Moore, G. E.

Abstract

Abstract G. E. Moore (1873–1958) was one of the most influential British philosophers of the twentieth century. His career was based in Cambridge (England), where he was Professor of Philosophy and a close associate of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. During the course of his life Moore addressed a broad range of philosophical issues, but in his early writings it is ethical questions which are given most attention, most notably in his only substantial monograph, Principia Ethica (1993). Moore wrote Principia Ethica while he held a prize fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, which he had been awarded on the basis of a dissertation on “The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics” (see Moore 2011). After completing Principia Ethica in 1903, however, Moore devoted relatively little attention to ethical theory apart from a short introductory book, Ethics , which he completed in 1912 (Moore 1966). But in 1941, finding himself confronted by several critical essays on his ethical theory in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore , he wrote a substantial reply to them (Moore 1942).