ABSTRACT
A profoundly influential figure in twentieth-century British philosophy was the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore. Born in 1873 to a comfortably middle-class family, George Edward Moore was the fifth of eight children, four boys and four girls. Among Moore’s teachers at Dulwich, he acknowledged especially the influence ofA. H. Gilkes, the headmaster, and W. T. Lendrum, who later became a Fellow atCaius College, Cambridge. The study of Greek and Latin was at the time Moore’sexclusive intellectual concern, since he “had no particular preference foranything else”. Conversations with them led Moore to some problems of philosophical method andsubstance that would become central to his thinking from then on. McTaggart’s punctilious regard for conceptual clarity and reasoned argumentmight have encouraged Moore’s own detailed attention to matters of philosophical method. The list of notable philosophers who had joined the Society in Moore’s time, besides those already mentioned, must also include Alfred North Whitehead and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
