ABSTRACT
MODERN MORAL PHILOSOPHY opens on a quietly apocalyptic note. Moral philosophers, it is explained, have hitherto failed to answer the questions which they posed satisfactorily, because they have failed to be clear about the questions themselves. In particular they have failed to distinguish between the questions, What kind of actions ought we to perform? and, What kind of things ought to exist for their own sake? The distinction is made at last, or so it is proclaimed, in the preface to G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica. The implication is that the problems will now be solved. The date is 1903.
