Themes from G.E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics - Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay (eds)

Abstract

This volume of 16 essays, according to the editors, is motivated by a growing sense that the time has come, fifty years after Moore's death in 1958, to reassess his contributions to philosophy in the light of what now seems to be their conceptual longevity. By 1950, they claim, most of Moore's views had been subjected to fierce criticism; and although his standing in the history of early twentieth‐century philosophy was solid and esteemed, his best arguments had been superseded by what they characterize as more ‘insightful’ positions. More recent developments in epistemology and ethics in the twenty‐first century, however, help to show that Moore's characteristic arguments and methods remain unexpectedly steadfast – bloody, perhaps, but as it turns out, unbowed. Moore's role in the history of philosophy has in some ways been obscured by the coincidence of his proximity to Russell and Wittgenstein. Principia Ethica and The Principles of Mathematics were both published in 1903. Wittgenstein arrived in Cambridge for the first time in 1911 – the year Moore returned, after seven years with no permanent post in philosophy – and resurfaced to dominate the scene in 1929, ten years before Moore retired. No one could argue that Russell and Wittgenstein's work fails to merit the scholarly attention it has received, and no one would deny that their lives added engrossing detail to their intellectual biographies. The latter admittedly can hardly be said of Moore. But few philosophers today take the propositions of the Tractatus as authoritative; fewer still, if any, would claim that the logicist programme of Principia Mathematica was a success. Principia Ethica, however, is considered the locus classicus of contemporary meta‐ethics (though Moore himself would not recognize the term). Moore's epistemology (to which he turned in the 1920s and 1930s) tackled such bedrock issues such as scepticism about the external world and the nature of perception; these, along with the nature and viability of methodological common sense, form an enduring part of his reputation.