I am very happy indeed to contribute to this series of lectures, especially because I owe most of my training in philosophy to Elizabeth Anscombe, whose work has given the series its name. I am deeply indebted to the marvellous generosity of her teaching, to the example she set me of an unrelentingly thorough and serious thinker, to the unobtrusive way she introduced me to Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Through Elizabeth Anscombe I also made the acquaintance of my friend Philippa Foot, (...) whose work in moral philosophy has, over decades and more than anyone else's, influenced my own. I hope it will be possible to recognize in what I am going to say here not indeed the excellence but at least traces of the beneficial influence of both these philosophers. (shrink)

In Part I of ‘Causality and Determination” (CD), Anscombe writes that (1) we understand causality through understanding specific causal expressions, (2) efficient causation can be perceived, (3) “causality consists in the derivativeness of an effect from its causes”, and 4) no “analysis in terms of necessity or universality” has a place for this. Theses (1) and (2) represent fundamental and important insights. (3) is unsatisfactory; for, taken in a sense that does not already build on the general notion of causation, (...) deriving from does little to elucidate this notion. CD is however right to urge the need to identify a “core, the common feature, of causality in its various kinds”—a kind of criterion, such as the one suggested by Makin (2000), that takes account of (4) in that it is more substantial than, but does not entail, “necessity or universality”. What CD seems to underestimate is the important role of regularities, possibly neither necessary nor exceptionless, for our understanding of the causal relation. Finally, such understanding also requires us, not only to rely on a common criterion of causation, but also on a subjective component of this idea: the consciousness of our own causal agency. Anscombe’s own investigations into non-observational practical knowledge open the door to the study of this aspect of causality. (shrink)

Do the virtues, as is often said, conflict with each other? The history of philosophy knows various attempts to conceive of them so as to exclude such conflict. Nicolai Hartmann ("Ethik", 1925) is the most prominent representative "and" critic of this tradition in our century. Each Aristotelian "mean", for him, represents a "synthesis" of "conflicting values"; but only the "one and only virtue" synthesizing "all" values would exclude all tragic conflict. In contrast, the Aristotelian and medieval conception of "connexio virtutum" (...) by "prudence" allows the virtues to "limit each other" and thus be "compatible" without merging into one super-virtue. (shrink)

Mit diesem Buch geht die analytische Handlungstheorie neue Wege. Statt den von Davidson vorgezeichneten Mustern zu folgen, knüpft der Autor an die aristotelische Unterscheidung von poiesis und praxis an, um die komplexen teleologischen Strukturen menschlichen Handelns zu untersuchen. Als überraschend ergiebiger Leitfaden erweist sich dabei der Begriff der Erziehung. Eine Fülle detaillierter Analysen zeitigt nicht nur anthropologisch und moralphilosophisch bedeutsame Resultate, sondern auch zeitkritische Folgerungen. 'Wie im Bereich der Erziehung, so gewöhnen wir uns auch sonst daran, die Wirklichkeit unseres Handelns (...) mit Kategorien des Hervorbringens zu überziehen und auch da nach Produkten zu suchen, wo es eigentlich um die Qualität des Lebens geht. Angesichts solcher Verirrungen fundamentale Strukturen und Ansprüche praktischer Vernunft erneut zu bedenken, ist heute vielleicht die vornehmste Aufgabe der Handlungsphilosophie.'. (shrink)