Dates

• Existence: 1873 - 1958

Biography

George Edward Moore (1873-1958), philosopher, was born on 4 November 1873 in Upper Norwood, London, one of the seven children of Dr Daniel Moore and his second wife Henrietta Sturge. He was educated at Dulwich College, 1882-1892, and Trinity College, Cambridge (Classical Tripos, part I, 1894; Moral Sciences Tripos, part II, 1896). He then worked for a Trinity College Prize Fellowship, which he obtained in 1898 with a dissertation on Kant's Ethics. The six years of the fellowship enabled him to write articles and reviews, lecture on Kant at the London School of Philosophy and Social Ethics, and publish Principia ethica (1903). He also gave papers to Cambridge University societies, such as the Moral Sciences Club, and was an active member of the Cambridge Conversazione Society (the 'Apostles') from 1894. Moore had a small private income, and when his Fellowship ended in 1904 he was able to continue studying philosophy, living first with a friend, A.J. Ainsworth, in Edinburgh, and from 1908 with his sister Hettie in Richmond. He continued to write articles, published Ethics (1912), read papers to the Aristotelian Society, and lectured at Morley College. In 1911 he returned to Cambridge as University Lecturer in Moral Science, and in 1925 was appointed Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic. He retired in 1939, and spent the years 1940-1944 in the U.S.A. as visiting Professor at several Universities. He published Philosophical studies (1922), Some main problems of philosophy (1953), and collaborated with P.A. Schilpp in the production of The philosophy of G.E. Moore (1942). Philosophical papers (1959), prepared by Moore, was published after his death. He was editor of the journal Mind from 1921 to 1947. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1951, and died in Cambridge on 24 October 1958. He married Dorothy Ely on 27 December 1916 and had two sons, Nicholas (1918-1986) and Timothy (1922- ).

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