A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4(Anscombe–The Cambridge Platonist: Aletheia and Areté)

Visits: 1961

Anscombe, we have claimed, is an enigmatic philosopher. Sometimes she appears in the guise of the Catholic medieval scholar logic chopping her way to conclusions. Sometimes she appears in more “modern” guise, conducting so called grammatical investigations in relation to the very modern concerns of Philosophical Psychology and Epistemology in the spirit of Modern Philosophical Logic.

We have argued in earlier works for the idea that it is only Ariadne’s thread that can lead us out of the labyrinthine cave of our ignorance. The question to raise in relation to Anscombe’s work is the following: “Where should we place her work in relation to a thread that divided our minds into two. Ought we to place her work alongside the Philosophy of Descartes and Hobbes and the “new men”, (Hume Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx, the early work of Wittgenstein, and Russell)? She certainly sides with the work of the later Wittgenstein, which, we have argued, created the logical space for the restoration of the Philosophers of the Greek and German Enlightenment manifested best in the works of Aristotle and Kant. Yet we have also pointed to an anti-metaphysical or a-metaphysical scepticism in Wittgenstein’s work that prevents us from classifying him as a rationalist. Anscombe, to some extent, shares this animus. Her work, however, appears sympathetic in relation to the metaphysics of Platonism that many medieval scholars embraced. The preference for the work of Plato over the work of Aristotle is evident in her assertion that Plato is the Philosophers Philosopher. In this claim she clearly has the work of Aristotle in mind and this is puzzling given the fact that one of the key concepts of Wittgensteinian philosophy is the very Aristotelian sounding idea of “forms of life” which is a hylomorphic idea that Plato would have difficulty embracing in his earlier metaphysical systems. Platonic forms do not relate naturally to the categorical idea of psuche or soul. Anscombe refers to Plato’s relation between the soul and the forms, via the interesting idea of “like knows like”. The key role for Plato’s eternal unchanging forms was to provide a philosophical tool to investigate the Heraclitean idea of panta rei( reality is in flux and subject to continuous processes of change). The forms of “The Republic” were certainly less like Aristotelian “principles” than Plato’s later conceptions. The identification of the forms of the Republic with “substance” and “kinds of substance” is a reasonable interpretation. Indeed we encounter this move from substance to principle even in the developing work of Aristotle.

Aristotle claimed that Being has many meanings. This is not merely a thesis concerning the plurality of substances or kinds of object in one realm of Being, but also an argument for a plurality of principles over the whole domain of Being. The “like-knows-like” principle is still understandable on an Aristotelian account. For Aristotle it is principles that best explain the reasons for change . In volume one of this work we characterised Aristotle’s overall position in the following way:

“For Aristotle, the world-creating forms occur in the media of change(space, time, and matter) and they find their explanation in a theoretical matrix of 4 kinds of change, three principles, and 4 causes.”(A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action, Volume one, P.76)

The forms of life(psuche) manifest their essence in universal life-determining powers, which combine and integrate with each other to produce, for example, the human essence which Aristotle captures in his essence-specifying definition of rational animal capable of discourse. Principles also both constitute and regulate a domain of changing reality in ways that are presented in three different sciences using the above 4 kinds of cause/explanation. The powers of sensibility, understanding and reason all interact in various ways in our acts of perception, conceptualisation, and reasoning. Given the complexity of this account it is therefore surprising to find Anscombe designating Plato as the Philosophers Philosopher.

In Anscombe’s essay “The Origin of Plato’s Theory of Forms” reference is made to Mathematics. The dialogue of the Meno is discussed and it is acknowledged that Mathematics as a discipline contains only a “dream” or an “image” of the forms. Wittgenstein’s contribution to this debate is to fixate upon one of Plato’s criteria for the forms , namely that one must be able to predicate the form of itself, e.g., The form of the good must itself be good. Wittgenstein in the spirit of Russell and Mathematical logic contests this property on the grounds that the class of men is not a man(Russell’s paradox). We cannot say of the Greenwich standard yard that it is one yard long in the language game we play with non-metric measurement. It is rather the final context of practical justification for disputes arising about whether something is one yard long or not. The language game clearly distinguishes, then, between the context of exploration/discovery(measuring something) and the context of explanation/justification. Whether this is a sufficient argument to generate a paradox over saying that the Greenwich yard is one yard long is an open question. The Greenwich standard yard is certainly shorter than the Paris standard metre and does not the fact that we call this yard, a yard, serve to distinguish it from a metre? This is certainly a good illustration of the like-knows-like principle suggested by Plato and if it flies in the face of mathematical logic and the theory of classes so much the worse for mathematical theory. This principle, indeed, might be a good indicator of the metaphysical limitations of Mathematics recognised by Plato, but not by Russell.

