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Anscombe in the NY Times…

Brian Leiter

…albeit in a piece by their religion writer.  It is clearly true that there's more interest in Anscombe than, say, 20 years ago–some of it is driven by renewed interest in Intention, and some of it by conservative Catholics looking for intellectually weighty authorities.  My colleague Candace Vogler (who is part of the former movement) is quoted as saying that Anscombe "is the next big thing" in philosophy. 
What do readers think?  And if not Anscombe, then what is the "next big thing" in philosophy?

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9 responses to “Anscombe in the NY Times…”

  1. Andrei A. Buckareff

    Anscombe certainly is the big thing in certain circles in the philosophy of action. Her influence is evident in many of the recent critiques of the so-called "standard story" about action and its explanation (i.e., versions of the causal theory of action and action explanation).

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  2. Ben Sarbey

    For reasons I am still not altogether clear about, I have a distaste for the idea that a particular philosopher can be the 'next big thing' or 'hot' like a fad for, say, yo-yos or wayfarer sunglasses. While there are ups and downs in interest for a particular topic or philosopher, this may result in some people may studying certain things for the wrong reasons, such as merely because that issue is fashionable or because a lot of other people are doing it. I witnessed a notable example of this at the APA conference. I was speaking with a small group of other philosophers during a reception, and someone came up to us, introduced themselves, then as a bit of small talk, said something along the lines of 'I hear Spinoza is the next big thing.' They said it in a way which recalled certain high school busybodies who took great pleasure in gracing others with the latest tasty morsel of gossip about who is dating who or about what Justin Bieber is doing right now. While I don't think this person did anything wrong in doing so, I personally can't help but feel a shudder at the idea that a philosopher can be 'the next big thing.' Certainly, advancements in work on a particular person can reignite interest in a particular philosopher or idea, particularly one such as Spinoza who many still do not understand. However, there may be some fine line (metaphorically speaking) between a philosopher being made more understandable or reevaluated, and that philosopher being 'fashionable.'

    BL COMMENT: In fairness to Professor Vogler, who was speaking to a journalist after all, it is certainly true that interest ebbs and flows on particular philosophers and issues, and the question is whether Anscombe is such a philosopher at present.

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  3. Just a grad student

    Sarbey: Going right for the uncharitable reading.

    On topic: I know a couple of fellow graduate students who are deeply interested in Anscombe, and the work of Chicago philosophers, and also Michael Thompson, has been instrumental in feeding that interest. I also know some faculty (from a particular windy city) now at other schools who are interested in Anscombe. Her work in Intention, these people I know think, offers a new way to think about philosophy of action and its relation to other fields, eg ethics. Ironically enough, the fellow grad students are also interested in so-called 'continental' theory, and they think that Anscombe's work is helpful in a post-analytic=post-continental philosophical space. Of course, anecdotes are not evidence, but those are my anecdotes.

    Personally, I think that philosophers that speak to issues in epistemology, moral psychology, practical reason and normativity will see a renewed interest in their work. I think this because that intersection is a growing discipline that features two camps who seem to disagree with each other: scientists and humanists. I think that philosophers that the two sides can use to argue with the other will become more important. So, I think that Anscombe, Williams and Ross will be the next 'big things' (Nietzche is already getting there). But, I'm probably wrong — these things are so hard to predict!

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  4. Kenny Easwaran

    According to Google, Anscombe seems to have been on a pretty consistent upwards trajectory since 1960:
    http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Anscombe&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=0

    I clicked on a couple of the year-restricted Google book searches, and it seemed that the majority of the hits in most of those time periods were actually for her, and not other people with the same name.

    Interesting note – it looks like in 1790, Aristotle was "the next big thing":
    http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Aristotle%2CPlato&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

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  5. Chris Frey

    My favorite line from the article:

    "The next year, she published “Intention,” which one philosopher called the greatest work on the philosophy of action — a sub-field concerned with how our brains cause our bodies to do things — since Aristotle."

    Brains causing our bodies to do things! Anscombe would not be happy.

    BL COMMENT: Good catch! The journalist, Mark Oppenheimer, whom I've dealt with before, is not too knowledgeable about philosophy.

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  6. John Schwenkler

    @ Kenny: There's an explanation for the apparent rise of interest in Aristotle around that time, namely the move away from the descending 's', which Ngrams reads as an 'f': http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Aristotle%2CAriftotle&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3.

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  7. Richard Baron

    I will not make predictions about who may or may not be the next big thing, but Elizabeth Anscombe should certainly be admired for writings that are honest, precise and exciting. In "Modern Moral Philosophy" she frankly faced the consequences of people's no longer believing in God, well aware that belief was on its way out. In "Mr Truman's Degree" and in "Contraception and Chastity", she said what she thought, well aware that many people would disagree – although I am puzzled as to anyone could believe what she said in the latter publication. It led to a strongly-worded riposte by Bernard Williams and Michael Tanner.

    I can offer a few anecdotes.

    In the British biographical directory Who's Who, people list their recreations. I am pretty sure that at one stage in her career, she put "Sitting around". But this did not appear in entries late in her life, and I have not been able to confirm by going back to earlier editions.

    Timothy Ratcliffe, former Master of the Dominicans, has said that when he used to preach in Cambridge, she and her husband would sit in the front pew, listen intently and note down his errors of doctrine.

    There were once drawings of former professors of philosophy in the Faculty Library at Cambridge. But instead of a drawing of Wittgenstein, there was a notice to the effect that Professor Wittgenstein thought that philosophers should be judged by their works, and not by their appearance (at least, I think that this was so – memory is fallible – can anyone else confirm that there was such a notice?). It is possible that Elizabeth Anscombe supplied this sentiment on Wittgenstein's behalf.

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  8. Adamhodgkin

    Anscombe attracted good stories and I am sure that many of them were true. One should admire her courage but she was also a great one for ingenious argument. When I was a student at Cambridge I tried to attend her lectures whenever possible and found her discussions and dialogue very rewarding. It was said that she gave up smoking cigarettes (and took up cigars, perhaps even the pipe?) because she had vowed to give up cigarettes if her son was spared during some critical illness, did God know that she had made that mental reservation about cigarettes/cigars? Or did it only subsequently occur to her? She had a naturalness and a solidity as a philosopher and a discussant that was most impressive and she deserves a decent biography. One should remember that her style of Catholicism was quite unfashionable in Catholic circles at that time, and it still is.

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  9. lowly graduate student

    I can think of at least two reasons in addition to her work on intention that I think would make Anscombe worthy of becoming "the next big thing" in philosophy:

    1. Though she did not formally write any feminist philosophy, she certainly made a statement or two: I heard that she was once told she could not enter a conference room because she was inappropriately dressed–she was wearing trousers. She responded by taking them off.
    2. In that pithy essay "Modern Moral Philosophy," she pegs philosophy of psychology as the next project we ought to pursue– and between the rise of moral psychology and cognitive science, I would say that she was right on.

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