Anscombe's history of ethics

I'm reading Jimmy Doyle's book No Morality, No Self a bit more carefully now and he seems to see Anscombe's history of ethics as having roughly three stages: virtue theory (which is based on doing whatever it takes to have a good life--"egoistic eudaimonism"), a law conception of ethics (which basically means being Jewish or Catholic, and can be combined with virtue theory), and morality (which incoherently tries to have what a law conception of ethics has but without God). So really we have two choices: Aristotelian egoism and theism. Or three, if you include moral skepticism.

I read Anscombe a little differently. She does respect Aristotle, but she also calls the concept of "human 'flourishing'" doubtful, and explains why:

For it is a bit much to swallow that a man in pain and hunger and poor and friendless is "flourishing," as Aristotle himself admitted. Further, someone might say that one at least needed to stay alive to "flourish."

Which suggests that the egoist-eudaimonist view is actually unacceptable (otherwise it would, for instance, be ethical/rational/a good idea to join the SS rather than be killed by them) unless a lot of philosophical work can be done to explain why not. Doyle takes up Anscombe's assertion that "It is clear that a good man is a just man" in order to counter this kind of thought. But I think we then move away from Aristotle. The good and unstrained (she calls the Stoic notion of flourishing "strained") options that Anscombe considers are either being Jewish or Christian (her preference, of course) or else what I have called the plain man's view, which Anscombe describes thus:

Another man, who does not follow the rather elaborate reasoning of the philosophers, simply says "I know it is in any case a disgraceful thing to say that one had better commit this unjust action."    

This is neither very Aristotelian nor very egoist.

Anscombe also rejects a number of other views along the way:

1. "Butler exalts conscience, but appears ignorant that a man's conscience may tell him to do the vilest things."
2. Hume: a sophist, defining words so as to get the results he wants
3. Kant: his theory is absurd and useless
4. Bentham and Mill: fatal failure to notice that pleasure is such a difficult concept. Mill's theory also lacks content, as does Kant's, because he doesn't stipulate how to describe actions or principles
5. Protestantism: rejects the idea of Christ as a legislator to be obeyed
6. Consequentialists after Mill: no good because they refuse to rule acts such as murder out of the question
7. Following the norms of society: not likely to be any better than Butler's ethics
8. Following one's own rules, or those of one's ancestors: Ditto. "If one is lucky it will lead to good." It might not, of course, but at least one might have some good, Socratic doubt about whether one is on the right path
9. Following the laws of nature: unlikely to lead to feelings about harmony or balance, likely instead to result in something like a dog-eat-dog ethic
10. Obeying some kind of universal or social contract: this would need to be worked out, would be unlikely to provide details (such as prohibiting murder), and lacks an explanation of how we come to be bound by a contract without realizing it  
11. Following norms embodied in human virtues: possibly OK, but we are then back to Aristotle

The social contract view would be interesting to explore, but mostly Anscombe seems clearly to prefer either religious ethics or the ethics of the unphilosophical plain man, which perhaps we could call Wittgensteinian or ordinary language ethics.

Finally, just for further thought, here's some more of what she says about option #10:

Just possibly, it might be argued that the use of language which one makes in the ordinary conduct of life amounts in some sense to giving the signs of entering into various contracts. If anyone had this theory, we should want to see it worked out. I suspect that it would be largely formal...

This also might be called a kind of ordinary language ethics, although it sounds as though it would involve the development of quite a sophisticated theory. Which doesn't sound like ordinary ordinary language philosophy. I think some of Margaret Gilbert's work might be (very) roughly along these lines.