G.E. Moore's The Elements of Ethics

Abstract

G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1903) has a fair claim to be called the most influential book on ethics published in this century. No modern work has so profoundly affected both philosophy and literature, at least in English-speaking countries. Many of the questions raised in Principia Ethica are still being actively thought about by philosophers, and the values maintained by Moore are embodied in the works of E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and others. In his autobiography Moore says that the essential outline of Principia Ethica was developed during a course of lectures he gave in London in 1898. A typescript of these lectures, including some brief marginal comments apparently by Bertrand Russell and a printed syllabus of the lectures, has recently come to light. An account of these lectures, which Moore entitled The Elements of Ethics, should be of interest to the understanding of Moore's thought and thus to the history of modern British philosophy and literature. The most concise way to give such an account is to reproduce the syllabus for the lectures. Through the very kind permission of Mrs. G. E. Moore the syllabus is reproduced below. A xerox copy of the typescript has, again with Mrs. Moore's generous consent, been deposited in the library of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, where the Bertrand Russell archives are also preserved.