Friday, November 11, 2011

Anscombe's Moral Philosophy reviewed

About every month (probably exactly once a month, but I haven't checked) I get a set of cards in the VMI mail with reviews of philosophy books that I might want to ask our library to order. Looking through the latest batch at the orthodontist's yesterday (waiting for my daughter) I came across a review of my book. The review is copyrighted (Choice, November '11 ~ Vol. 49, No. 03), so I'll just quote the best bits (none of it is negative, though--honest):
Richter ... provides a helpful guide to the moral philosophy of G. E. M. Anscombe, a leading 20th-century philosopher. His exposition of Anscombe's moral viewpoint develops through a thoughtful, accessible attempt to clarify and defend it against many leading critics. Throughout, Richter's development of Anscombe's views is sympathetic without being insensitive to Anscombe's often-shallow treatment of the history of philosophy. Accordingly, Richter succeeds in bringing out the manner in which Anscombe's thought is important--not for its penetrating insight into the history of ideas, but for its novel contribution to that history. [...] Ultimately, this volume is not only an important supplement to the Anscombe literature, but also one that, in the process of clarifying the philosopher's views, makes an important contribution to contemporary moral philosophy.
 Thanks, A. L. Morton!

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like a book you should advise your library to order multiple copies of!

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  2. Thanks, Bosphorus and vh. Yes, the library already has it. I made sure of that.

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  3. Excellent. I have long neglected Anscombe's philosophy. Will have to put that right one of these days.

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  4. She's very interesting, but I suppose I would say that. Quite extreme on various matters in ethics, but she usually defends her views surprisingly well (given their somewhat counter-intuitive extremeness). When she fails to do so that's interesting in itself: if she can't defend those views then (I would bet) no one can.

    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on her is a good place to start, and contains a couple of links at the end. Roger Teichmann's book is very good, too.

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  5. As has already been said, cool. (And congrats on the swell review.)

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