74 years ago yesterday on Feb 2, Elizabeth Anscombe read her paper replying to Lewis on his argument against naturalism. But Ludwig Wittgenstein, her mentor. did not approve of her attending the Oxford Socratic Club and did not think C. S. Lewis to be worth refuting. What if Anscombe had listened to Wittgenstein. How would Lewis's apologetic and literary output have been different?
My view is "not much." (Though there would have been no revised chapter). What do you think?
2 comments:
Bottom Line: C.S. Lewis today is known and read by millions, and his books can be found in any bookstore. Anscombe? Nobody other than academics reads her, and let's face it, outside of academia no one has ever even heard of her. She is a footnote in C.S. Lewis' biography.
My view is "not much."
I agree. Lewis was not a philosopher like Anscombe and so her input had only a minor impact on his literature as you note.
Likewise, Lewis had little (or no) impact on Anscombe other than giving her some notoriety at a young age. May have even been a distraction.
Anscombe was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein and became an authority on his work and edited and translated many books drawn from his writings, above all his Philosophical Investigations. Anscombe's 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term consequentialism into the language of analytic philosophy, and had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics.[4] Her monograph Intention (1957) was described by Donald Davidson as "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle."[5][6] And the continuing philosophical interest in the concepts of intention, action, and practical reasoning can be said to have taken its main impetus from this work.
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