Anscombe also claims in relation to the slave example in the Meno, that mathematics cannot be taught. She apparently asked a 9 year old child the same questions Socrates asked the slave of the Meno and was given the same answers. The principles of logic obviously played a role in the questioning process and it does not seem to be paradoxical to suggest that one is not taught the principle of contradiction or the principle of sufficient reason, but rather that the understanding of these principles appears to “dawn” upon one in the same way in which the Kantian “I think” dawns upon the young child. What is not acknowledged in Anscombe’s essay is that both Plato and Aristotle agree upon the overall role of mathematics in logic and metaphysics, which is that Mathematical reasoning works towards the establishing of a principle in exploratory fashion via the manipulation of mathematical variables. This is to be contrasted with Philosophical reasoning which occurs in the context of explanation/justification where the reasoning proceeds from a principle toward the manipulation or understanding of a reality that is constituted or determined by that principle. Our standard example of this position is that of the proceedings of a court of law where we are, for example, working from the principle “Murder is wrong”(against the law) to the judgements “X is a murderer”, “X has committed murder” or “X is innocent of the charge”. The court room procedures contain, of course, an exploration of the evidence but it is important to note that this is not an exploratory scientific activity designed to establish whether people murder each other, but rather activity that is determined by our knowledge of the law. There would, for example, seem to be nothing to tie the preceding judgments relating to X, and the sentence or innocence verdict, into a unity, except the law. The law too, it has to be admitted at some point came into being–it was passed–and this may have involved a process of exploration that was driven by the principle or form of justice. A form which for Plato would have had to possess the characteristics of being both good in itself and good in its consequences. One of the key consequences of this “form” is that everyone ought to get what they deserve, e.g. a judgement of guilty, where that is appropriate, and an appropriate sentence or a judgment of innocence and the restoration of ones freedom, where that was appropriate.

As mentioned above the unity of these legal proceedings are reminiscent of the kind of conceptual unity of the “I think” that Kant discussed under the heading of the relationships of the faculty of Sensibility with the faculty of Understanding/Judgement. Representations were unified and differentiated in an act Kant called the “unity of apperception”–an act that resulted in the forming of a concept. Anscombe, in an essay entitled “Plato, Soul and the Unity of Apperception”(From Plato to Wittgenstein,Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2011) claims that Plato appeared to propose two theses which appear at first glance to be antagonistic, namely, that the soul is a unity but that it can also be divided into parts. Plato claims that there is no contradiction between these theses as long as the parts retain some kind of logical connection to the unified whole. The “parts” Plato proposes are the appetite, spirit, and reason. These parts coexist in a hierarchical relation in which the highest power of reason is the power that produces the harmony in the soul. On this account it is acceptable for someone to give in to the temptations of appetite as long as a measure of self control is exercised and we are not narcissistically consumed by the “thousand headed” monster of desire. Anscombe ignores this aspect of Plato in her essay and chooses to focus instead on the epistemological issue of the relationship of the different sensory systems to each other and the kind of knowledge we have of this activity:

“Plato introduced the topic called ” the unity of apperception” in his Theaetetus. There Socrates asked Theaetetus whether we see with our eyes or rather through them: whether we hear with our ears or through them. Theaetetus answers “through”, and Socrates commends him for his decision, saying how odd it would be “if there were a number of senses sitting inside us, as if we were wooden horses, and there were not some single form(soul or whatever we ought to call it) in which all of them converge, something with which, through the senses as instruments, we perceive all that is perceptible.”(P.25)

