Seminar 3 : Moore ’ s Journey from Idealism to Realism to Common Sense Part 1 : Becoming

Early Days: Kantian Freedom and Extreme Realism Moore entered Cambridge University as an undergraduate in 1892 intending to study classics. There he met another undergraduate, Bertrand Russell, who convinced him to switch to philosophy. His teachers included the Absolute Idealist, J.M.E. McTaggart and the ethicist Henry Sidgwick, both of whom had an influence on him that was reflected in his 1896 thesis “The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics”, which articulated a position he would later repudiate in Principia Ethica, 1903.