George Edward Moore was born in Upper Norwood, in south-east London, on 4 November 1873, the middle child of seven of Daniel Moore, a medical doctor, and Henrietta Sturge.[12][13][14] His grandfather was the author George Moore. His eldest brother was Thomas Sturge Moore, a poet, writer and engraver.[12][15][16]
He was educated at Dulwich College[17] and, in 1892, began attending Trinity College, Cambridge, to learn classics and moral sciences.[18] He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1898 and was later University of Cambridge Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic from 1925 to 1939.
Moore is known best now for defending ethical non-naturalism, his emphasis on common sense for philosophical method, and the paradox that bears his name. He was admired by and influenced other philosophers and some of the Bloomsbury Group. But unlike his colleague and admirer Bertrand Russell, who for some years thought Moore fulfilled his "ideal of genius",[19] he is mostly unknown presently except among academic philosophers. Moore's essays are known for their clarity and circumspection of writing style and methodical and patient treatment of philosophical problems. He was critical of modern philosophy for lack of progress, which he saw as a stark contrast to the dramatic advances in the natural sciences since the Renaissance. Among Moore's most famous works are his Principia Ethica,[20] and his essays, "The Refutation of Idealism", "A Defence of Common Sense", and "A Proof of the External World".
Moore was an important and admired member of the secretive Cambridge Apostles, a discussion group drawn from the British intellectual elite. At the time another member, 22-year-old Bertrand Russell, wrote "I almost worship him as if he were a god. I have never felt such an extravagant admiration for anybody",[7] and would later write that "for some years he fulfilled my ideal of genius. He was in those days beautiful and slim, with a look almost of inspiration as deeply passionate as Spinoza's".[21]
From 1918 to 1919, Moore was chairman of the Aristotelian Society, a group committed to systematic study of philosophy, its historical development and its methods and problems.[22] He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1951.[23]
Moore died in England in the Evelyn Nursing Home on 24 October 1958.[24] He was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium on 28 October 1958 and his ashes interred at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in the city. His wife, Dorothy Ely (1892–1977), was buried there. Together, they had two sons, the poet Nicholas Moore and the composer Timothy Moore.[25][26]
