Principia Ethica.

First edition. 8vo. xxvii, [1, blank], pp. Original brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top and fore edges untrimmed (faint offsetting to endpapers, a few gatherings roughly opened, tips of spine and corners slightly worn, dent to fore edge of front cover, small amount of faint marking to rear cover, still a good copy overall). Cambridge, at the University Press.

The principal work by the Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore in which he sought to clarify what is meant by people using moral terms, working from the basis that the good is 'simple, unanalyzable, and indefinable'. Moore was here the principal author of the idea of the naturalistic fallacy, that is, the fallacy of treating any term, for example 'good', as if it were the name of a natural property.

The text marked a major departure from the idealist metaphysics that dominated British philosophy at the time, favouring instead a 'common sense' realist position according to our ordinary common-sense view of the world is largely correct.

Stock Code: 251850