Elizabeth Anscombe, who died on January 5th aged 81, was considered by some to be the greatest English philosopher of her generation. She was professor of philosophy at Cambridge from 1970 to 1986, having already, as a research fellow at Oxford in the 1950s, helped change the course of moral philosophy.
Also influential in philosophy of mind, she pioneered contemporary action theory, and the pre-eminent philosopher Donald Davidson called her 1957 monograph Intention the best work on practical reasoning since Aristotle.
Elizabeth Anscombe went to Sydenham High School. She got a first in Greats at St Hugh's College, Oxford, but came to inveigh against the dryness of Oxford philosophy. This was because she had come under the spell of Ludwig Wittgenstein, probably the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. She became Wittgenstein's close friend and proselytiser, even adopting his mannerisms - the anguished head in hands, furrowed brow, long silences - and the tinge of an Austrian accent.
After his death in 1951, she became one of his three notoriously intractable literary executors, and co-edited his posthumous works. Her translation of his greatest work, the Philosophical Investigations, was remarkable.
Wittgenstein famously said "philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday", and spoke of trying to cure such problems by examining the way we use concepts. Elizabeth Anscombe applied a Wittgenstein-type analytic therapy to philosophy of mind. But her application was far more systematic and thoroughgoing than Wittgenstein's cryptic, suggestive hints, and was also distinctively her own.
In Intention, she criticised the way philosophers since Descartes have had a conception of knowledge, even knowledge of one's own actions, as "incorrigibly contemplative", passive, speculative. In fact, she said, we know what our intentions are without observation; and between someone observing, and someone intending and performing, an action, there is what she called a difference in the "direction of fit" (of action to thought).
Elizabeth Anscombe thought modern philosophy had also misunderstood ethics. In her seminal paper Modern Moral Philosophy (1958), she argued that notions like "moral obligation", "moral duty", "morally right", and "morally wrong", are vacuous hangovers from the Judaeo-Christian idea of a law-giving God. Elizabeth Anscombe believed in God, but she was examining the way language was actually used, and ethics done. She argued that "ought" has become "a word of mere mesmeric force", since it no longer has the corollary "because we are commanded by God".
Philosophers, however, have tried to find content in the deracinated ethical concepts, and failing to, have been induced to supply "an alternative [very fishy] content", such as that the right action is the one that produces the best possible consequences. However purportedly different, in fact, all contemporary moral philosophies lead to this sort of "consequentialism" (it was Elizabeth Anscombe who coined that now-indispensable term), which blithely countenances the execution of an innocent person as a potentially right action.
In 1956, Elizabeth Anscombe demonstrated in a very practical way her opposition to consequentialism. When it was proposed that Oxford should give President Truman an honorary degree, she and two others opposed this because of his responsibility for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although overruled, they forced a vote, instead of the customary automatic rubber-stamping of the proposal.
Elizabeth Anscombe was never afraid to voice unpopular views, scandalising liberal colleagues with her paper against contraception (later published in revised form by the Catholic Truth Society) and condemnation of homosexuality.
Outspoken, often rude, she was sometimes dubbed "Dragon Lady". For a time she sported a monocle, and had a trick of raising her eyebrows and letting it fall on her ample bosom, which somehow made her yet more daunting. But, while giving short shrift to pretension and pomposity, she took endless pains with those students she considered serious.
Married to Peter Geach, a fellow-philosopher and Catholic, she was always called "Miss Anscombe", which caused some consternation at the Radcliffe Infirmary whenever she turned up to give birth (she had seven children).
Perhaps Elizabeth Anscombe's best work was done in the 1950s, but her three-volume Collected Philosophical Papers (1981) contain trenchant papers on epistemology, metaphysics, history of philosophy, and philosophy of religion.
Although doggedly Catholic, Elizabeth Anscombe could also be radical and was never straitlaced. She was notorious for a forthright foulmouthedness which was only enhanced by the beauty of her voice.
Once, threatened by a mugger in Chicago, she told him that that was no way to treat a visitor. They soon fell into conversation and he accompanied her, admonishing her for being in such a dangerous neighbourhood.
Except when pregnant, she wore trousers, often under a tunic, which, in the 1950s and 1960s, was often disapproved of. Once, entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies were not admitted in trousers. She simply took them off. She is survived by her husband and their four daughters and three sons.
Gertrude Elizabeth Mary Anscombe: born 1919; died, January 2001