Elizabeth Anscombe

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, generally known as Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British philosopher, born in 1919 and died in 2001, who studied under and later edited and translated the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and became one of the leading analytic philosophers of the twentieth century as well as a committed Roman Catholic engaged in Thomist ethics. Her 1957 monograph Intention, described by the philosopher Donald Davidson as the most important treatment of human action since Aristotle, examines what distinguishes an intentional action from mere bodily movement, and her 1958 essay Modern Moral Philosophy introduced the term consequentialism while arguing that moral philosophy could not proceed usefully until it had a sound philosophy of psychology, an argument credited with helping revive virtue ethics in the later twentieth century. Anscombe also played a central role in editing and translating Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and other posthumous writings, shaping how his later philosophy was received by generations of subsequent philosophers.