This essay examines the Dominican influences on the Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe while an undergraduate at Oxford University between 1937–1941. It focuses on three Thomists who formally instructed Anscombe and how one Dominican, Victor White, likely instructed her on a radically Catholic perspective regarding the morality of warfare, which would not only influence her 1940 co-authored pamphlet, ‘The Justice of the Present War Examined’, but would shape her writings on war and murder for her entire academic career.
This essay accompanies the republication of Anscombe's ‘I am Sadly Theoretical: It is the Effect of Being at Oxford,’ her earliest known published essay. She wrote this article in response to a public invitation from the Catholic Herald for Catholics between the ages of 18 and 25 to make their voices heard by their fellow Catholics. In this teenage apologia, Anscombe outlines the goals for her life, and what it means for her as a Catholic to be a witness.