For several decades following its publication, Elizabeth Anscombe's essay « The first person » was usually cited as an example of an illuminating absurdity, her « extraordinary[1] » or « bizarre[2] » conclusion ­– that the word « I » does not refer to its speaker – being one that we ought to find « barely credible[3] », indeed « difficult to understand at all[4] ». More recently, this consensus has shifted, with a number of philosophers arguing that Anscombe's doctrines are not only defensible, but key to preserving our ordinary conception of self-conscious thought.

My talk will consider a work in this genre, namely Vincent Descombes' « Le marteau, le maillet et le clout ». I begin by introducing Descombes' reading of Anscombe's essay, emphasizing his argument that Anscombe's conclusion is neither contrary to common sense nor aligned with the Lichtenbertian « impersonalist » account of first-person thought.

Having done this, I challenge one part of Descombes' interpretation of Anscombe's conclusion, namely his suggested assimilation of the first-person pronouns to indexical terms like « here » and « now ». I argue that it is possible to use a word like « now » to specify a time that is different from the time that one intends to specify, as when I say that something will happen now but it only happens later. With the use of « I », however, there is no such possibility. For example, if I mistake someone in a photograph for myself, then if I point to this person and say « I », this word will not specify the person I point to. This undermines the suggestion that the words « I » and « Descombes » share the same metaphorical relation of hammer to nail as do « now » and « five o'clock », or « here » and « Chicago ».