Lectures on Metaphysics, 1934-1935

by G.E. Moore, Margaret MacDonald, Alice Ambrose (editor)

These notes of G. E. Moore's lectures for the three terms of 1934-1935 were compiled by Alice Ambrose, then Student of Newnham College, and Margaret Macdonald, then Fellow of Girton College. The lectures cover a wealth of interrelated topics, and provide instances of the analyses which made Moore «the father of the analytic school.» Since his analyses of such concepts as material objects, sense data, and truth rest on the ordinary use of expressions for these concepts, «ordinary language» philosophers found in him their champion. Moore examines the views of Broad, Russell, F. P. Ramsey, W. E. Johnson, and John Wisdom.

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

George Edward "G. E." Moore OM, FBA was philosopher, one of the founders of the analytic tradition along with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and (before them) Gottlob Frege. With Russell, he led the turn away from idealism in British philosophy, and became well known for his advocacy of common sense concepts, his contributions to ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, and "his exceptional personality and moral character." He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, highly influential among (though not a member of) the Bloomsbury Group, and the editor of the influential journal Mind. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1918. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, from 1894, and the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club.