George Edward Moore Biography Quotes 7 Report mistakes

7 Quotes
Known as	G. E. Moore
Occup.	Philosopher
From	England
Born	November 4, 1873 London, England
Died	October 24, 1958 Cambridge, England
Aged	84 years

Early life and education
George Edward Moore was born in 1873 in England and became one of the central figures of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. He was educated at Dulwich College and went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he first studied classics before turning to philosophy. At Cambridge he encountered a circle of unusually gifted contemporaries, among them Bertrand Russell, and joined the conversation society known as the Cambridge Apostles. These friendships and debates would shape the direction of his thought and the course of analytic philosophy in the English-speaking world.

Turning from idealism
When Moore began his career, British philosophy was dominated by forms of absolute idealism associated with figures such as F. H. Bradley and, at Cambridge, J. M. E. McTaggart. Moore became increasingly dissatisfied with their sweeping metaphysical claims and the abstruse style in which they were defended. In a series of early papers, culminating in The Refutation of Idealism (1903), he argued that the data of consciousness do not collapse into ideas and that the existence of the external world is not hostage to philosophical constructions. His careful arguments and plain prose signaled a new philosophical temperament. Russell later credited Moore with helping to break the hold of idealism on British philosophy, a shift that opened the path to analytic approaches grounded in clarity, analysis, and respect for common experience.

Principia Ethica and the ethics of the good
Moore's most famous book, Principia Ethica (1903), transformed moral philosophy. He argued that good is a simple, non-natural property that cannot be reduced to or defined in terms of natural or psychological facts, a position dramatized by his open question argument. He maintained that in ethics we make direct, non-inferential value judgments, and he introduced the idea of organic unities, emphasizing that the value of a whole is not necessarily the sum of its parts. While Moore admired aspects of Henry Sidgwick's work, he departed from attempts to ground the good in natural or metaphysical systems. Principia Ethica had extraordinary cultural reach: members of the Bloomsbury Group, including John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and E. M. Forster, found in Moore's emphasis on intrinsic value and friendship a philosophical charter for their artistic and personal experiments.

Common sense and the external world
Moore's name is also tied to a vigorous defense of common sense. In A Defence of Common Sense, he catalogued propositions that ordinary people know with certainty, such as the existence of his own body and other people. In Proof of an External World, he offered his famous hand-raising demonstration: here is one hand, and here is another; therefore, there exists an external world. Though deceptively simple, these arguments pressed philosophers to explain how radical skepticism could be reconciled with everyday knowledge. Moore also identified the phenomenon that came to be known as Moore's paradox, highlighting the oddity of asserting sentences like "It is raining but I do not believe that it is raining", a puzzle that later engaged Ludwig Wittgenstein and influenced work in philosophy of language.

Cambridge colleague, editor, and exemplar
Moore spent most of his professional life at Cambridge, where he eventually held a professorship and exercised a quiet, exacting influence through seminars and the Moral Sciences Club. He was renowned for fairness, patience, and intellectual scrupulousness in discussion. For more than two decades he edited the journal Mind, setting standards of clarity and argument that shaped the field. His editorial stewardship influenced colleagues and younger philosophers across Britain and beyond, including contemporaries such as C. D. Broad and Frank P. Ramsey, who engaged with his views while developing their own.

Relations with Russell and Wittgenstein
Moore's long friendship with Bertrand Russell was crucial to the emergence of analytic philosophy. Though they differed in temperament and emphasis, both insisted on precision and the analysis of concepts. Moore also played a significant role in Cambridge's reception of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He followed Wittgenstein's evolving ideas with interest and was among those responsible for his examination when Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge. The interplay among Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein created a distinctive intellectual atmosphere in which questions of meaning, knowledge, and value could be pursued with new rigor.

Personal life
Moore married and had two children; one of his sons, Nicholas Moore, became a poet. Friends and students often described Moore as modest, candid, and almost painfully honest in argument, qualities that became part of the ideal of philosophical conduct for several generations. Despite his public authority, he remained free of polemics and was wary of grand systems, preferring careful distinctions and incremental progress.

Later years and legacy
Moore continued to write and teach into the mid-twentieth century, refining his views on perception, certainty, and ethics. He died in 1958, closely associated to the end with Cambridge. His legacy endures in several strands: the metaethical framework of non-naturalism and the open question argument; the doctrine of organic unities; the methodological commitment to plain speech and careful analysis; and the idea that philosophical skepticism must be accountable to what we pre-theoretically know. His works remain touchstones for discussions of moral realism, the analysis of knowledge, and the nature of philosophical method. Through colleagues, students, and readers ranging from Russell and Wittgenstein to Keynes and the Bloomsbury writers, Moore helped define the tone and ambitions of modern analytic philosophy.

Our collection contains 7 quotes who is written by George, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Faith - Art - Soulmate.

Other people realated to George: F. H. Bradley (Philosopher), Clive Bell (Critic), Charles D. Broad (Philosopher)

George Edward Moore Famous Works