Elizabeth Anscombe 1919 – 2001

G. E. M. Anscombe was a British analytic philosopher, a student and literary executor of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the leading translator of his later works. She succeeded Wittgenstein in the chair of philosophy at Cambridge. Her monograph Intention is one of the founding works of modern philosophy of action, and her essay Modern Moral Philosophy challenged the secular ethical theories of her time and called for a return to the virtue tradition, helping to launch the late-twentieth-century revival of virtue ethics. A devout Catholic and pacifist, she protested the awarding of an honorary degree at Oxford to President Truman.