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Principia Ethica

Principia Ethica is a book written in 1903 by British philosopher, G. E. Moore. Moore questions a fundamental pillar of ethics, specifically what the definition of "good" is. He concludes that "good" is indefinable because any attempts to do so commit the naturalistic fallacy. Principia Ethica was influential, with Moore's arguments being considered ground-breaking advances in the field of moral philosophy.

Author

G. E. Moore

Cambridge University Press

October 1903

Publication history[edit]

Principia Ethica was first published in October 1903 by Cambridge University Press.[1][2] It was reprinted in 1922 and 1929.[1] An Italian translation by Gianni Vattimo, with a preface by Nicola Abbagnano, was published by Bompiani in 1964.[3]

Reception[edit]

Principia Ethica was influential,[13] and helped to convince many people that claims about morality cannot be derived from statements of fact.[22] Clive Bell considered that through his opposition to Spencer and Mill, Moore had freed his generation from utilitarianism.[23] Principia Ethica was the bible of the Bloomsbury Group,[23][24] and the philosophical foundation of their aesthetic values. Leonard Woolf considered that it offered a way of continuing living in a meaningless world.[25] Moore's aesthetic idea of the organic whole provided artistic guidance for modernists like Virginia Woolf,[26] and informed Bell's aesthetics.[27]


Moore's ethical intuitionism has been seen as opening the road for noncognitive views of morality, such as emotivism.[28]


In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls compares Moore's views to those of Hastings Rashdall in his The Theory of Good and Evil (1907).[29] Moore's views have also been compared to those of Franz Brentano, Max Scheler, and Nicolai Hartmann.[20]


Principia Ethica has been seen by Geoffrey Warnock as less impressive and durable than Moore's contributions in fields outside ethics.[13] John Maynard Keynes, an early devotee of Principia Ethica, would in his 1938 paper 'My Early Beliefs' repudiate as Utopian Moore's underlying belief in human reasonableness and decency.[30]

, ed. (1993). Principia Ethica. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-44378-4. OCLC 27339088.

Baldwin, Thomas

Baldwin, Thomas (1998). "Moore, George Edward". In Craig, Edward (ed.). . Vol. 6. Routledge. ISBN 0415-07310-3.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Bates, Stanley (24 February 2003). "Stanley Cavell and Ethics". In Eldridge, Richard (ed.). Stanley Cavell. . pp. 15–47. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511613944.003. ISBN 978-0-521-77025-5.

Cambridge University Press

(1904). "Review of Principia Ethica". Mind. 13 (50): 254–261. doi:10.1093/mind/XIII.1.254. ISSN 0026-4423. JSTOR 2248287.

Bosanquet, Bernard

Briggs, Julia (14 June 2006). "Reading People, Reading Texts: 'Byron and Mr Briggs'". Reading Virginia Woolf. . pp. 63–77. doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624348.003.0005. ISBN 978-0-7486-2434-8.

Edinburgh University Press

Bywater, William G. (1975). . Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-1534-8. OCLC 1093692.

Clive Bell's Eye

Dean, J. T. (April 1996). "Clive Bell and G. E. Moore: The Good of Art". . 36 (2): 135–145. doi:10.1093/bjaesthetics/36.2.135. ISSN 0007-0904.

British Journal of Aesthetics

Gargani, Aldo G. (1966). "Review of Principia Ethica". Belfagor (in Italian). 21 (3): 352–357.  0005-8351. JSTOR 26141788.

ISSN

(2015). "Moore's Moral Philosophy". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 2 January 2021.

Hurka, Thomas

(1999). Virginia Woolf. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-375-70136-2. OCLC 42488009.

Lee, Hermione

Moore, George Edward (1903). . Project Gutenberg.

Principia Ethica

(1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-04260-5. OCLC 441343524.

Rawls, John

, ed. (1952). The Philosophy of G. E. Moore. Tudor Publishing Company. OCLC 1150949106.

Schilpp, Paul Arthur

(1997). "Modern Moral Philosophy". In Singer, Peter (ed.). A Companion to Ethics. Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18785-5.

Schneewind, J. B.

Stratton-Lake, Philip (2014). "Principia Ethica". In Shand, John (ed.). . Vol. 4. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315710389. ISBN 978-1-315-47893-7. OCLC 1258257960.

Central Works of Philosophy

Sylvester, Robert Peter (1990). . Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-4399-0169-4. OCLC 472409433.

The Moral Philosophy of G. E. Moore

(1978). Ethics Since 1900 (3d ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-289108-1. OCLC 3813097.

Warnock, Mary

Warnock, Geoffrey (1995). "Moore, George Edward". In Honderich, Ted (ed.). . Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 585. ISBN 0-19-866132-0.

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

(1973) [1956]. "Old Friends". Civilization and Old Friends. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-04206-5. OCLC 963209.

Bell, Clive

Rosenbaum, S. P., ed. (1995). . University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4875-7376-8. OCLC 1085567888.

The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs and Commentary

at Standard Ebooks

Principia Ethica

at Project Gutenberg

Principia Ethica

public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Principia Ethica