Principia Ethica by G. E. Moore

Ethics for the Here and Now

The study of ethics is one central element or study found in philosophy, and is often something the ‘real world’ covets yet knows little about. In a philosophy class, one might read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, or study Kant’s categorical imperatives, for instance. Of course, there’s Bentham and Mill’s utilitarian ethics and newer takes such as care and communitarian ethics. From this, we can already see that no single ethic fits the bill for everyone and every context.

One of the books I read on the subject, aside from works on each of the above ethics, was G. E. Moore’s classic Principia Ethica. Moore’s perspective of ethics is interesting to me given his contrast between a naturalistic (I would consider Aristotelian, although he does not do so) ethic, a hedonistic (perhaps Epicurean or utilitarian) ethic, and a metaphysical (I would consider Platonist, which he mentions) ethic.

He sums up a long-held dichotomy in philosophy: The ‘ hic et nunc’ versus the ‘eternal.’ This is the contrast between the ‘here and now,’ temporal view of human existence, and the eternal, universal existence that transcends our present, physical bounds. In some ways, Moore’s summation embodies the debate between the classical sophists and the philosophers up until the Enlightenment (the philosophical shift back toward humans as the only universal rather than something ‘out there’ began with David Hume and Voltaire, culminating in Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and…