Richard Mervyn Hare (21 March 1919 – 29 January 2002), usually cited as R. M. Hare, was a British

moral philosopher Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...

who held the post of

White's Professor of Moral Philosophy The White's Chair of Moral Philosophy was endowed in 1621 by Thomas White (c. 1550–1624), Canon of Christ Church as the oldest professorial post in philosophy at the University of Oxford. In 2021, the chair was renamed the Sekyra and White’s ...

at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

from 1966 until 1983. He subsequently taught for a number of years at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

. His

meta-ethical In metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought ...

theories were influential during the second half of the twentieth century. Hare is best known for his development of prescriptivism as a meta-ethical theory, which he argues is supported by analysis of formal features of moral discourse, and for his defence of

preference utilitarianism Preference utilitarianism (also known as preferentialism) is a form of utilitarianism in contemporary philosophy. It is distinct from original utilitarianism in that it values actions that fulfill the most ''personal interests'', as opposed to a ...

based on his prescriptivism. Some of Hare's students, such as

Brian McGuinness Brian McGuinness (22 October 1927 – 23 December 2019) was a Wittgenstein scholar best known for his translation, with David Pears, of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ''Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus''. He was christened with the forenames ...

, John Lucas, and

Bernard Williams Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include ''Problems of the Self'' (1973), ''Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'' (1985), ''Shame and Necessity'' ...

went on to become well-known philosophers.

Peter Singer Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, ...

, known for his involvement with the

animal liberation movement The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, ...

(who studied Hare's work as an honours student at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

and came to know Hare personally whilst he was an Oxford BPhil graduate student), has explicitly adopted some elements of Hare's thought, though not his doctrine of universal prescriptivism.

Life and career

Richard Hare was born on 21 March 1919 in

Backwell Backwell is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of North Somerset and in 2011 had a population of 4,589. The village lies about southwest of Bristol, south of the A370 to Weston-super-Mare. The parish includes the hamlets of Ba ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

. He attended

Rugby School Rugby School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Rugby, Warwickshire, England. Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain. Up ...

in Warwickshire, followed in 1937 by

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

, where he read greats (classics). Having joined the officer training corps whist still at Rugby, on the outbreak of World War II, he volunteered to serve with the

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

. Hare was taken as a

prisoner of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of wa ...

by the Japanese from the fall of Singapore in 1942 to the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Hare's wartime experience had a lasting impact on his philosophical views, particularly his view that moral philosophy has an obligation to help people live their lives as moral beings. His earliest work in philosophy, which has never been published, dates from this period, and in it, he tried to develop a system that might "serve as a guide to life in the harshest conditions", according to C. C. W. Taylor. He returned to Oxford after the war, and in 1947, married Catherine Verney, a marriage that produced a son and three daughters. (Hare's son,

John E. Hare John Edmund Hare (born 26 July 1949) is a British Classical studies, classicist, philosopher, ethicist, and currently Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. Biography He received a Bachelor of Arts honours in Literae ...

, is also a philosopher.) He was elected fellow and tutor in philosophy at Balliol from 1947 to 1966; honorary fellow at Balliol from 1974 to 2002; and was appointed Wilde Lecturer in Natural Religion, 1963–66; and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, 1966–1983, which accompanied a move to Corpus Christi. He was president of the

Aristotelian Society The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy, more generally known as the Aristotelian Society, is a philosophical society in London. History Aristotelian Society was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Squar ...

from 1972 to 1973. He left Oxford in 1983 to become Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the

at Gainesville, a post he held until 1994. After suffering a series of

strokes A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop funct ...

, R. M. Hare died in

Ewelme Ewelme () is a village and civil parish in the Chiltern Hills in South Oxfordshire, north-east of the market town of Wallingford. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,048. To the east of the village is Cow Common and to the ...

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

, on 29 January 2002. At his memorial service held at

St Mary's Church, Oxford The University Church of St Mary the Virgin (St Mary's or SMV for short) is an Oxford church situated on the north side of the High Street. It is the centre from which the University of Oxford grew and its parish consists almost exclusively of un ...

, in May of that year,

delivered (as he felt Hare would have wished) a lecture on Hare's "Achievements in Moral Philosophy" which concluded by giving three "major, lasting" ones, namely, "restoring reason to moral argument, distinguishing intuitive and critical levels of moral thinking, and pioneering the development of ... applied ethics".

Influences

Hare was greatly influenced by the

emotivism Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivi ...

A. J. Ayer Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books '' Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) ...

and Charles L. Stevenson, the

ordinary language philosophy Ordinary language philosophy (OLP) is a philosophical methodology that sees traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting how words are ordinarily used to convey meaning in ...

of J. L. Austin, a certain reading of the later philosophy of

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...

utilitarianism In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charact ...

