G.E. Moore's philosophy and Cambridge economics: Ralph Hawtrey on ethics and methodology.

The paper discusses Ralph Hawtrey's critical approach to welfare economics. Hawtrey, one of the Cambridge Apostles, was deeply influenced by the ethical philosophy of G.E. Moore. First in The Economic Problem (1926), and then in several other writings, Hawtrey denounced contemporary economics as lacking in ethical foundations, and, accordingly, regarded the individualist economic system as morally unsatisfactory. Hawtrey's approach is compared to that of a contemporary Apostle and Cambridge economist, Gerald Shove. Hawtrey's and Shove's tentative applications of Moore's philosophy to economics and political science, respectively, provide intriguing evidence of a neglected Moorean undercurrent in Cambridge social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]