What is being obliquely referred to is the relation of the body to the soul. There are many ways to interpret the above text. The Aristotelian interpretation, which it is not clear that Anscombe intends, is a hylomorphic interpretation in which the form organising the matter is like a principle organising change in a realm of Being. Anscombe’s emphasis appears to be instrumental and therefore does not quite capture the interesting Aristotelian conception of a power that is aware of itself and capable of opening onto a world and disclosing the Being of the world. The principle constituting this power has been dubbed the Reality Principle in earlier volumes: this principle helps to reveal both that things are and also why they are as they are. P.M.S. Hacker calls this a “two-way-power”. This interpretation stretches the Platonic idea of like-knows-like to its limits. Yet the Platonic idea of a physical realm of reality “participating” in the realm of the forms remains coherent. The major difference between the Platonic Theory of Forms and the Aristotelian hylomorphic theory is that the latter is tied to the idea of forms of life physically rooted in a system of tissues, organs and limbs. The body that is formed by this system, on the other hand, is also regulated by other principles, e.g. the Energy Regulation Principle, and the Pleasure-Pain Principle. These two principles contribute to what Ricoeur called the effort to exist or what Darwin called the survival of the organism. Our existence is certainly at stake insofar as the efficient operation of these two principles is concerned. It is the quality of life, on the other hand, that is at issue with the operation of the Reality Principle. Ricoeur refers to this aspect of our lives in terms of “the desire to be”. These three principles, we noted in earlier works formed the foundation of Freudian Psychoanalytical theory. This theory appealed to the rationalism of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. Anscombe systematically avoids Aristotelian and Kantian forms of rationalism in her interpretations of Wittgenstein’s work, preferring instead a more Platonic interpretation. Hacker chooses in contradistinction to focus on Aristotelian concepts in his interpretations. Plato’s reference to the sensory powers, however, is less instrumental than Anscombe supposes as is evidenced in the following quote:

“if I am right in my understanding of the matter, the difference between the legs and the sense organs is that the legs do walk and are not instruments by means of which the soul walks: the eyes on the other hand, do not see but are instruments by means of which the soul sees”(P.28).

Are organs, instruments, one can wonder? Instruments are normally regarded as extensions of our organs or limbs, e.g. the telescope and the hammer. They are embedded in other systems of instrumentalities that can repair damage as and when it occurs: instruments require external agents if they break and cease to perform their function. It appears as if Anscombe is falling prey here to the reductionist tendency to divide reality into independent causes and effects–the soul being the cause and the eyes being the effects. This is certainly not in accordance with the Aristotelian hylomorphic theory of the unity of the body and the soul. Wittgenstein makes two claims that are relevant to this discussion. Firstly, he maintains that our attitude towards a person is an attitude towards a soul. This ought to be considered alongside another claim he makes, namely, that the human body is the best picture of the soul. Is this an Aristotelian hylomorphic theory or is it more Platonic, as Anscombe appears to suggest? Anscombe in her writings criticises Wittgenstein’s early picture theory of meaning by claiming that a picture is ambiguous and the picture of a boxers stance, for example, could illustrate both how one ought to stand and also how one ought not to stand. A number of questions immediately present themselves. Firstly, If the soul is a principle of movement and rest, as Aristotle proposes can one have an attitude toward a principle? The only kind of relation we appear to have towards principles are the theoretical attitude of understanding them or the practical attitude of respecting them. If Wittgenstein means to suggest with this pair of statements that we ought to respect other persons, then he places himself in the Kantian territory he seeks to avoid. Secondly his claim that the body is the best picture of the soul has a phenomenological ring to it. Phenomenology we know seeks to investigate the essences of things but the mere citing of the body without specifying whether it is moving or at rest invites a hermeneutic theory of interpretation which “reads” the expressions of a body or “interprets” its physical expression or activity in accordance with some attitude. But what attitude is that? The attitude of respect again suggests itself. What rules of interpretation does this attitude use in its investigative activity? The problem with the Wittgensteinian idea of following a rule is that the concept of a rule for Wittgenstein seems to belong in the context of games such as chess. Rules certainly determine how I move pieces on a board. But is strategically controlling the centre of the board a rule or a principle? Stanley Cavell has drawn an important distinction between following a rule that allows us to play chess and playing in accordance with a principle that determines how well we play a game of chess. This latter activity in Greek minds would be associated with the term areté(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way). Epistemé(knowledge of principles of chess such as restricting the options of the opponents pieces by controlling the centre of the board) would also be involved. It is not quire clear how the notions of attitude, picture, and rule(embedded in an “album of sketches”) can do the same kind of work as the ideas of psuche, areté, arché, epistemé embedded in a complex hylomorphic theory.

