Principia Ethica
- Downloads
- Under 100
- First published
- 1903
- Pages
- 201
Listen to Principia Ethica Audiobook Free
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Preface
9:47 -
Chapter 1: The Subject Matter of Ethics, part 1
29:12 -
Chapter 1: The Subject Matter of Ethics, part 2
29:05 -
Chapter 1: The Subject Matter of Ethics, part 3
34:33 -
Chapter 2: Naturalistic Ethics, part 1
29:26 -
Chapter 2: Naturalistic Ethics, part 2
27:34 -
Chapter 3: Hedonism, part 1
31:56 -
Chapter 3: Hedonism, part 2
36:22 -
Chapter 3: Hedonism, part 3
30:45 -
Chapter 3: Hedonism, part 4
34:10 -
Chapter 4: Metaphysical Ethics, part 1
28:19 -
Chapter 4: Metaphysical Ethics, part 2
29:06 -
Chapter 4: Metaphysical Ethics, part 3
27:19 -
Chapter 5: Ethics in Relation to Conduct, part 1
26:50 -
Chapter 5: Ethics in Relation to Conduct, part 2
27:57 -
Chapter 5: Ethics in Relation to Conduct, part 3
26:00 -
Chapter 5: Ethics in Relation to Conduct, part 4
29:20 -
Chapter 6: The Ideal, part 1
25:00 -
Chapter 6: The Ideal, part 2
27:38 -
Chapter 6: The Ideal, part 3
30:47 -
Chapter 6: The Ideal, part 4
31:06
Principia Ethica (1903) is a public domain work.
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About this book
G. E. Moore reshaped modern moral philosophy with this 1903 study, which begins from a deceptively simple question: what do we mean when we call something good? Moore argues that goodness is a basic, indefinable quality, and that most earlier ethics went wrong by identifying it with something else, such as pleasure or what nature intends. He names this mistake the naturalistic fallacy and defends the point with his famous open-question argument. From there he asks which things are good in themselves, concluding that personal affection and the appreciation of beauty rank highest. The book helped launch analytic philosophy and left a deep mark on the Bloomsbury Group.
From the opening pages
The Subject-Matter of Ethics
1. It is very easy to point out some among our everyday judgments, with the truth of which Ethics is undoubtedly concerned. Whenever we say, “So-and-so is a good man,” or “That fellow is a villain”; whenever we ask, “What ought I to do?” or “Is it wrong for me to do like this?”; whenever we hazard such remarks as “Temperance is a virtue and drunkenness a vice”—it is undoubtedly the business of Ethics to discuss such questions and such statements; to argue what is the true answer when we ask what it is right to do, and to give reasons for thinking that our statements about the character of persons or the morality of actions are true or false. In the vast majority of cases, where we make statements involving any of the terms “virtue,” “vice,” “duty,” “right,” “ought,” “good,” “bad,” we are making ethical judgments; and if we wish to discuss their truth, we shall be discussing a point of Ethics.
So much as this is not disputed; but it falls very far short of defining the province of Ethics. That province may indeed be defined as the whole truth about that which is at the same time common to all such judgments and peculiar to them. But we have still to ask the question: What is it that is thus common and peculiar? And this is a question to which very different answers have been given by ethical philosophers of acknowledged reputation, and none of them, perhaps, completely satisfactory.
2. If we take such examples as those given above, we shall not be far wrong in saying that they are all of them concerned with the question of “conduct”—with the question, what, in the conduct of us, human beings, is good, and what is bad, what is right, and what is wrong. For when we say that a man is good, we commonly mean that he acts rightly; when we say that drunkenness is a vice, we commonly mean that to get drunk is a wrong or wicked action. And this discussion of human conduct is, in fact, that with which the name “Ethics” is most intimately associated. It is so associated by derivation; and conduct is undoubtedly by far the commonest and most generally interesting object of ethical judgments.
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Book facts
- Author
- G. E. Moore
- First published
- 1903
- Reading time
- About 7 hours
- Pages
- 201
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Ethics
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook
- Audio read by
- Fredrik Karlsson