ABSTRACT
Professor Moore's 'The Refutation of Idealism', published in 1903, is still one of the most famous articles written in philosophy since the turn of the century. Its acute and searching criticism of the proposition that esse is percipi has been widely held to have finally proved its falsity and thus to have robbed of their basis the idealistic philosophies which in one way or another had been built upon it. It is true that in the preface to his Philosophical Studies -in which the article was reprinted in 1922-Moore writes that 'this paper now appears to me to be very confused, as well as to embody a good many downright mistakes'. These, however, are not specified, and, since he does not repudiate the article as a whole it may be presumed that he still adheres at least to its essential contention. In any case, because of the influence the wide acceptance of its argument has had on the course of subsequent philosophical thought, the article as published is now a classic and commensurate in importance with the celebrated proposition it attacks. This is enough to justify a critical examination of it on the present occaston.
