Anscombe founded modern analytic philosophy of action with "Intention" (1957), arguing that intentional action is known by the agent without observation, and in "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) she argued that concepts like moral "obligation" survive from a divine-law conception of ethics that secular philosophy had abandoned without replacement, urging either a return to Aristotelian virtue-based ethics or abandonment of "ought" language pending a better moral psychology.
Intellectual setting
Anscombe wrote as a student, translator, and literary executor of Wittgenstein at Cambridge and Oxford, and her 1958 essay appeared amid mid-century Oxford ordinary-language philosophy's turn away from systematic moral theory, directly catalyzing the later twentieth- century revival of virtue ethics.
Key ideas
Intention and knowledge without observation
In "Intention," Anscombe argued that an agent's knowledge of their own intentional action is not based on observing what they are doing, but is a distinct kind of "practical knowledge" built into the action itself, reshaping subsequent philosophy of action.
Critique of "moral obligation" language
In "Modern Moral Philosophy," Anscombe argued that terms like moral "ought" and "obligation" retain the force of a divine-law framework that most modern moral philosophers no longer accept, leaving such language philosophically groundless until ethics returns to an Aristotelian framework of virtues and human flourishing.
Legacy
Anscombe's essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" is credited with launching the contemporary revival of virtue ethics through the work of Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre, and "Intention" remains a foundational text in philosophy of action; her translation of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" shaped its reception in the English-speaking world.