Abstract

Section: Lectures Keywords: History of analytic philosophy, Moore, Sidgwick, Russell, McTaggart, A-theory, B-theory, presentism Disciplines: Philosophy The ‘new realist’ G E Moore is hardly known as a metaphysician of time, yet I argue his 1910–11 lectures, later published as _Some Main Problems of Philosophy_, offer the first substantial English-language defence of presentism and the A-theory. This paper contextualises Moore’s positions, stressing his intellectual connections with J M E McTaggart and Bertrand Russell; explores his Common Sense metaphysics of time; and argues that his time realism owes a great debt to ‘old realist’ Henry Sidgwick.