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Product Description
The long history of ethics has had as its driving force the goal of establishing basic principles to govern human behavior and against which our actions can be judged and determinations of responsibility made. But as the twentieth century began, Moore believed that it was time to get back to basics and to ask the relevant questions once again.
What is good? How do we define it? What do we mean when we call something 'good'? He contends that much of what serves as the foundation for ethics is in jeopardy - i.e., open to the "Naturalistic Fallacy" - because the question of defining "good" is not fully addressed. Here one of the most penetrating minds of modern philosophy seeks to clarify the fundamental elements of ethical discourse.
Amazon.com Review
It took us thousands of years of struggling with science and ethics before we thought to combine the two. While scientific ethics has advanced only gradually, the science of ethics burst into existence in 1903 with the publication of G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, which did for the study of morality what Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica did for mathematics--clarify old confusions and define terms that are still with us today. Practically overnight, ethicists turned into meta-ethicists, studying their own terms to establish theoretical ground on which to stand before trying to build any prescriptive edifices.
Moore begins by clearing up some of the most widely spread confusions plaguing moral philosophy, such as the naturalistic fallacy of Bentham, Spencer, and others who insisted on a precise, concrete definition of good. According to Moore, we have to settle for an intuitive assessment of goodness, and his arguments are powerfully compelling. Proceeding to define terms and territory that have lasted a century, he revolutionized philosophy and single-handedly altered the course of ethical studies for generations. While Principia Ethica isn't the easiest book to read (a dictionary of philosophy comes in handy for most of us), it is well worth careful study by anyone interested in the difference between right and wrong. --Rob Lightner
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