I figured that the first semi-substantive post should give some indication as to the direction that the rest will be taking. But I can’t think of anything. So I’m just going to update and re-post something that I posted a long time ago at a different blog. This is, after all, stuff that I’m still thinking about . . .
For some time now, I’ve been interested in looking into the relationship between Thomas Reid and G. E. Moore and their thoughts on the task of philosophy and its duty to common sense. Here’s Reid:
Such principles [of common sense] are older, and of more authority, than Philosophy: she rests upon them as her basis, not they upon her. If she could overturn them, she must be buried in their ruins; but all the engines of philosophical subtlety are too weak for this purpose; and the attempt is no less ridiculous, than if a mechanic should contrive an axis in peritrochio to remove the earth out of its place. [Reid, Inquiry, ed. Derek Brookes (University Park, Pennsylvania: PSUP, 1997), 5: 21.]
Good stuff.
Anyway, a while ago, I took part in a directed reading of early 20th century metaethics. We began, of course, with Moore, and I made an effort to supplement my reading of Principia Ethica with some exegetical/critical stuff I had lying around. This is from the introduction of Brian Hutchinson’s G. E. Moore’s Ethical Theory (Cambridge: CUP, 2001):
Its being an expression of the thought that wisdom lies in accepting the simple, obvious truth makes Principia problematic to many philosophers. Most philosophers instinctively regard themselves as challengers rather than defenders of what all people, including philosophers, instinctively believe. It is thus difficult for them to avoid concluding that even if these beliefs are not simply jettisoned as terminally simpleminded, in the service of offering a revelation, it is their duty to make them over so thoroughly as to leave them unrecognizable. But it may just be that the greatest of iconoclastic acts is to renounce iconoclasm and to defend or, with the thought that it is not really defending that they need, just completely and confidently articulate the simple views that even philosophers hold when they forget they are philosophers: Moore is not afraid to be a lonely philosopher and stand with the crowd. (2)
. . . although he does not realize it, the deepest impulse of Moore’s philosophy is, as Wittgenstein’s is, the end of philosophy. Moore’s great aim in ethics is to expose and expunge philosophy’s revisionary impulse in order to defend the things we know to be irreplaceable in any sane way of life. This requires a transformation of philosophy so profound as to be impossible for most philosophers to envisage: Some things philosophers must simply accept. (13)
Philosophy is good only as a means to the dissolution of intellectual clots that the wrong kind of philosophy creates. This would suggest that Moore pursues philosophy not because he finds it to be intrinsically interesting, but because he recognizes an obligation to help others dissolve the clots they suffer from. His long career is then an impressively patient and quiet one of self-sacrifice. (14)
Gotta admit: I find this all really compelling. I especially love this line: “Moore is not afraid to be a lonely philosopher and stand with the crowd.”
