FOUNDING ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY - INTRODUCING THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY

MOORE, GEORGE EDWARD.

Principia Ethica.

Cambridge, 1903. 8vo. Orig. brown full cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Gilt armorial centre-piece to front board (indicating that this was a prize from "Coll. di Joh. Bapt."). A bit of bumping to capitals and corners, otherwise fine. Inner hinges slightly weak and a few marginal pencil annotations. XXVII, (1), 232 pp.

First edition of Moore's seminal magnum opus, his hugely influential "Principia Ethica", which helped found analytic philosophy and introduced and named the "naturalistic fallacy".

"Moore's "Principia Ethica" (1903) is a landmark in the history of ethics. Its impact and influence on subsequent ethical theory, at least in Anglo-American philosophy, have been tremendous. Its specific doctrines of the indefinability of good and of the naturalistic fallacy, whether reinforced, amended, or even rejected, by later theorists, have served as the starting points of much of twentieth century philosophy." (Morris Weitz, 20th-Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition, (1966), p. 68).

George Edward Moore (1873-1958) is one of the most influential twentieth century philosophers, and his contributions to analytic philosophy can be compared only to those of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Frege, with whom he founded this philosophical discipline. His impact on Anglo-American philosophy in the 20th century is unsurpassed.

"Principia Ethica" is the most important of Moore's works. In this work, he makes use of analysis to establish the main doctrines of the book, and thereby lays one of the cornerstones of analytic philosophy. Moore here applies logic to ethics and shows us how this can provide a better foundation for ethics. Moore begins by showing that analysis will reveal to us that "good" is a simple, non-natural, and indefinable property, which cannot itself be defined and analyzed, because it is not a complex object that can be divided, but a simple object of thought and goes on to define ethics as an inquiry into what is good. He furthermore shows how sometimes false premises in the definition of good lead to false conclusions about ethical behavior and he introduces his seminal concept "naturalistic fallacy", which is defined as the error of assuming that "good" can be defined by naming various properties of things which we believe to be good. "Naturalism", according to Moore falsely assumes to have defined "good" and is therefore unable to provide any logical reason for any principle of ethics.

"It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely WHAT question it is which you desire to answer. " (Moore, Preface, p. VIII).

"The influence [of "Principia Ethics"] was not only overwhelming; it was exciting, exhilarating, the beginning of a renaissance, the opening of a new heaven on a new earth, we were the forerunners of a new dispensation, we were not afraid of anything." (Keynes).

Order-nr.: 51385