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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
It is just over eighty years since G. E. Moore published Principia Ethica, thereby changing English-speaking moral philosophy for the rest of the century. Just why and how was that book so important?
1 I borrowed this quotation to put at the head of an article called ‘The Neutrality of the Moral Philosopher’ (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 48, 1974)Google Scholar and I hope Mr Stoppard will not mind if I keep it a little longer; it has not gone out of date. That article dealt with topics covered in section 4 of the present one. In case some of what I say here looks casual, perhaps I should also mention my article ‘The Absence of a Gap between Facts and Values’ (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. LIV, 1980) whose topic is obvious, and several papers in my book Heart and Mind (Harvester Press, 1981) particularly ‘On Trying Out One's New Sword’, which discusses the idea that it is impossible to make moral judgments. This is also a central theme of my book Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), developing views which I had put forward in Beast and Man (Harvester, 1979—centrally in section 9. These views have been criticized by John Cottingham in ‘Neo-Naturalism and its Pitfalls’, Philosophy 58, No. 226 (October 1983).
2 See his Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy (Fontana Masterguides, 1985), 16.Google Scholar
3 Ayer's opening words, ‘The traditional disputes of philosophers are for the most part as unwarranted as they are unfruitful’ are comparable, but in later life he has taken considerable trouble to revise and restate his views. Moore, by contrast, just let his early ethical pronouncements lie, and since he went on to become a great philosopher, his later prestige naturally protected them.
4 Both these couplets seem to be isolated epigrams.
5 On Huxley, see an admirable discussion on ‘Thomas Henry Huxley: The War Between Science and Religion’ by Gilley, Sheridan and Loades, Ann, Journal of Religion 61, No. 3 (July 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 The most impressive testimonial, with some very shrewd criticism, is of course that of Maynard Keynes—‘My Early Beliefs’ in his Two Memoirs (Rupert Hart-Davies, 1949). Others from Leonard Woolf (in Sowing), Clive, Bell, Lytton, Strachey, Bertrand, Russell and many other less expected people are collected by Paul Levy in the opening pages of his book Moore: G. E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles (Holt, , Rinehardt and Winston, New York, 1979Google Scholar). He also cites a complaint from Beatrice Webb, part of which runs as follows—‘… Principia Ethica—a book they all talk of as “The Truth”! I never can see anything in it, except a metaphysical justification for doing what you like and what other people disapprove of! So far as I can understand the philosophy it is a denial of the scientific method and of religion—as a rule that is the net result on the minds of young men—it seems to disintegrate their intellects and characters’ (quoted from The Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Vol. II, Norman Mackenzie (ed.) (Cambridge and London, 1978).Google Scholar
7 I can say nothing further about this aesthetic and contemplative moral position here, but, as I have explained in ‘G. E. Moore on the Ideal’ in Heart and Mind (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981), I take it very seriously and wish it had had more attention from philosophers. See also Iris Murdoch's discussions of it in The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).Google ScholarPubMed
8 See ‘Brute Facts’ by G. E. M., Anscombe, Analysis 19 (1958).Google Scholar
9 Life of Johnson, Vol. 2 (Everyman edition), 148.Google ScholarPubMed
10 As Bernard Williams remarks, since it is neither naturalistic nor a fallacy, ‘it is hard to think of any other widely used phrase in the history of philosophy that is such a spectacular misnomer’ (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p.121). I therefore use shudder-quotes; it seems idle to try to find a better name now.Google ScholarPubMed
11 In the case of science too, Stevenson's idea of the philosophic supervisor who ‘sends others to their work with clearer heads’ without himself studying the subject has been less than satisfactory.
12 PrincipiaEthica, Ch. 5, p. 147.
13 Ibid., p. 155.
14 Ibid., pp. 174-6, 182.
15 See especially their intervention at the beginning of Book 2, sections 357-367.
16 See the Preface to his Sermons, sections 24-29, and the whole of Sermon 3.Google Scholar
17 The peculiarly ill-judged attacks on Mill are in Chapter 3, pp. 64-72, 77 and 102. They are interspersed with some shrewd and admirable criticisms of Hedonism in general. Because Moore had a real sympathy with Hedonism, these criticisms, along with the last chapter, are to my mind the best parts of the book.
18 It is a prime theme of Skinner's, manifesto, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (London: Cape, 1972) and has been central to all his efforts at penal reform. For Williams, , see below, section 9.Google Scholar
19 This indeed is what he does discuss in his admirable investigation of excuses (Nicomachean Ethics III, chs 1-5).
20 Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p. 194.Google ScholarPubMed
21 Ibid., p. 177.
22 See ‘The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn’ in Philosophy 49, No. 188 (April 1974).Google ScholarPubMed
23 St Matthew's Gospel, 7.1.
24 I have tried to point out these difficulties in ‘Philosophizing out in the World’ in Social Research 52, No. 3 (Autumn 1985), 437–470.Google ScholarPubMed
25 See ‘The Defence of Common Sense’ in his Philosophical Papers (London: Allen andUnwin, 1959), 32–60.Google ScholarPubMed