R. M. Hare

R. M. Hare was a prominent British moral philosopher whose work in the mid-20th century revitalized the study of ethics within the analytic philosophy tradition. Serving as White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and later as a professor at the University of Florida, he developed an influential ethical theory known as universal prescriptivism. His systematic approach, blending insights from Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, sought to provide a rational foundation for moral reasoning and had a profound impact on contemporary meta-ethics and applied ethics.

Life and career

Richard Mervyn Hare was born in Backwell, Somerset, and educated at Rugby School before winning a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. His studies were interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served as a British Army officer, was captured in 1942 during the Battle of Crete, and spent three years as a prisoner of war in Changi Prison and later in Singapore. After the war, he returned to Oxford, completed his degree, and was elected a fellow of Balliol College in 1947. Hare later held the prestigious White's Professor of Moral Philosophy chair at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1966 until 1983. He spent his final academic years at the University of Florida before retiring to Ewelme, Oxfordshire, where he died in 2002.

Philosophical work

Hare's philosophical project was a direct response to the dominance of emotivism and the perceived dead end of logical positivism in ethical theory. In his early major work, The Language of Morals (1952), he argued that moral language is not merely expressive, as A. J. Ayer or C. L. Stevenson held, but is fundamentally prescriptive and universalizable. He further developed these ideas in Freedom and Reason (1963) and Moral Thinking (1981), constructing a sophisticated framework for moral argument. His methodology involved rigorous conceptual analysis of key terms like "ought" and "good," positioning his work within the tradition of ordinary language philosophy associated with J. L. Austin and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Universal prescriptivism

The core of Hare's ethical theory is universal prescriptivism, which posits that moral judgments have three logical properties: prescriptivity, universalizability, and overridingness. A moral statement like "You ought to tell the truth" is a prescription for action, not a description of a fact. Its universalizability means that if it applies in one situation, it must apply in all relevantly similar situations, a formal requirement reminiscent of Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. Hare argued that combining prescriptivity with universalizability forces a form of impartiality in moral reasoning, which, when coupled with facts about human preferences, leads substantively to a version of preference utilitarianism. This synthesis is often termed his two-level utilitarianism, distinguishing between intuitive moral rules for everyday life and critical thinking for resolving conflicts.

Influence and legacy

Hare's work exerted considerable influence on a generation of moral philosophers, bridging the gap between abstract meta-ethics and practical moral debate. His students and interlocutors included major figures like Peter Singer, whose work on animal liberation and practical ethics is deeply indebted to Hare's utilitarian framework. Philosophers such as John McDowell, Bernard Williams, and Simon Blackburn engaged critically with his ideas, helping to shape subsequent debates about moral realism, cognitivism, and practical reason. While aspects of his theory, particularly the derivation of utilitarianism from formal constraints, were contested by thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Jürgen Habermas, his rigorous, logical approach established a dominant paradigm for ethical inquiry in the latter half of the 20th century.

Selected publications

* The Language of Morals (1952) * Freedom and Reason (1963) * Essays on Philosophical Method (1971) * Essays on the Moral Concepts (1972) * Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point (1981) * Plato (1982) * Essays in Ethical Theory (1989) * Essays on Political Morality (1989) * Sorting Out Ethics (1997)

Category:20th-century British philosophers Category:Moral philosophers Category:University of Oxford faculty