G. E. Moore (1873–1958)

I don't have the proper context in philosophical reading to know where the ideas in Moore's book fit into the larger philosophy canon, but I found this book to be worthwhile from a dabbler's perspective. Moore discusses the purpose of ethics, the naturalistic fallacy, hedonism, and the ideal. He states that good "does denote a simple and indefinable notion" and explains the problems that occur when we identify good with something other than good. It seems that this concept would be important to remember. Elements of both hedonism and the naturalistic fallacy seem to be included in many works of literary fiction, but I haven't particularly labeled the naturalistic fallacy in past reading. Moore is definitely recommended but not easy.… (more)

Asking ethical questions is very difficult because clarity is required for clear answers, and clarifying the questions one posed is an extremely difficult task. This observation is true also for other philosophical fields where one retreats to the college dictum: "The answer to the question is conditioned by the terms of the question." While that may seem self-evident upon reflection, a surprising number of well-educated moderns working in critical ethical areas seem to stumble clumsily over these simple caveats.… (more)

This is a short book on Ethics, in which the author discusses several views of ethics, arguments against them, and defenses against some of the arguments that are defensible. I found very little to disagree with, and the book covers most of the important areas, such as free-will, utilitarianism, intrinsic value, right and wrong, and objective moral judgments.
Moore is very clear in the way that he rigorously defines what he is trying to say, and what he doesn't mean, so that the reader only has themselves to blame if they don't understand. I don't think that that there was anything in this book that should be thought of as controversial, with all the issues of ethics that are really left still open labelled as such. This of course, includes a lot of important things, but not as many as some might think, with several misconceptions being well kicked down.
It is a shame that this is a short book, but this does make it terrific introduction piece of modern ethics. There are books which deal with the individual topics raised here in more detail, but this one makes a good overview, and has a lot of sense in it, and good arguments.… (more)