Collection: Philosophical Papers

Overview
The volume collects G. E. Moore's most influential essays across ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, tracing the argumentative style that helped define early analytic philosophy. Selections range from sharp, early refutations of idealism and defenses of common-sense beliefs to sustained discussions of value, meaning, and the conditions for knowledge. The pieces are presented with editorial framing that situates each essay within Moore's career and the wider debates of the twentieth century.
Moore's prose is characteristically crisp and plainspoken; he favors careful distinctions, direct counterexamples, and relentless attention to ordinary language and common-sense propositions. Rather than offering a single, unified doctrine, the collection exhibits a consistent method: close conceptual analysis aimed at dissolving philosophical confusions by making implicit assumptions explicit and testing them against careful intuitions.

Core arguments and themes
A central strand is epistemology and metaphysics, where Moore mounts straightforward defenses of the external world and the reality of ordinary objects. He famously insists that some propositions about the external world are more certain than the skeptical premises used to deny them, and he gives what amount to common-sense proofs for the existence of material objects. Closely related are his critiques of idealism and his efforts to clarify the relations between sense-data, perception, and judgment. Rather than elaborate transcendental systems, Moore prefers to show where opponents rely on equivocations or unwarranted inferential moves.
Ethical theory receives sustained attention through Moore's development and refinement of the non-naturalistic conception of value. He insists that "good" is a simple, non-natural property that cannot be defined reductively in terms of natural properties like pleasure or fitness. The open-question argument and the identification of the naturalistic fallacy function together to defend a moral vocabulary that resists reductive analysis and that requires careful, non-circular justification. Moore balances these theoretical claims with reflections on moral knowledge and the methods by which evaluative truths are to be discerned.
Methodological issues recur throughout: the role of intuition, the limits of definition, and the demand for conceptual clarity. Moore rejects grand speculative systems that trade on vague terms, and he demonstrates how precise analytic moves uncover hidden premises. At the same time he remains tied to ordinary judgments and insists that philosophy must respect manifest truths unless a compelling reason shows they are false.

Legacy and influence
The collection captures why Moore became a touchstone for later analytic philosophers: his combination of argumentative rigor, reliance on intuitive judgments, and scepticism about metaphysical grandstanding shaped debates in ethics, philosophy of language, and epistemology. Moore's defense of common-sense realism provided a durable counterpoint to more radical skeptical and idealist positions, while his views on value helped generate subsequent work on non-naturalism, intuitionism, and the analytic treatment of ethical predicates.
Readers encounter here not merely a set of claims but a way of philosophizing that prizes small, decisive moves over sweeping theory. The essays continue to be assigned and discussed because they model how to interrogate philosophical problems through careful example, clear distinction, and argument that appeals to what can be plainly recognized. The collection remains a foundational source for understanding the emergence and early consolidation of analytic philosophy.