G.E. Moore was the Professor of
Philosophy at Cambridge in the early twentieth century when Cambridge was the
center of the philosophical universe. Fellow Cantabrigians included Alfred
North Whitehead, Bertrand (the 3rd Earl of) Russell (one of only a trio of
philosopher winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the others being Camus
and Sartre), and Ludwig Wittgenstein, later Moore’s successor in the
Professorship.
The Moore thesis for today is that
it is better that a Beautiful World (hereinafter “BW”) exist, even if so
distant that no one will ever see it. In this Moore was trying to refute
ethical hedonism, as then expounded by utilitarian theorists, who claimed that
the good (what is valuable in a way relevant for morality) is exhausted by desirable
states of consciousness. Henry Sidgwick, the most prominent of these theorists,
specifically contended that there could be no value in any beauty apart from
its contemplation by conscious beings. [Methods
of Ethics, book I, ch. IX, s. IV, pr. II, p.114).]
