G.E.M. Anscombe: Bare Facts of Modern Moral Philosophy

For this session, we will be reading and discussing G.E.M. Anscombe's seminal essays, Modern Moral Philosophy and On Brute Facts.

G.E.M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) is a landmark critique attacking not just emotivism but the entire trajectory of English moral philosophy since Sidgwick, arguing that philosophers should abandon concepts of moral obligation and duty until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology. Anscombe contends that terms like "moral obligation" and "moral ought" are survivals from divine command ethics that retain "mesmeric force" without content in a secular framework—without God as legislator, they become incoherent remnants of an earlier worldview. She criticizes consequentialism for its willingness to justify any action by its outcomes, famously rejecting the idea that it could ever be right to commit judicial murder or kill the innocent even to prevent greater harm. Instead of obligation-based morality, Anscombe advocates reviving virtue ethics and focusing on concepts like "virtue," "flourishing," and "practical reasoning".

Her companion essay "On Brute Facts" provides the philosophical psychology that "Modern Moral Philosophy" demands. Through the grocer example—I asked for potatoes, he delivered them, he sent a bill showing I owe money—Anscombe demonstrates how institutional facts rest on brute facts without being logically entailed by them, undermining the strict fact/value dichotomy by revealing that facts come in layers requiring contextual understanding.