In her influential paper Modern Moral Philosophy (1958), G. E. M. Anscombe contends that the concepts of moral obligation and moral duty should be abandoned in order for philosophy of modern ethics to progress. Defending Modern Moral Philosophy in No Morality, No Self (2018), James Doyle asserts that Anscombe goes so far as to declare that the word morality does not express a concept at all. It appears that the reasons for Anscombe’s resolute rejection of moral obligation as a coherent concept, or a concept at all, lie in the incoherency of the foundation for morality so far proposed by philosophers, especially by those she refers to as consequentialists – philosophers who evaluate the rightness of an action based on a calculation of consequences.

As Anscombe reasons, Aristotle uses the term “moral” to refer to human passions and (non‑technical) actions with human as a moral subject matter. For example, Aristotle distinguishes moral virtues which include courage and honesty, from intellectual virtues which include scientific knowledge and technical skills. However, the advent and then centuries of dominance by Christianity, with God being a divine law giver, imbue the term “moral” with a sense of absolute verdict (like one of guilty/not guilty on a man) in western philosophy. Meanwhile, “ought” in the moral context acquires the special sense of obligation as if bound by law. Incongruity arises when God is not believed to be a divine law giver and divine command is not the foundation of morality. The pointed question is: how can one reject God as a law giver while embracing obligations and duties He requires as law? The incongruity manifests itself in the discourses of the consequentialists. God’s divine command is absolute and cannot be subject to a calculation of consequences. Murder and theft are wrong in God’s command and no amount of good consequences calculated from the acts of murder and theft can make them right. In short, without believing in God as a divine legislator, the concept of moral obligation in secular ethics has no root, and is incongruous and meaningless.

Is it possible to retain the law binding force of moral obligation without God being the divine legislator? Perhaps one can first ascertain the “norms” of society and then legislate the necessary moral obligation and moral duty for oneself? Anscombe rejects such possibility as absurd because it is unlikely that such legislation based on social norms can lead to notions of justice. Another possibility for the foundation of moral obligation and moral duty may be contractual – one’s contract with society. Anscombe rejects this possibility by pointing out that it wouldn’t be reasonable for someone to enter into a contract without the knowledge of doing so.

The remaining option for Anscombe is to base ethics on the “norms” of human virtues, as in Aristotelian ethics, with man having a complete set of virtues as the “norm.” Notably, the sense of “norm” in the man with the complete set of virtues is not equivalent to “law.” In other words, norms of human virtue entail no law binding sense of obligation and duty. Therefore, Anscombe concludes that, with God’s divine command being unfeasible as a basis for secular ethics, with obligation and duty having a contractual basis being an unfeasible theory, and with norms in human virtue being a feasible basis for ethics, one should study ethics in the norms of human virtue as in Aristotelian ethics and abandon the notions of “moral obligations,” “moral duty,” and “moral ought” altogether, because the notions of moral obligation do not pertain to norms of human virtue.