Anscombe and Aquinas

There has been a growing sense of Anscombe’s indebtedness to Aquinas, though the specifics and extent of that debt have remained unclear for three reasons. First, because of general unfamiliarity with Aquinas’s writings. Second, because of ignorance about important aspects of Anscombe’s intellectual biography and writings. Third, because of her inexplicitness, particularly in works intended for academic readers, regarding his influence on her thought. This chapter charts her engagement with and use of the thought of Aquinas from her days as a student to her last writings, cataloguing her direct and indirect references to his work and assessing the extent to which she was in broad agreement with or dissented from his positions on major philosophical issues.