Anscombe is very categorical in her philosophical investigations into human life(its origin and extinction). She unequivocally, on more than one occasion via the media claimed that abortion was murder. Her primary argument was an epistemic argument. In cases of human abortion, she claims we know it is a human life in the womb that we are extinguishing. Human conception does not give rise non-human forms of life. This knowledge, for Anscombe means that we are intentionally taking a human life which she claims has a fundamental value or is an end-in-itself. There is, however, an important question as to exactly at which point in time in the developmental process human life emerges. She points to the zygote stage in this process: This she claims is the first new unified cell and we can already call this cell human because it has the individual human tissue, organ, limb system inscribed in its DNA. These in their turn will give rise to the distinctive powers of being human that are constitutive of human psuche. Anscombe, however chooses to discuss this matter in terms of a “new substance” that has been created:-

“I was once a sperm and an ovum. That is the sperm and the ovum from whose union I came were jointly I.The objection to this is just that the sperm and the ovum were not one substance. That is, on a count of individual substances they came out at two until they have formed one cell. I do not mean that each cell is a substance: most are only parts of substances. That they are so is proved by cell differentiation which soon begins to happen as they multiply by dividing. Cell differentiation is for the sake of the kind of structured organised living material whole that gets formed through it.”(Human Life, Action, and Ethics, Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2005, P.42-3)

So, the zygote is a new human substance and any human intervention which brings about the extinction of its life is an act of murder. This, in spite of the fact that the animal life of movement and sensation is not yet present at this stage of the developmental process. Anscombe uses the epistemic argument here too and claims that we know that both self caused movement and sensation will occur at later phases of development. What we are provided with, on Anscombe’s account, is the criterion of identity for the zygote that eventually actualises into the form of a human individual. She argues that even if it is true that the zygote can give rise to twins, triplets etc, this is no argument against the form or essence of the human zygote. There is an analytical focus on the notion of substance but there are also traces of Aristotelian hylomorphism: the latter type of reflection, however, appears to stop at the threshold of Aristotle’s Rationalistic metaphysics. It must be admitted that she has a powerful argument, but it is unfortunately embedded in an “instrumental” context in which the most effective counterargument is claiming that a woman’s body is her “possession”, hers to do with what she pleases. On this counterargument this possessive woman is free to dispose of parts of her body. Engaging with this particular debate in the way in which she does is part of her refusal to engage with the metaphysics that could support her argumentation in a context of explanation/justification. The above idea of freedom would be highly questionable on any Kantian interpretation of this rationalist idea of reason. The role of principle in this discussion is not clear, probably because of the focus on both “substance” and “instrumentalism”. It is not clear that Anscombe can successfully defend her categorical position on abortion and also adhere to her interpretation of Plato’s “unity of apperception” argument. The hylomorphic interpretation of Plato’s argument is that the form or principle of the soul is constitutive of the human body which has obviously been brought about by physical principles associated with material and efficient causation. The way in which these physical principles(Energy Regulation Principle, Pleasure-Pain principle) operate is similar to the way in which the law of gravity acts upon an arrow shot into the air that finally returns to the earth. We use principles not to describe, but to explain changes in the many realms of Being we are dealing with. The principle, that is, provides the unity of all representations and the propositions relating to these representations. Construing the principle of psuche as substance is misleading. Anscombe, in defence of her position, claims that Plato regards the form as immaterial substance. Whether it is this that Plato has in mind when he maintains that the soul is like the form is not entirely clear but it is certainly a possible interpretation of the content of some Platonic dialogues. Plato’s thought, we know, developed over time to include even a criticism of his own theory of forms which some commentators have claimed moved him closer to Aristotelian positions, away, that is from the idea of form as substance and toward the idea of forms as principles.

