G. E. M. Anscombe (18 March, 1919 – 5 January, 2001), born Gertrude
Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, but better known as Elizabeth Anscombe,
was a British analytic philosopher. A student of Ludwig Wittgenstein,
she became an authority on his work and edited and translated many
books drawn from his writings, above all his Philosophical
Investigations. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of
action, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and ethics.
Anscombe's 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term
"consequentialism" into the language of analytic philosophy; it had a
seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics, as did some of her
subsequent articles. Her monograph Intention is generally recognized
as her greatest and most influential work, and the continuing
philosophical interest in the concepts of intention, action and
practical reasoning can be said to have taken its main impetus from
this work.