Saturday, May 16th 2009. Elizabeth Anscombe.

“Elizabeth Anscombe and contemporary philosophy” - International conference ExeCO-ENS Philosophy department - Saturday, May 16, 2009

Student, executrix, and great commentator of Wittgenstein, deeply knowledgeable about ancient philosophy and more particularly Aristotle, Anscombe was also a Thomist and an active Roman Catholic ; she was a teacher to Cora Diamond and Philippa Foot’s senior colleague. Anscombe paved the way for contemporary philosophy of action and, perhaps in spite of herself, the ethics of virtue. Her strong philosophical personality is marked by thought as diverse as it is controversial. Anscombe defended the primacy of singular causal relations over nomological regularities as early as 1971, the non-referentiality of the first-person pronoun (a paradox to most philosophers still) and she coined the notion of a “direction of fit.” While she always defended strong positions, Anscombe strove to engage with the most recent developments in analytical philosophy and sought to debunk some of its unwittingly empiricist and idealist habits.

Her advocacy of certain medieval positions sometimes struck her colleagues as being as abstruse as her Wittgensteinian analysis but through both she sought to reinvest philosophical questions with their fundamental brutality. Anscombe is a philosopher in the analytic style but she is also a philosopher in the ancient style, constantly raising questions through simple examples that seem harmless but are actually very often devastating. She was also a remarkable reader, able to work on a given question by weaving together Aristotle and Wittgenstein, Brentano and Descartes or Austin and Aquinas without ever forgetting to point out the gaps that separate the moderns from the ancients. She is one of the very few contemporary thinkers that enable us to believe in the unity of philosophy.

By looking at the diverse facets of Anscombe’s writings and her incredibly dense thinking, this conference aims to measure her pertinence in today’s debates and to confront her claims and arguments with recent philosophical developments.

PROGRAM

Morning : University Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne – 12, Place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris, Room 216

9h00-9h15 Introduction by Valérie Aucouturier (Paris 1) and Marc Pavlopoulos (ENS)

9h15-10h00 Bruno Gnassounou (Nantes University) : "Proposition et connexion non prédicative"

10h00-10h45 Marc Pavlopoulos (ENS) : "Connaissance sans observation, connaissance pratique et connaissance de soi : quelques remarques grammaticales"

10h45-11h00 Break

11h00-12h45 : The first person

11h00-11h30 Rachel Wiseman (University of York) : "Anscombe and McDowell on intentions and I"

11h30-12h15 Vincent Descombes (EHESS) : "La référence à soi"

12h15-12h45 Table ronde avec Vincent Descombes, Bruno Gnassounou et Rachel Wiseman.

12h45-14h15 Lunch break

Afternoon : École normale supérieure - 45, rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris, room Cavaillès

14h15-15h00 Valérie Aucouturier (Paris-1 and University of Kent) : "L’expression des intentions"

15h00-15h45 Philippe de Lara (Paris 2 University) : "Que prouve l’argument des stopping modals ?"

15h45-16h00 : Break

16h00-16h45 Roger Teichmann (Oxford University, St Hilda’s College) : "Is Pleasure a Good ?"

16h45-17h30 Cyrille Michon (Nantes University) : "Libre arbitre et responsabilité morale"

17h30-18h00 Roundtable with Vincent Descombes, Cyrille Michon and Roger Teichmann : Anscombe and moral philosophy.

Contact :

valerie.aucouturier@malix.univ-paris1.fr ; marc.pavlopoulos@ens.fr