The key metaphysical idea of psuche as a form of life for Aristotle was that life is a principle of motion and rest in all life forms. Kant’s metaphysics added to this the notion that life forms were self-causing entities, i.e. entities capable of bringing about change in the world. Neither in Aristotle nor in Kant’s case is it appropriate to think of the relation of the soul to the body in instrumental terms, e.g. as a pilot in a ship. A better descriptive picture of this relation is to be found in phenomenological Philosophy where the concept of “the lived body” is articulated in various ways, e.g. in Merleau-Ponty’s work “The Phenomenology of Perception”. In this work we find the claim that my hand does not lie beside the cup on the table but rather “inhabits” the environment it is in. The cup and the table belong in a context of instrumentalities that is different to the “lived space” the hand inhabits. My hand is not merely at the end of my arm waiting to be used but rather helps to constitute the field of instrumentalities that contains the cup, the spoon, the candle, and the table. The hand is part of a body-image best conceived of non-substantially, and non instrumentally, in terms of a constellation of principles of physical activity. Underlying this image is of course the Aristotelian hylomorphic material matrix of tissues, organs, and limbs. For us the principal organ of this matrix has become the brain but whilst this organ is certainly a necessary condition for human life it is not sufficient to explain all human forms of activity. The organs as a whole provide both the physical conditions necessary for activity and representation but they are first order functions that form the matrix of second and tertiary order functions. It was William James in a work entitled “Does Consciousness Exist?” that proposed that consciousness was not any kind of substance but rather resembled a function. Consciousness is of course importantly connected to representation and its relation to representations resembles the relation of the eyes to the visual field. For Kant sight was to the eyes as thinking was to the mind, which for him housed both conscious and unconscious functions. It is surely clear, in the context of this kind of discussion, that the brain is not an instrument to be used just because it is part of my body. For Anscombe the woman’s relation to her womb is similar to the intimate non-instrumental relation of sensory-motor activities to the brain. The relation we have to the idea of freedom is also very different to the way in which it is represented by the instrumentalists. For the Greeks, for example, free choice was bound by the condition of areté which bound the agent to doing the right thing in the right way at the right time.

Aristotle, we know believed that abortion before the 40th day was acceptable,(a period of time in which neither life nor sensation was present in the collection of cells we find in the womb). After the 40th day, Aristotle would have objected to taking the right to live of this little human in the womb, away. Even within the time frame of 40 days there had to be good reason for the termination of the life of the life-form within the womb. Such reasons could include not being able to physically support a certain number of children or reason to suspect a serious physical deformation. Aristotle, on the basis of these reflections, then, may well have agreed with Anscombe that we certainly know at an early stage of the actualisation stage we are dealing with a rational animal capable of discourse. In Aristotle’s time, abortion cannot have been a risk free procedure so perhaps there were additional arguments against performing this procedure. Aristotle would, however, have agreed with the epistemic argument presented by Anscombe. For him it was the essence of this form of life to actualise into a being that reasoned and conversed in the agora. Whether Aristotle would call abortion “murder” is not at all clear. Anscombe is perhaps in this respect more extreme in her position than Aristotle would have been. Anscombe’s position entails seeing the human in a platelet of shapes that has neither animal nor human shape. Her argument for this would probably be that we know that this platelet of cells will eventually roll up into a tube that will be the material basis of the human spinal cord.

This judgment, on the basis of potentiality, suffices for Anscombe to pass judgment in accordance with the moral attitude she referred to earlier. Whether this attitude is consistent with the Aristotelian idea of psuche as a principle of movement or rest, a causa sui, is not clear from her account. It is Kant that introduces the idea of causa sui into the discussion of the human form of life, and it is Kant that also claims that the act of taking ones life when committing suicide, is a practical contradiction(using life to take life). In this context we ought to note that we do not in the case of performing an abortion speak of “committing” abortion, but Anscombe nevertheless insists on using the term “murder” to describe what is happening here. Murder is, of course, a crime that is “committed”.

Anscombe is recognised by many commentators to be an analytical Philosopher, but given the poor record of these philosophers insofar as contribution to the fields of ethics and politics is concerned, her everyday practical position on these fronts shines like the beacon of a lighthouse in the darkness. We recall that when ex-President Truman was to be awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University, Anscombe stood up in a formal assembly to denounce the proposal in English(rather than the customary Latin–the language of Academia). Her objection was of course grounded upon Trumans decision to drop two atomic bombs on civilian populations. On her political account, being at war, requires respect for those who have not actively chosen to fight in the war: ignoring the freedom of these people to carry on leading their lives as normally as they can and dropping weapons of mass destruction on them is a crime against humanity. This accords with the Kantian view of war which saw the activity to lack meaning. Kant claimed that there were two kinds of argument against the activity of war: firstly it is wrong because one can know via reason that it is both morally and instrumentally irrational. Secondly, it is wrong because one can know through experiencing the concrete consequences of such activity that it is entirely pointless. Kant points out that, in spite of the fact that both reason and experience are opposed to this activity, the antagonistic nature of man prevails and we are periodically thrown into this cataclysmic abyss. Anscombe’s objection to Truman’s degree was therefore Kantian. There is , however, a very interesting essay contained in the work “Human life, Action and Ethics” entitled “Knowledge and Reverence for Human Life”. In this essay Anscombe appears to argue analytically for “two kinds of knowledge” that we can possess, namely what she calls mysteriously “indifferent knowledge” and another form of knowledge she calls “connatural knowledge”. The decisive category involved in the characterisation of these forms of knowledge is that of value. In the first form of knowledge we are concerned with knowledge whose truth is indifferent to value and the second form we are concerned with knowledge whose truth is intimately connected to value. The essay cites Hume’s notorious assertion that “Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions”. At first it looks as if Anscombe wishes to contest this assertion but subsequently there is a retreat from any form of rationalism and a tentative advance toward a form of knowledge which is related to value in virtue of being connected to our inclinations or attitudes:

