George Moore

Ongoing discussion of this paper here: https://www.academia.edu/s/cf13d33860?source=link
Philosophy – whether traditional or contemporary – has nothing to say about the human metaphysical predicament, and cannot even offer a basic phenomenology of the human condition. Part of the problem is the ongoing confusion as to what philosophy actually amounts to, and what it can achieve. It is necessary to demystify philosophy, and have it restricted to the discipline of critical thinking, and it should not be thought of as possessing any substantial theoretical content of its own. It is a method, a skillset, a series of techniques, not a repository of various highbrow theories, whether about mind, epistemology, ontology, cosmology, science, or anything else. Metaphysics is an entirely distinct and separate field of inquiry, and concerns the human predicament, and ultimate human fulfilment, and it is to this end that critical thinking skills can usefully be applied. The purpose of this short study is to give some help to those hoping to gain an insight into the metaphysical realms of their being, and who would like some guidance with regard to those formal and academic disciplines supposedly geared to dealing with that very subject.

Esta dissertação de mestrado é um estudo de The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), de Oscar Wilde, e Esther Waters (1894), de George Moore. Ao atuarem como romancistas num período de grande efervescência cultural na Inglaterra, os dois autores estavam engajados na discussão sobre a representação do objeto literário, denominada como a “controvérsia da arte versus vida”. Embora esse debate possa ser compreendido como um problema estético, propõe-se nesta pesquisa que a encruzilhada entre a vida e a arte também se apresenta como um problema moral. Para averiguar tal hipótese, este trabalho visa inicialmente examinar os projetos do naturalismo e do esteticismo, aos quais George Moore e Oscar Wilde, respectivamente, aderiram em um primeiro momento. A despeito de suas divergências, ambas as estéticas foram interpretadas pela moralidade vitoriana como um instrumento de corrupção dos leitores. A partir da reconstituição desse debate histórico, The Picture of Dorian Gray e Esther Waters são analisados à luz das questões de seu tempo, no qual se mostram representativos do impasse moral e estético imposto pelo conflito entre a vida e a arte.


This master’s thesis is a study of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), by Oscar Wilde, and Esther Waters (1894), by George Moore. In a time of great cultural effervescence in England, these writers took part in the discussion of the representation of the literary object, known as the
“controversy of art versus life”. Although that debate could be understood as an aesthetic problem, this research proposes that the crossroads between life and art also characterize a moral problem. In order to verify that hypothesis, this work initially examines the projects of naturalism and aestheticism, which were at first followed by George Moore and Oscar Wilde respectively. In spite of their divergences, both aesthetics were interpreted by Victorian morality as instruments of corrupting readers. Taking this historic debate into account, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Esther Waters are analyzed in their cultural context, in which they are representatives of the moral and aesthetic impasse posed by the conflict between life and art.

I discuss first the meaning of naturalism in philosophy and then the sense in which it has been introduced in ethics: that of American Naturalism, that of Dewey’s pragmatism, the sense of a negation of Moore’s negation of naturalism, the neo-Aristotelian, and the one of the external realists. I will argue a fundamental heterogeneity of these meanings and will add that the reasons for the apparent unity of a naturalist front in recent philosophical debates lies more in factors pertaining to the sociology of knowledge. I will suggest that there is one sense in which a naturalism claim may be defended, the sense of Aristotle and Dewey, according to which moral good is not specifically moral in its nature. I will add that programs of scientific exploration into biological bases of behaviour and co-ordination of behaviour within groups are highly promising, but are in no sense ‘naturalistic’ and are indeed compatible with ethical intuitionism, or Kantian ethics.

Philosophia
DOI 10.1007/s11406-012-9404-3

Received: 7 May 2012 / Accepted: 24 August 2012
# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

The paper discusses Annalisa Coliva's book on Moore and Wittgenstein.  I devote more attention to Moore than to Wittgenstein.  Coliva is sympatethic with Moore, but much more positive about Wittgenstein, I am more sympathetic with Moore's views instead and believe that they are rarely fully grasped.

В коллективной монографии впервые в отечественной и зарубежной научной литературе представлен историко-философский анализ этапов становления и развития
Аристотелевского общества в Великобритании как сообщества философов и ученых,
существенно повлиявшего на философскую мысль конца XIX–XX вв. На примере публикаций журнала «Труды Аристотелевского общества» и докладов всемирно известных философов, избранных в разные годы президентами Общества, анализируется
интеллектуальная атмосфера формирования философских концепций, характеризующих традиции континентальной и аналитической философии.

Resumo: Em um momento no qual a crítica inglesa se revoltava com o naturalismo de Émile Zola e com a possibilidade de seus romances serem lidos pelo grande público, George Moore (1852-1933) identificava no autor francês uma oportunidade de romper com a moral vitoriana e de pensar outros caminhos para a ficção inglesa. Por ser um dos principais promotores de Zola na Inglaterra, pretende-se aqui investigar o papel de Moore na controvérsia naturalista que se estabeleceu no fim da Era Vitoriana e sua contribuição para o debate da época em torno da representação do objeto literário.

Resumo: Na busca de seu próprio caminho como escritor, o autor irlandês Ge-orge Moore teve Zola como uma das principais referências na sua formação. A rela-ção conturbada com o escritor francês foi retratada em "My Impressions of Zola" (1894), texto cuja tradução ao português brasileiro é pela primeira vez aqui apre-sentada.
Palavras-chave: George Moore, Émile Zola, My Impressions of Zola, Naturalismo.

When Julia Frankau wrote of "the life history of the insidious bacilli that have destroyed his  [GM's] reputation", she was making the association and linkage to disease that was typical of much critique of realistic and naturalistic literature in nineteenth-century Britain. George Moore's early novels are marked by a transgression of Victorian moral codes through the portrayal of physiological and psychological states, hitherto tabooed, such as homosexuality, female lust, emancipation, or addictions, thus challenging the societal status quo. Contemporary reaction to these works follow a discourse of pathologisation that attacks the text as well as the author and his French influences. This paper will exemplify Moore's transgressions in his quest for artistic freedom by analysing his 1885 novel "A Mummer's Wife" and in his 1895 short-story "Mildred Lawson".

List of Illustrations
Preface
Notes on Contributors
Introducing the Literary North; K.Cockin
'The Chimneyed City': Imagining the North in Victorian Literature; J.Guy
'By the People, For the People': The Literary North and the Local Press 1880-1914; J.Hewitt
The Sublime and Satanic North: The Potteries in George Moore's A Mummer's Wife (1885) and Arnold Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns (1902); A.Heilmann
Clog-dancers and Clay: The Geography of Arnold Bennett's North in Clayhanger; R.Robbins
'Dirty Old Town': The Presentation of the Northern Cityscape in Ewan MacColl's Landscape with Chimneys; C.Warden
'The North, My World': W.H. Auden's Pennine Ways; A.Sharpe
Northern Yobs: Representations of Youth in 1950s Writing: Hoggart, Sillitoe and Waterhouse; N.Bentley
The Unknown City: Hull and the North in the poetry of Larkin, Dunn and Didsbury; S.O'Brien
'Northern Working-class Spectator Sports': Tony Harrison's Continuous; J.Gill
North-east Childhood: Representations of the North-east of England in the Work of Robert Westall; N.Dalrymple
'Where you going now?': Themes of Alienation and Belonging in the North-east in Children's Literature; R.Lee
The North in Children's Fiction; T.Cosslett
The Literary Response to Moss Side, Manchester: Fact or (Genre) Fiction?; L.Pearce
Locating the Literary North; K.Cockin
Selected Bibliography
Index