''Principia Ethica'' is a 1903 book by the British philosopher
G. E. Moore
George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...
, in which the author insists on the indefinability of "good" and provides an exposition of the
naturalistic fallacy
In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as ''pleasant'' or ''desirable'', is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in ...
. ''Principia Ethica'' was influential, and Moore's arguments were long regarded as path-breaking advances in moral philosophy, though they have been seen as less impressive and durable than his contributions in other fields.
Publication history
''Principia Ethica'' was first published in October 1903 by
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
. It was reprinted in 1922 and 1929. An Italian translation by
Gianni Vattimo
Gianteresio Vattimo (born 4 January 1936) is an Italian philosopher and politician.
Biography
Gianteresio Vattimo was born in Turin, Piedmont. He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin, and graduat ...
, with a preface by
Nicola Abbagnano
Nicola Abbagnano (; 15 July 1901 – 9 September 1990) was an Italian existential philosopher.
Life
Nicola Abbagnano was born in Salerno on 15 July 1901. He was the first-born son of a middle-class professional family. His father was a practi ...
, was published by
Bompiani
Bompiani is an Italian publishing house based in Milan. It was founded in 1929 by Valentino Bompiani.
In 1990, Bompiani became part of the RCS MediaGroup. It was sold in 2015 to the Giunti Group. It is widely regarded as one of the leading literar ...
in 1964.
Summary
Moore suggests that ethics is about three basic questions: (1) "what is good?", (2) "what things are good or bad in themselves?", and (3) "what is good as a means?".
What is good
The first question is concerned with the nature or definition of the term "good". Moore insists that this term is simple and indefinable. But two forms of goodness have to be distinguished: things that are
good in themselves or intrinsically good and things that are
good as causal means to other things. Our knowledge of ''value in itself'' comes from ''self-evident intuitions'' and is not inferred from other things, unlike our knowledge of ''goodness as a means'' or of ''duties''. Among the things that are good in themselves, there is an important difference between the ''value of a whole'' and the ''values of its parts''. It is often assumed that the value of a whole just consists in the sum of the values of its parts. Moore rejects this view and insists that it fails for certain types of wholes: "organic unities" or "organic wholes".
Cases of
retributive justice are examples of ''organic wholes''. Such cases are wholes comprising two negative things, a morally vicious person and pain inflicted on this person as punishment. But the value ''on the whole'' is less negative (or maybe even positive) than the sum of the values of the two parts. Again we have to depend on our intuitions to determine how the intrinsic value of a whole differs from the sum of the values of its parts.
What things are good or bad in themselves
The second question of ethics asks about what kinds of things are good in themselves. Moore discusses various traditional answers to this question, especially naturalism, which he contrasts with his own approach. The main problem with naturalism in ethics is its tendency to identify value with natural properties, like ''pleasure'' in
hedonism
Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. ''Psychological'' or ''motivational hedonism'' claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decr ...
or ''being more evolved'' in "Evolutionistic Ethics". He accuses such positions of committing the ''naturalistic fallacy'' in trying to define the term "good", an unanalyzable term according to Moore, in terms of natural properties. If such definitions were true, then they would be uninformative
tautologies, "'Pleasure is good' would be equivalent to 'Pleasure is pleasure'". But, Moore argues, this is not the case, it is not a tautology but an
open question whether such sentences are true. This is why the definition above and naturalism with it fails.
Moore agrees with hedonism that pleasure is good in itself, but it is not the only intrinsically valuable thing. Another important good that is valuable in itself is beauty, for example, the beauty of mountains, rivers and sunsets. Moore proposes a thought experiment, the "method of isolation", as a test to determine whether something has intrinsic value. The test is meant to remove any considerations of the thing being good as a means by isolating the intrinsic values.
The method consists in imagining a world that contains only the thing in question, for example, a world composed only of a beautiful landscape. Moore argues that such a world would be better than an ugly world, even though no one is there to enjoy it in either case, which is to show that pleasure is not the only thing good in itself.
What is good as a means
Having answered the second question of ethics, Moore proceeds to the third question: "What is good as a means?". This question is of particular relevance since it includes the domain traditionally associated with ethics: "What ought we to do?". For this it is necessary to further limit the third question since the main interest is in "actions which it is possible for most men to perform, if only they will them; and with regard to these, it does not ask merely, which among them will have some good or bad result, but which, among all the actions possible to volition at any moment, will produce the best total result". So right acts are those producing the most good. The difficulty with this is that the consequences of most actions are too vast for us to properly take into account, especially the long-term consequences. Because of this, Moore suggests that the definition of ''duty'' is limited to what generally produces better results than probable alternatives in a comparatively near future. As the reference to causal means suggests, a detailed empirical investigation into the consequences of actions is necessary to determine what our duties are, it is not accessible to self-evident intuitive insight. Whether a given rule of action turns out to be a ''duty'' depends to some extent on the conditions of the corresponding society but ''duties'' agree mostly with what common-sense recommends. ''Virtues'', like honesty, can in turn be defined as ''permanent dispositions'' to perform duties.
Reception
''Principia Ethica'' was influential, and helped to convince many people that claims about morality cannot be derived from statements of fact.
Clive Bell
Arthur Clive Heward Bell (16 September 1881 – 17 September 1964) was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group. He developed the art theory known as significant form.
Biography Origins
Bell was born in East ...
considered that through his opposition to Spencer and Mill, Moore had freed his generation from
utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charact ...
. ''Principia Ethica'' was the bible of the
Bloomsbury Group, and the philosophical foundation of their aesthetic values.
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own wo ...
considered that it offered a way of continuing living in a meaningless world. Moore's
aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...
idea of the organic whole provided artistic guidance for modernists like
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
, and informed Bell's aesthetics.
Moore's
ethical intuitionism
Ethical intuitionism (also called moral intuitionism) is a view or family of views in moral epistemology (and, on some definitions, metaphysics). It is foundationalism applied to moral knowledge, the thesis that some moral truths can be known no ...
has been seen as opening the road for noncognitive views of morality, such as
emotivism
Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positi ...
.
In ''
A Theory of Justice
''A Theory of Justice'' is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributi ...
'' (1971),
John Rawls
John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1 ...
compares Moore's views to those of
Hastings Rashdall
Hastings Rashdall (24 June 1858 – 9 February 1924) was an English philosopher, theologian, historian, and Anglican priest. He expounded a theory known as ideal utilitarianism, and he was a major historian of the universities of the Middle A ...
in his ''
The Theory of Good and Evil'' (1907). Moore's views have also been compared to those of
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters ...
,
Max Scheler
Max Ferdinand Scheler (; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers,Davis, Zach ...
, and
Nicolai Hartmann
Paul Nicolai Hartmann (; 20 February 1882 – 9 October 1950) was a Baltic German philosopher. He is regarded as a key representative of critical realism and as one of the most important twentieth-century metaphysicians.
Biography
Hartmann was ...
.
''Principia Ethica'' has been seen by
Geoffrey Warnock as less impressive and durable than Moore's contributions in fields outside ethics.
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...
, 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.
References
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Further reading
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External links
eTextof ''Principia Ethica''
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{{Authority control
1903 non-fiction books
Analytic philosophy literature
English-language books
English non-fiction books
Ethics books
Cambridge University Press books