Prefatory Note to Reprint of “The Elements of Ethics” [1952]

This prefatory note was written at the request of Wilfrid Sellars and John Hospers, colleagues in the philosophy department at the University of Minnesota and editors of Readings in Ethical Theory, in which this short paper appeared as a footnote (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), p. 1 (B&R B103). First published in full in Philosophical Essays (1910), “The Elements of Ethics” was conceived as a contribution to an abortive popular exposition of G. E. Moore’s philosophy. Most of the text seems to have been drafted as early as May 1905 (see Papers 5: 719–20), when Russell certainly was “under the influence of Moore’s Principia Ethica” (269: 1–2). In granting reprint permission to Sellars and Hospers, however, Russell insisted (in 1949, presumably, although this correspondence is missing) on being allowed to indicate his rejection of the philosophical position taken in “The Elements of Ethics”. On 2 November 1951, with publication of their selection of writings now imminent, the two American academics reminded Russell of his stipulation and requested hasty submission of this note of disagreement with views expressed almost half a century ago—“unless perchance you have come to espouse them again during the last two years”. This had not occurred, of course, and while it was hardly true that Russell had “abstained” (269: 11) from all writing about ethics after being subjected to Santayana’s withering criticism of his (or rather Moore’s) conception of “good” (see A269: 7–8), he remained profoundly, if regrettably, convinced by the Spanish-born American philosopher’s argument that ethics was not a branch of human knowledge (see Russell 1969, 32–3). Before Russell belatedly satisfied the request from Sellars by sending him 37, he had been sufficiently perplexed by Russell’s continuing silence to approach his principal British publisher. Philip Unwin, quite properly, sought guidance in the matter from Russell himself (4 Jan. 1952, ra rec. acq. 70), who indicated in a handwritten reply at the bottom of the incoming letter that he had already acceded to a reprinting of the essay, but “with a note from me to say I think it all wrong.”