Revival of Virtue Ethics

At my CS Lewis discussion of Miracles on Tuesday, Elizabeth Anscombe predictably came up. There has long been a controversy about her debate with CS Lewis at the Socratic Club, causing him to give up philosophical debate forever after. From this she acquired a reputation in uninformed circles as some liberal female theologian who was determined to take the great man down, haha! Neither she nor Lewis ever thought so.  He thought her criticism excellent, sat down and wrote out a more complete explanation of his thought very much in the directions she suggested.  The second edition of Chapter 3 of Miracles reflects a great deal of her influence in this.  It is pretty stiff going, with arguments hinging or such careful defining of terms as distinctions in the use of the word because.  What is often not known outside of philosophy circles is that she was a powerhouse herself. The Wiki will tell you the list of praises from other philosophers about her. As for her her theology she was a Catholic convert and a Thomist. As for seeking to overturn established Christian thought and structures, she was fond of pointing out that perhaps that would be unlikely in a Catholic wife with seven children, which the accusers seem not to have taken into account.

What I had not known was that she was an enormous influence on Iris Murdoch and Philippa Foot, the central figures in the revival of virtue ethics in the 20th Century, and influenced by them in return. The three were very close in age, being born around 1920.  I never picked it up because I thought of Murdoch only as a novelist, and Foot was an unattached English name from post 1950. I pass this along to you so that you will have heard of their importance as well.