The course of normative ethics in the 20th century was a roller-coaster ride, from a period of skilled and confident theorizing in the first third of the century, through a virtual disappearance in the face of various forms of skepticism in the middle third, to a partial revival, though shadowed by remnants of that skepticism, in the final third. The ideal future of normative ethics therefore lies in its past. It must entirely shed its traces of mid-century skepticism if it is to return to the levels of insight provided by G. E. Moore, Hastings Rashdall, J. M. E. McTaggart, W. D. Ross, C. D. Broad, and other early 20th century moral theorists.