Grice on Austin on Moore

I would begin by recalling that as a matter of historical fact Austin professed a strong admiration for G. E. Moore. “Some like Witters” he once said, “but Moore is my man.” [...] The question which now exercises me is why Moore’s stand on this matter should have specially aroused Austin’s respect, for what Moore said on this matter seems to me to be plainly inferior in quality, and indeed to be the kind of thing which Austin was more than capable of tearing to shreds had he encountered it in somebody else. [...] My explanation of part of Austin’s by no means wholly characteristic charity lies in my conjecture that Austin saw, or thought he saw, the right reply to these complaints and mistakenly assumed that Moore himself had also seen how to reply to them. [...] while Cook Wilson finds himself landed with bad answers, it seems to me that Moore has no answers at all, good or bad; and whether nonanswers are superior or inferior to bad answers seems to me a question hardly worth debating.

Grice, 1989, Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 381-384