Hare questions the claim made by modern intuitionists and deontologists that Kant is their ally against utilitarianism. The core of the chapter is a discussion of Kant's Categorial Imperative, which is shown to be compatible, in its various formulations, with utilitarianism. Conspicuously anti‐utilitarian elements of Kantian ethics, Hare argues, are based on principles extrinsic to, and sometimes incompatible with, Kant's moral theory. In answering possible objections to his interpretation, Hare firstly distinguishes pure from applied ethics, which includes an important distinction (...) between Kant's notions of Wille and Willkür; and, secondly, he argues that Kant can be understood as a consequentialist. (shrink)

Plato can claim a preeminent place in the philosophy of education, for two reasons at least. The first is that he started the subject; the second is that he expressed with a force which has not since been surpassed a particular, seemingly authoritarian, view about it. Any liberal has to come to grips with this view, for which ‘Platonism’ is still the most appropriate name; and the first step is to determine more exactly what, in essence, the view is. This (...) paper will not be concerned with the close examination of Plato’s text; that must be left for a book about his moral philosophy that I am working on. I shall say nothing about the quaint details of the educational curriculum in the Republic or the Laws, which have distracted the attention of some commentators from more fundamental problems. What I aim to discuss is the question ‘Can virtue be taught?’, with which Plato introduces the subject in the Meno—the question which more than any other provides the incentive for his entire philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

In this chapter, conceived originally as the introduction to chapters 3 to 7, Hare shows how philosophical questions arise from the consideration of practical moral problems, such as war and euthanasia. The main task of moral philosophy, Hare argues, is to study the logical form of moral arguments and, in particular, the logical properties of moral words, such as ‘ought’, ‘right’, and ‘good’. All argument, including moral argument, depends on logic, and logical validity depends on the meaning of words. The (...) investigation of the meaning of the words and concepts, and thus the logic, employed in moral and other value judgements is, according to Hare, the distinctive contribution of the moral philosopher to the discussion of substantive moral questions. (shrink)

The thesis of Emotivism, a species of non‐descriptivism, is that there is more to the meaning of moral statements than syntax and truth conditions; in particular, moral statements have an expressive, and a causative aspect. Drawing upon J. L. Austin's distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, Hare argues that emotivists try to explain the meaning of moral statements, which they assimilate to imperatives, in terms of their perlocutionary effect. The difficulty with this is that, firstly, the emotivists hold a false (...) theory of imperatives, and secondly, perlocutionary effect cannot explain meaning. Furthermore, emotivists deny the possibility of rational moral argument, and therefore embrace irrationalism. Towards the end of this chapter, Hare identifies six essential features of moral language, and its logic, that must be recognized and accounted for by an adequate moral theory: Neutrality, Practicality, Incompatibility, Logicality, Arguability, and Conciliation. (shrink)

Intuitionism, the second type of descriptivism, is the theory that the truth conditions of moral statements depend on irreducible moral properties, which must be defined in moral terms. The intuitionist claims that we have knowledge of moral truths derived from moral intuition. However, because it is a subjective experience, one person's intuition may differ from another's, and the theory offers no way to decide between them. Intuitionism, Hare argues, is really a kind of Subjectivist Naturalism, or Subjectivism; and, as with (...) Naturalism, it also leads to relativism. Therefore, because it is exhausted by these two theories, descriptivism in general must be abandoned if we are to attain the sort of objectivity that will allow us to avoid relativism. (shrink)

Naturalism is a species of descriptivism, and is described as the proposal to specify the truth conditions of moral statements without reference to moral words, i.e. without reference to the attitudes of the speakers. Hence, the truth conditions of moral statements are non‐moral properties. Hare subdivides Naturalism into ‘objectivist’ and ‘subjectivist’ varieties. The variety of Naturalism that interests Hare in this chapter is objectivist naturalism, according to which the non‐moral properties are objective. Naturalism, Hare argues, results inevitably in relativism, and (...) any ethical theory that implies relativism must be rejected. (shrink)

I am going in this lecture on ‘Philosophy and Practice’ first to say something about philosophy and then something about practice, in order to show you how they bear on one another. But I must start by paying a tribute to the President of the Society for Applied Philosophy, Professor Sir A. J. Ayer, who has kindly agreed to take the chair at this lecture. I can honestly say that he is more responsible than anybody else for putting me on (...) the right track in moral philosophy. He did this by convincing me, when young, that the ways people were doing it at that time had no future. In the famous chapter on ethics in his marvellously readable and exciting book,Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer was thought to be trying to show that moral philosophy itself, and perhaps even ordinary first-order moral thinking, was a waste of time. From later work of his, and from his occasional pronouncements about moral and political questions, it is evident that the second of these slanders was false. But even on the theoretical side the lessons I learnt from his book were positive as well as negative. That is not to say that the negative lessons were unimportant. Some people have still not absorbed them, and continue to waste our time. But here are two positive points which you will find in Ayer's book, and which for me were crucia. (shrink)

I am going in this lecture on ‘Philosophy and Practice’ first to say something about philosophy and then something about practice, in order to show you how they bear on one another. But I must start by paying a tribute to the President of the Society for Applied Philosophy, Professor Sir A. J. Ayer, who has kindly agreed to take the chair at this lecture. I can honestly say that he is more responsible than anybody else for putting me on (...) the right track in moral philosophy. He did this by convincing me, when young, that the ways people were doing it at that time had no future. In the famous chapter on ethics in his marvellously readable and exciting book,Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer was thought to be trying to show that moral philosophy itself, and perhaps even ordinary first-order moral thinking, was a waste of time. From later work of his, and from his occasional pronouncements about moral and political questions, it is evident that the second of these slanders was false. But even on the theoretical side the lessons I learnt from his book were positive as well as negative. That is not to say that the negative lessons were unimportant. Some people have still not absorbed them, and continue to waste our time. But here are two positive points which you will find in Ayer's book, and which for me were crucia. (shrink)

Philosophy of language, according to Hare, contributes significantly to ethics, because it provides a logical structure for moral thinking. Referring to J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts, Hare distinguishes two kinds or genera of speech acts, the descriptive and the prescriptive; and he also discusses Austin's distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Moral judgements, e.g. those judgements expressed by ‘ought’, are prescriptive speech acts, but they also have a descriptive meaning. This is because moral judgements share with normative judgements (...) the logical feature Hare calls universalizability. Alongside prescriptivity and universalizability, a third element of Hare's account of moral judgement is the identification of one's will with that of another moral agent's will in hypothetical situations. (shrink)