G. E. M. Anscombe

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, usually called G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher and a leading figure of analytical Thomism. Her work covered the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of action, logic, language and ethics, and she remains one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. She was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1919 and died in Cambridge in 2001.

She studied at Oxford, where she converted to Catholicism during her first year. She then worked with Ludwig Wittgenstein, attending his lectures in Cambridge in the 1940s. He came to regard her as one of his closest students and friends, and she translated his Philosophical Investigations into English, co-editing the original with Rush Rhees. After Wittgenstein's death she became one of his literary executors and oversaw the publication of much of his manuscript material. Her 1959 introduction to the Tractatus drew attention to Frege's importance for Wittgenstein's thought and challenged positivist readings of that book.

Her best-known philosophical work is Intention (1957), a study of human action that starts from the idea of intentional action and asks in what sense an action can be answered by the question "Why?". It is widely regarded as a foundational text of contemporary philosophy of action. In 1958 she published "Modern Moral Philosophy", which introduced the term "consequentialism" and questioned the foundations of both Kantian and utilitarian ethics, helping to revive virtue ethics. With Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch and Mary Midgley she helped renew moral philosophy in postwar Oxford, in opposition to the prescriptivism and verificationism of the period.

She was also a controversialist. She opposed Britain's entry into the Second World War, protested against an honorary degree given to Harry S. Truman over the atomic bombings, and defended the Catholic Church's teaching on contraception. She held the chair of philosophy at Cambridge from 1970 until her retirement in 1986. Her legacy lives on in philosophy of action, virtue ethics and the wider reception of Wittgenstein.