Brian Hutchinson

This 2001 book is a comprehensive study of the ethics of G. E. Moore, the most important English-speaking ethicist of the twentieth century. Moore's ethical project, set out in his seminal text Principia Ethica, is to preserve common moral insight from scepticism and, in effect, persuade his readers to accept the objective character of goodness. Brian Hutchinson explores Moore's arguments in detail and in the process relates the ethical thought to Moore's anti-sceptical epistemology. Moore was, without perhaps fully realizing it, sceptical about the very enterprise of philosophy itself, and in this regard, as Brian Hutchinson reveals, was much closer in his thinking to Wittgenstein than has been previously realized. This book shows Moore's ethical work to be much richer and more sophisticated than his critics have acknowledged.

This dissertation examines the tension in the ethics of G. E. Moore arising from his dual role of revolutionary and conservative. He is revolutionary in arguing that all ethicists until Sidgwick have made an elementary error; conservative in returning them to their common sense awareness of good, which, despite their confusions, they never completely lost. We raise and resolve the following questions: If common sense ethical awareness is well-grounded and ethicists never completely lose it, why have they gone so far astray? If they have gone astray, how can Moore be hopeful of delivering them of their errors? We argue that Moore overestimates the revolutionary features of his thought. We make him less revolutionary and more convincing by enriching his methodology and also by fleshing out his moral psychology. We effect the latter task by examining and elaborating on his views on the connection of desire and the will to good. Finally, however, Moore's argument against ethical egoism makes him an extreme revolutionary and no friend of common sense