“inclination itself is a sort of perception of the meanness of acting even without the judgement being formulated”(P.60)

Reference is being made here to both “seeing the action in a certain light” and the “unity of apperception”. In a later passage Anscombe continues:

“Connatural….it belongs to a just way of looking at things, and it cant be called a good of fortune. The spirit of such knowledge is what is called a gift of the Holy Ghost: the light of it a light to enlighten everyone who comes into the world. I do not mean that everyone actually has this light in his mind, for it may have been extinguished or never allowed to come on. It may be there as a mere glimmer whose sign is the understanding of the human language with all its multifarious action and motive descriptions, its machinery for accusing others and excusing oneself.”(P.62)

It is not clear what Anscombe means by a “gift of the Holy Ghost” and it is also not clear what the sign connected to the understanding of language might be unless this is a reiteration of the point that language enables one to see things in a certain light. She elaborates upon this train of thought by referring to the “inclination” toward a good will, Such an inclination apparently arises as a consequence of acquiring the habits of a lifetime and the suffering of a lifetime. Curiously, however, Anscombe claims that this kind of knowledge is theoretical. Knowing the worth of a human being is certainly not only a theoretical matter. Anscombe , at the very least, owes us a more detailed discussion of the kinds of knowledge involved in theoretical and practical reasoning. One can wonder here whether and how a mere “inclination” toward a good will could ever suffice to pass judgment upon a murderer: whether and how “inclinations” could ever result in the imperatives of duty Kant refers to.

For both Kant and Aristotle the only possible defence a murderer could have for killing someone is that this someone deserved to die. This obviously cannot be said of the little human being inside the womb. The arguments for and against abortion are familiar territory for Anscombe and she is well aware that she owes an answer to the question relating to how one can avoid the Aristotelian scenario of conceiving too many children. Sexual abstention is her answer, and this fits well with the Greek virtue of self control. For Anscombe, in an essay entitled “the Dignity of the Human Being”, sexual abstention is the only dignified response to the temptations of sexuality and its possible consequences. She appeals here to freedom of choice and the free will but also to reverence for the creations of God. Her final judgment on our current attitude toward abortion is summed up in the following quote:

“I have observed something of the celebrations of VE day, celebrations of the victory of the allies over Nazi Germany…. “Fools!”, I thought. You talk of being armed in spirit against possible future threats of evil. You seem all unconscious of living in an actually murderous world.” Each nation that has liberal abortion laws has rapidly become, if it was not already, a nation of murderers.”(P.72-3)

The judgment is severe but it has its argumentative ground. It is surprising that given the categorical nature of this judgment that the only metaphysics(Kantian metaphysics) capable of justifying such a severe judgment is not actively embraced by Anscombe. It is not even clear whether Anscombe can be called a rationalist retreating as she does to talk of “inclinations” and “attitudes” which appear to be more appropriate to sensible contexts of exploration/discovery than rational contexts of justification. “Description” and “seeing things in a certain light” appear to confirm the above diagnosis. This is puzzling because she clearly uses the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in her deliberations but her reluctance to discuss either Aristotelian or Kantian metaphysics in relation to her argumentation must amount to a rejection of these forms of rationalism. The closest she comes to embracing some of the concepts of rationalism occurs in an essay entitled “Practical Truth”. In this essay she refers to Aristotle’s discussion of decisions arrived at in practical contexts yet requiring a form of reflection Aristotle calls “deliberation”. She quotes a passage from the Nichomachean Ethics:

