodiments
Major analytic-philosophy collection.
"Modern Moral Philosophy." (Collected Papers, vol. 3 — coined 'consequentialism')
Founding paper of the modern virtue-ethics revival.
"It would be a great improvement if instead of 'morally wrong' one named a genus such as 'untruthful', 'unchaste', 'unjust'." (Modern Moral Philosophy, Collected Papers, vol. 3)
Major papers on action, intention, and the first person.
"The First Person." (Collected Papers, vol. 2)
Catholic-Aristotelian-Thomist framework throughout.
"The Catholic philosophical tradition supplies the framework for genuine ethics." (Modern Moral Philosophy)
Realist-Aristotelian naturalism in action theory.
"Intentional action is a natural-kind concept." (Collected Papers, vol. 2)
Realism about causation, intention, and moral fact.
"Causal relations are real, not mere regularities." (Causality and Determination, in Collected Papers, vol. 2)
Internal Tensions
Principal reference work for Anscombe's papers; contains 'Modern Moral Philosophy', the founding paper of the modern virtue-ethics revival (continuously cited; the principal source of the post-1958 shift in Anglophone moral philosophy from utilitarianism/deontology toward virtue-ethical alternatives in MacIntyre, Foot, McDowell, and contemporary Aristotelian moral philosophy).
I. Time
1981 publication; papers composed 1953-1981.
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II. Space
Oxford / Cambridge. Anscombe had moved from Oxford to Cambridge in 1970, taking the chair Wittgenstein himself had held.
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III. Matter
Three-volume career collection (~1100 pages total). Each volume groups papers thematically; introduction by Anscombe to each.
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IV. Observer
Late Anscombe. The observer-philosopher is the Wittgenstein executor and translator, the senior Catholic-Aristotelian-analytic philosopher of her generation, gathering thirty years of work for the first time.
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V. Energy
Career-spanning energies. The collection spans Anscombe's most productive decades and shows the range of her analytic-Catholic-Aristotelian philosophical work.
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VI. Information
Three substantial volumes. 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (vol. 3) is the most-cited individual entry — the founding paper of the late-twentieth-century virtue-ethics revival.
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Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Collected Philosophical Papers resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.