SOURCE: A review of 'Principia Ethica', in Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 3, April, 1988, pp. 582-84.

In the following review, Klagge confesses to disagreeing with Moore's theories but commends Regan for explaining them more clearly than Moore.

G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica was the culmination of nearly a decade of personal turmoil and philosophical progress. Through the books under review, Tom Regan hopes to force a reconsideration of Principia Ethica, and of Moore, by attending to this decade. He should be successful.

This task was begun by Paul Levy in Moore: G. E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), but Levy is not a philosopher. Regan is a very good philosopher, and he illuminates very many philosophical issues ignored or obscured by Levy. Just as translations are best done by native speakers of the readers' language, so philosophers are best served by biographical work done by other philosophers.

Moore...