“So that, since moral virtue, i.e. virtue in actions and passions, is a disposition of decision making, and decision is deliberative will, this means that for decision to be sound the reasons must be true, the will right, and the same thing mist be named by the one and pursued by the other.”(P.152)

Practical thinking, she adds is :

“truth in agreement with right desire”(P.152)

The thoughts in this essay, however, do not quite mesh with the thoughts we encounter in the essay entitled “Knowledge and Reverence for Human Life” in which we pointed out she refers to “connatural” knowledge(knowledge intimately related to value) as a “gift from the Holy Ghost”. The humanism of Aristotle stands in stark contrast to this account. Throughout Aristotle’s work we find reference to the difference between lower level capacities and higher level dispositions. The terms areté and arché especially occur in these latter contexts. The Nichomachean Ethics must be, for Aristotle, one of the key documents of Practical Science, containing all the forms of explanation and justification relevant to the kinds of change we encounter in the arenas of action and passion. This work begins with its basic assumption that all forms of human activity aim at the good. Knowledge, of course, according to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, is a good in itself and this must be a universal and necessary truth because “All men desire to know”. Knowledge in the Metaphysics is defined in terms of the principles of what he calls “First Philosophy”. These principles attempt to provide us with a totality of conditions that help to constitute essence-specifying definitions such as “rational animal capable of discourse”. Sound practical choices are obviously decisive in the matter of whether such an animal will lead a flourishing life or not . The telos of such a rational animal is, in Greek, eudaimonia which in turn is a consequence of living in accordance with the notions of areté, arché, diké, epistemé, and phronesis. This battery of terms indicates that we are dealing with so much more than mere inclinations or attitudes. Eudaimonia was, for Kant, the summum bonum of human existence, a state of existence that rests upon the above charmed circle of Greek ideas and dispositions.

Anscombe, in her essay on Spinoza, once again approaches tentatively and with caution, the practical idea of freedom, reflecting upon Aristotelian hylomorphism. The title of this essay sounds Kantian: How can a man be free?” but she focuses upon the Aristotelian idea of the production of truth. She points out that this idea in modern Universities causes a sense of outrage:

“Admittedly, the idea of production of truth does not seem to fit very well. My own experience has led me to outrage philosophical audiences by maintaining that i can produce truth. E.g., I may say “I am going to stand on this table”, and then I produce truth in what I said by doing that. People protest “You cant talk like that. Truth is eternal. If you do stand on the table, it is always true(before you did it) that you would stand on the table when you did”. I understand this impulse about truth. Nevertheless in such a case I do make something true, which I had said I would do.”(From Plato to Wittgenstein, P.92)

When the primacy of action is the issue it is the telos of the action that becomes the constitutive function of the particular truth describing the activity “standing on the table”. Particular truth belongs in the context of exploration/discovery in which material and efficient causation is regulated by final causation(the why of the action). Particular truths have particular relations to particular sensory-motor systems and it is probably only particular truths that are “produced” in the sense referred to by Anscombe. One cannot “produce” essence specifying truths such as “Man is a rational animal capable of discourse”. Such truths are not in any sense “instrumental” (hypothetical) but are rather categorical or unconditional truths. The categorical imperative is an example of the latter kind of truth relating to Action and the Will, e.g., “So act that you can will that the maxim of your action be a universal law.”. Such a categorical unconditional imperative cannot be indifferent to Truth and must be capable of occurring as a major premise in a practical syllogism. One of the purposes of this class of syllogism is to demonstrate the categorical characterisation of a good will, which is a will that operates both within the domain of categorical understanding(being self causing, causa sui) and in accordance with ideas of reason such as freedom(so important in the realm of ethical virtue) .

Anscombe in the above essay does not refer to areté but rather to the Greek concept of eupraxia. This may be appropriate given we are dealing with particular truths relating to action. The more universal and necessary idea of eudaimonia is not taken up in her discussion. She merely claims that eupraxia ´relates to a general idea of “doing well” which she claims is an objective of rational life. Eupraxia is obviously a concept that belongs in the productive sciences relating to techné rather than in the realm of practical science and the conceptual system constituted by eudaimonia, areté, diké, and arché. The will and action is obviously relevant in both domains but a will regulated by hypothetical imperatives is a different matter to the will acting categorically. In other words there may be a world of difference between “doing well” and flourishing(eudaimonia).