1- https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009109413.009
Absolute Prohibitions without Divine Promises
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Punishment of the innocent appears early on in the essay3 as a species of the genus ‘injustice’, and Anscombe notes that ‘in present-day philosophy an explanation is required how an unjust man is a bad man, or an unjust action a bad one’; whereas, in her own (much-quoted) view, it would be a ‘great improvement’ if generic terms such as ‘untruthful’, ‘unchaste’, ‘unjust’ were treated as bedrock for the purpose of guiding action: ‘We should no longer ask whether doing something was “wrong”, passing directly from some description of an action to this notion; we should ask whether, e.g., it was unjust; and the answer would sometimes be clear at once.’4 But with the turn towards consequentialism in Moore and his successors, a situation develops in which ‘every one of the best known English academic moral philosophers [with some qualification in regard to R. M. Hare] has put out a philosophy according to which, e.g., it is not possible to hold that it cannot be right to kill the innocent as a means to any end whatsoever and that someone who thinks otherwise is in error’.5 Anscombe draws the conclusion that ‘all these philosophies are quite incompatible with the Hebrew-Christian ethic. For it has been characteristic of that ethic to teach that there are certain things forbidden whatever consequences threaten’—and she supplies a longish list which is headed by ‘choosing to kill the innocent for any purpose, however good’.6
- Research Article
- 15
- 10.1017/s1358246100008481
- Mar 1, 2004
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement
Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ is read and remembered principally as a critique of the state of ethical theory at the time when she was writing—an account of certain faulty assumptions underlying that theory in its different variants, and rendering trivial the points on which they ostensibly disagree. Not unreasonably, the essay serves as a starting point for the recent Oxford Readings collection on ‘virtue ethics’, and as an authoritative text on the failings of other approaches with which philosophy students have to acquaint themselves. Yet what really commands attention on rereading it is Anscombe's denunciation of the impotence of current moral philosophy to generate resistance to certain quite specific forms of wrongdoing. The question that provides a kind of gold standard here, recurring several times in the course of the discussion, is that of the killing (or judicial execution or other ‘punishment’) of the innocent in order to avoid some putatively greater evil, or to bring about some sufficiently great good.
- Book Chapter
- 1
- 10.1017/cbo9780511550836.008
- Nov 18, 2004
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- Book Chapter
- 1
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719625.003.0009
- Sep 1, 2015
This essay reconstructs the reasoning of Elizabeth Anscombe’s ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ with an eye to Anscombe’s defence of certain absolute (non-negotiable) Judaeo-Christian moral principles against the compromises of twentieth-century Realpolitik. In particular, it reads the famous paper (with its strictures on killing the innocent) in conjunction with another, roughly contemporary piece by Anscombe on the ethics of war, the latter being informed by Catholic tradition on just and unjust warfare. The present essay considers what can be done on the basis of a purely secular ethics to shore up the ‘clean hands’ position of Anscombe. Appeal is made for this purpose to an alternative, ‘Enlightenment’ tradition. That tradition too, it is argued, should be able to provide orientation for moral thinking in the heat of action, not merely at a safe distance.
- Single Book
- 23
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719625.001.0001
- Sep 1, 2015
Introduction 1. Feminism and Postmodernism 2. Feminism and Pragmatism: A Reply to Richard Rorty 3. Feminism and the 'Crisis of Rationality' 4. Meaning What We Say: Feminist Ethics and the Critique of Humanism 5. The Feminist Stake in Greek Rationalism 6. 'Gendering' as an Ethical Concept 7. Ethical Upbringing: From Connivance to Cognition 8. Absolute Prohibitions without Divine Promises 9. Religion and Modernity: Living in the Hypercontext 10. 'In Spite of the Misery of the World': Ethics, Contemplation, and the Source of Value 11. 'Ethical Living' in the Media and in Philosophy 12. Selflessness and Other Moral Baggage 13. Nietzsche on Distance, Beauty, and Truth 14. Iris Murdoch and the Ambiguity of Freedom Bibliography Acknowledgements Index
