Anton Ford is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Jennifer Hornsby is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. Frederick Stoutland was Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at St. Olaf College.
This publication marks a new stage in the reception of Anscombe’s
thought. In the decades following the publication of Intention,
readers saw Anscombe’s philosophy of action largely through a
Davidsonian lens. Davidson’s selective reconstruction was more
accessible and less Wittgensteinian than the original. It also
encouraged the hope of absorbing Anscombe’s insights within a
comfortable causalism about the mental. This hope could be
sustained as long as relatively few philosophers made a serious
study of Anscombe’s book. As the present volume shows, those days
are over. We now have a critical mass of authors with the scholarly
skill and the philosophical acumen to put us in direct contact with
Intention. This is a book about what we have missed.
*Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews*
One of the many merits of this collection of essays is that no one
reading it could be left in much doubt of the work’s significance,
nor for that matter of the fecundity of Anscombe’s thought: many of
the essays here show her ideas and claims opening up new avenues
and taking on a life of their own… Most of the contributors display
an understanding of what Anscombe is up to that is both
sophisticated and sympathetic.
*Analysis Reviews*
This volume begins with a superbly crafted introduction by
Frederick Stoutland to Anscombe’s work generally and to Intention
in particular, furnishing a historical situating of the work that
brings much clarity to otherwise difficult passages… This is
indispensable reading for specialists in the philosophy of action
and for others working in related areas in the philosophy of
mind.
*Choice*
The significance of Anscombe’s book Intention has been taken for
granted rather than genuinely understood. This exceptionally fine
collection of essays illuminates her thought and brings out its
deep differences from much contemporary philosophy of mind and
action. The book is outstanding in the kind of dialogue it sets up,
the authors responding to Anscombe, to each other and to Donald
Davidson and other action theorists. It should be essential reading
for anyone with a philosophical interest in human action.
*Cora Diamond, University of Virginia*
Anscombe’s little treatise is known as the foundational text not
only for the field of analytic philosophy of action, but also,
given its intersections with the analytic philosophy of mind and
language, as the inevitable source of so much important and lasting
work in the 50 years since its first appearance. This volume offers
original texts on Anscombe’s Intention by some of today’s most
eminent philosophers of action. They deliver without exception on
the purpose of rescuing, sharpening and clarifying the scope and
depth of Anscombe’s achievements. The collection manages what many
anniversary collections desire but few pull off: to vindicate its
subject as still full of promise. It not only provides a renewed
motive to reflect on the foundations and basic concepts of a
thriving discipline, but also recommends itself as a standard text
for students and teachers in courses involving Anscombe’s thought.
In all, everyone who dares to quote Anscombe needs to take note of
this book as a guide to the current gold standard of scholarship on
her thought and in the fields she set in motion.
*Anselm Mueller, Northwestern University*
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