As regular readers of this blog know I hold that the claim that 'analytical philosophy is clear' is at best a useful regulative ideal by which we delude ourselves in order to promote group cohesion and at worst a barrier to self-understanding. Of course, most of the time it is neither; we use it to kick down at continentals and litcritters in order to justify our ongoing ignorance of alternative points of view. Now consider the opening lines of this book review:
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.
Anscombe is, of course, a paradigmatic analytical philosopher. The very idea that one needs "scholarly skill" to read an analytical philosopher simply does not fit our self-conception. Unlike say, Whitehead, who is also notoriously difficult and who has been written out of our tradition and has become assimilated by post-postmodern Continentals to theirs (recal this), Anscombe has not been dismissed (yet). If you want to see how such dismissal works in practice, one can do worse than to start with Davidson's assertion that in Whitehead's class, "Truth, or even serious argument, was irrelevant." (p 14; I thank Stefan Koller for calling my attention to the passage.)
First, we need to note the rhetorical ploy played in this review. There is a contrast between "accessible" and "comfortable" on the one hand, and the "serious study," on the other. It is strongly implied that the Davidsonian reading isn't just mistaken, it just isn't serious (by being selective). Second, without any further evidence it is baldly asserted that in earlier times there was little such "serious study" of Anscombe. Now according to scholar.google Intention has been cited over 2100 times (presumably not all of these subsequent to the volume under review). Anscombe's book has been continuously discused, in fact, by nearly all the leading lights of the tradition. This no serious study before us ploy is as insipid as the Vlastos-move (i.e., until me nobody has understood Plato so we can ignore everybody else). Or the varieties of Spinozism without Spinoza move promoted by French scholars. Such ploys make it impossible to learn from earlier readers.
But we should also not underestimate the possibility that early responses do understand a text, but deliberately transform it into something else. After all, philosophers have lots of motives to engage with another text, and presenting the truth of that text is not high on our list. So, what may seem like a mis-reading to later scholars, may well be philosophically motivated in lots of ways. One such motive is (a) to make the other text say the truth about its topic by our lights (i.e., Davidsonian charity); another motive is (b) to make the other text help us say the truth about our topic. Turns out, of course, that (a) is not a necessary condition for (b). Moreover, one other motive is (c) to block that other text from inspiring others to explore certain issues (i.e., topics/distinctions/moves one considers off-limits). Note, however, that (b) and (c) can presuppose "serious study" and "philosophical acumen." For example, my judgment on Aristotle's testimony and reading of Socrates, Plato, and others involves attributing to Aristotle some version of (b) and (c). Of course (a), (b), and (c) need not be identical to (d) getting at the intended meaning of the original author of the text (if such a thing is to be had).
None of this is to deny that the Davidsonian engagement with Anscombe (partially) framed the discussion for others and may have involved serious philosophical blindspots to Anscombe's (ahum) intentions. It is also possible that because Anscombe got read side by side with Hampshire, Hart and Honore, Kenney, Melden, and others (see here for evidence) that the historical context of the book's appearance limited its reception. Sometimes distance is required to see what was there all along. But sometimes entirely new kinds of questions and distinctions can reveal a text's insights. It's also possible, of course, that differing aims for the philosophical enterprise (e.g., elucidation, explanation, therapy) lead to conflicting frameworks in which one reads and judges a text.
It is also not impossible that Anscombe wrote for two kinds of philosophical audiences at once--those that shared her Wittgensteinian or Thomist commitments and those that do not. This would explain her style and also the very different uptake of her work. Such esotericism is lodged at the heart of the Wittgensteinian circle (as Ernest Nagel noticed in the 1930s).
Finally, the review ends by commending one chapter in the volume for providing a "clear picture" an "for its accessibility to a general audience"--it is, in fact, "required reading" in the reviewer's "undergraduate course" henceforth. The irony is that almost certainly the features that most recommend this chapter to become a handy teaching device will ensure the propogating of a very partial understanding of Anscombe's Intention.
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