Essays on Anscombe's Intention

by Ford, Anton; Hornsby, Jennifer; Stoutland, Frederick

• ISBN13: 9780674051027
• ISBN10: 0674051025
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-14
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

G. E. M. Anscombers"s Intention, firmly established the philosophy of action as a distinctive field of inquiry. Donald Davidson called this 97-page book "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle." But until quite recently, few scholars recognized the magnitude of Anscombers"s philosophical achievement. This collection of ten essays elucidates some of the more challenging aspects of Anscombers"s work and affirms her reputation as one of our most original philosophers.Born in 1919, Anscombe studied at St. Hughrs"s College, Oxford, where she later held a research fellowship. In 1941 she married philosopher Peter Geach, with whom she had seven children. A close friend of Wittgenstein, in 1946 she joined Oxfordrs"s Somerville College and spent the next twenty-four years there before being appointed to the Chair of Philosophy at Cambridge that Wittgenstein had held. She died in 2001 after her long career as a highly regarded analytic philosopher.This volume brings together fresh interpretations of Intention written by some of todayrs"s leading philosophers of action. It will enlighten Anscombers"s readers who struggle with concepts they find puzzling or obscure, while providing a bracing corrective to doubts about Intentionrs"s significance and the gravity of what is at stake.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction: Anscombe's Intention in Context	p. 1
Summary of Anscombe's Intention	p. 23
Anscombe on Expression of Intention: An Exegesis	p. 33
Action and Generality	p. 76
Actions in Their Circumstances	p. 105
Anscombe on Bodily Self-Knowledge	p. 128
"The Knowledge That a Man Has of His Intentional Actions"	p. 147
Knowledge ofIntention	p. 170
Anscombe's Intention and Practical Knowledge	p. 198
Two Forms of Practical Knowledge and Their Unity	p. 211
Backward-Looking Rationality and the Unity of Practical Reason	p. 242
An Anscombian Approach to Collective Action	p. 270
Contributors	p. 297
Index to Anscombe's Intention	p. 299
Index	p. 309
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