Why read Intention?

Book cover of Intention

Book description

Intention is one of the masterworks of twentieth-century philosophy in English. First published in 1957, it has acquired the status of a modern philosophical classic. The book attempts to show in detail that the natural and widely accepted picture of what we mean by an intention gives rise to insoluble…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Intention as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Francesco Orsi

Author

This is the book that shaped philosophical thinking about action since the past half-century, though I didn’t really understand this the first time I read it.

Among other things, Anscombe single-handedly resuscitates the old idea that all we want, we want under the guise of some good from the relative obscurity it had fallen into, handing it over to new generations of philosophers. She vehemently rejects the idea that people can actually behave like Poe’s characters.

From Francesco's list on whether humans pursue the good and avoid the bad.