James Doyle, "No Morality, No Self: Anscombe's Radical Skepticism" (Harvard UP, 2018)

This is the centennial year of the birth of G.E.M. Anscombe, one of the major philosophical figures of the 20th century within the analytic tradition. A close associate of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Anscombe contributed fundamental insights in philosophy of mind, action theory, and ethics. In his new book No Morality, No Self: Anscombe's Radical Skepticism (Harvard University Press, 2018), James Doyle considers two of her major papers: in "Modern Moral Philosophy", she denies that the term "moral" picks out a special, sui generis type of obligation, reason, or motivation, and argues for reorienting ethics towards understanding concepts of virtue; while in "The First Person", she denies that the term "I" really is the device of self-reference that it seems to be. Doyle, who is lecturer in philosophy at Harvard University, clarifies her arguments and assesses them in response to a number of prominent critics. In doing so, he shows how Anscombe's work continues to inspire thinking about fundamental issues in ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.