The Ascension Parish Burial Ground is one of Cambridge’s hidden treasures – the final resting place for many of the University’s great and good. For a philosophy student like me, the chief attraction has to be the well-tended grave of Ludwig Wittgenstein, where devotees still leave candles, flowers, and, for some reason, pinecones. But adjacent to the great man lies what was mortal of one of his favourite students, who went on to become an intellectual giant in her own right: Elizabeth Anscombe. Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge from 1970-1986, she made as big a mark on the landscape of academia as she did on philosophy. I’m obliged to take an interest because she’s on the syllabus of my course, but Anscombe is such a singular figure that no one can fail to be impressed by her life.

Anscombe was a latecomer to Cambridge, taking her degree at the Other Place. But she came to Newnham in 1942 to study under Wittgenstein, who was then leading a revolution in 20th-century philosophy, and even when she returned to Oxford for a time, she made the journey back once a week to hear him lecture. In 1970 she became Professor of Philosophy and remained here until her death in 2001 at Addenbrookes Hospital. Being a prominent woman in academia at that time would have been distinctive enough, especially in the notoriously male-dominated world of professional philosophy, but Anscombe was famous for her complete disregard of gendered conventions. She insisted on wearing trousers everywhere, declined to take her husband’s last name, and continued with her career despite having seven children. She was also a habitual smoker and swore constantly. A man of his time, Wittgenstein disliked women in academia, but Anscombe impressed him enough to make an exception, and he took to referring to her as ‘old man.’

“She insisted on wearing trousers everywhere, declined to take her husband’s last name, and continued with her career despite having seven children”

Following her teacher, Anscombe thought that philosophers should attend to concepts as they are actually used in ordinary life, but she went beyond him in her systematic study of intention and what it means to intend something. She believed that the way in which the politicians and statesmen of her time tried to justify committing atrocities and war crimes often revealed a failure to distinguish between those consequences of an action that one intends and those which one does not. Most famously, she applied this in her condemnation of Harry Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese, arguing that intentionally killing innocent civilians is wrong in a way that merely allowing soldiers to die is not (something for our current leaders to think about, perhaps).

One of the things that motivated me to write this article was that there are still several people living in Cambridge who remember her. Nicholas Boyle, emeritus Schröder Professor of German, recounted that when he was considering a research project on Wittgenstein, Anscombe summoned him to her house to examine his suitability and offered him a lunch of “haddock and vodka”. She suspected him of being the source of a (perfectly true) rumour that Wittgenstein was gay, which Boyle denied. She eventually gave her approval, but Boyle was already put off the project. “I decided it wasn’t for me,” he says.

“When he visited her at her home, Anscombe told Kenny that she hoped he and his bride would both be very unhappy and slammed the door in his face”

Both Anscombe and her husband, Peter Geach, were devout and uncompromising Catholics, and Eamon Duffy, Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity, told me about Anscombe’s reaction to the news that fellow philosopher Anthony Kenny, who had previously been a Catholic priest, had left the priesthood and was getting married. When he visited her at her home, Anscombe told Kenny that she hoped he and his bride would both be very unhappy and slammed the door in his face. Duffy also described a meeting that Anscombe and Geach had with the Pope, who wanted to commend her for her philosophical work. After their audience, Anscombe noticed that Geach had worked himself into a rage. “That man!” he hissed. When Anscombe asked what the Pope had done to upset him, he replied, “He called you Mrs Geach!”

What makes Anscombe so fascinating is that she is almost impossible to pin down: pioneering feminist and conservative Catholic, sui generis thinker and Wittgensteinian acolyte, devoted to her work and to her family. She defies every attempt at categorisation, and probably liked it that way. Most of us probably don’t want seven children – and some of us may not even want to become professional philosophers. But I think that Anscombe can still be a model for all of us in virtue of her refusal to let her life be dictated to her by any set of standards other than the ones that her own conscience imposed. By emulating her courage – if not her rudeness – we can aim for the self-confidence and force of personality that characterised the woman sometimes referred to as the ‘dragon lady.’