When reading this paper of Anscombe’s, I could never quite shake the feeling that her real subtext was something like “See what a mess you get into when you abandon Christianity?”. (Anscombe was a Christian, of the Roman Catholic variety.) That sense of insincerity makes it hard for me to admire it much, even though it makes some good points.
That was probably her opinion, but I think she was carefully trying to write with respect for a non-religious audience.
I think she was saying, more or less, that secular people can either go forward in the direction they are going, but they’ll have to leave should/ought/morality behind (and with it any judgements about e.g. whether shoving Jews in the ovens was necessarily a bad thing to do)—which was what philosophers of her place and time were doing with e.g. emotivism—or they can go backwards to a pre-Christian perspective from which ethics had a grounding other than divine law and then move forward from there.
For her as a Catholic, the answer was “what was so bad about divine law anyway? That grounds morality just fine.” but she knew that wouldn’t fly with most of her audience, so she said: here’s the diagnosis, if you don’t like my cure find one of your own, but you’re gonna have to do something other than what you’re doing right now.
When reading this paper of Anscombe’s, I could never quite shake the feeling that her real subtext was something like “See what a mess you get into when you abandon Christianity?”. (Anscombe was a Christian, of the Roman Catholic variety.) That sense of insincerity makes it hard for me to admire it much, even though it makes some good points.
That was probably her opinion, but I think she was carefully trying to write with respect for a non-religious audience.
I think she was saying, more or less, that secular people can either go forward in the direction they are going, but they’ll have to leave should/ought/morality behind (and with it any judgements about e.g. whether shoving Jews in the ovens was necessarily a bad thing to do)—which was what philosophers of her place and time were doing with e.g. emotivism—or they can go backwards to a pre-Christian perspective from which ethics had a grounding other than divine law and then move forward from there.
For her as a Catholic, the answer was “what was so bad about divine law anyway? That grounds morality just fine.” but she knew that wouldn’t fly with most of her audience, so she said: here’s the diagnosis, if you don’t like my cure find one of your own, but you’re gonna have to do something other than what you’re doing right now.