, and

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

. Hare held that ethical rules should not be based on a principle of utility, though he took into account utilitarian considerations. His hybrid approach to meta-ethics distinguishes him from classical utilitarians like

Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._4_February_1747.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 4 February 1747">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.htm ...

. His book ''Sorting Out Ethics'' might be interpreted as saying that Hare is as much a Kantian as he is a utilitarian, but other sources disagree with this assessment. Although Hare used many concepts from Kant, especially the idea of universalisability, he was still a

consequentialist In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative ethics, normative, Teleology, teleological ethical theories that holds that the wikt:consequence, consequences of one's Action (philosophy), conduct are the ultimate basis for judgm ...

, rather than a

deontologist In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek: + ) is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, ra ...

, in his normative ethical views. Hare himself addressed the possibility that Kant was a utilitarian like himself, in his "Could Kant Have Been a Utilitarian?"

Universal prescriptivism

In a series of books, especially ''The Language of Morals'' (1952), ''Freedom and Reason'' (1963), and ''Moral Thinking'' (1981), Hare gave shape to a theory that he called

universal prescriptivism Universal prescriptivism (often simply called prescriptivism) is the meta-ethical view that claims that, rather than expressing propositions, ethical sentences function similarly to imperatives which are universalizable—whoever makes a mor ...

. According to this, moral terms such as 'good', 'ought' and 'right' have two logical or semantic properties:

universalizability The concept of universalizability was set out by the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born ...

and prescriptivity. By the former, he meant that moral judgments must identify the situation they describe according to a finite set of universal terms, excluding

proper names A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', '' Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...

, but not

definite description In formal semantics and philosophy of language, a definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is ''proper'' if X applies to a unique individual or o ...

s. By the latter, he meant that moral agents must perform those acts they consider themselves to have an obligation to perform whenever they are physically and psychologically able to do so. In other words, he argued that it made no sense for someone to say, sincerely: "I ought to do X", and then fail to do X. This was identified by Frankena, Nobis and others as a major flaw in Hare's system, as it appeared to take no account of ''

akrasia Akrasia (; Greek , "lacking command" or "weakness", occasionally transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy) is a lack of self-control, or acting against one's better judgment. The adjectival form is "akratic". Classical approa ...

'', or weakness of the will. Hare argued that the combination of universalizability and prescriptivity leads to a certain form of

consequentialism In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...

, namely,

. In brief, this means that we should act in such a way as to maximise the satisfaction of people's preferences.

Importance of specificity

Hare departs from Kant's view that only the most general maxims of conduct be used (for example, "do not steal"), but the consequences ignored, when applying the

categorical imperative The categorical imperative (german: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 ''Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals'', it is a way of evalu ...

. To ignore consequences leads to absurdity: for example, that it would be wrong to steal a terrorist's plans to blow up a nuclear facility. All the specific facts of a circumstance must be considered, and these include probable consequences. They also include the relevant, universal properties of the facts: for example, the psychological states of those involved.

Applied ethics and political philosophy

While Hare was primarily interested in meta-ethics, he also made some important contributions to the fields of political philosophy and applied ethics. Among his essays within these fields those on the wrongness of slavery, abortion "Abortion and the Golden Rule," R. M. Hare, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring, 1975), pp. 201-222
/ref> and the Golden Rule, and on demi-vegetarianism have received the most attention. Hare's most important work in political philosophy and applied ethics is collected in the two volumes ''Essays on Political Morality'' (1989) and ''Essays on Bioethics'' (1993), both published by Oxford University Press.

Select works

* * * * * * * * * * *For a more complete list of publications see th
annotated bibliography
by Keith Burgess-Jackson.

Notes

References

External links

*
R. M. Hare
- resources page containing Hare's writings, secondary literature, reviews, obituaries and a bibliography rchived_by_Wayback_Machine.html" ;"title="Wayback_Machine.html" ;"title="rchived by Wayback Machine">rchived by Wayback Machine">Wayback_Machine.html" ;"title="rchived by Wayback Machine">rchived by Wayback Machinebr>R. M. Hare in Conversation (on his 80th birthday)
[Archived by Wayback Machine]
R. M. Hare
(in Italian) rchived by Wayback Machine {{DEFAULTSORT:Hare, R. M. 1919 births 2002 deaths Military personnel from Somerset 20th-century British non-fiction writers 20th-century British philosophers 21st-century British non-fiction writers 21st-century British philosophers Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Analytic philosophers Anglican philosophers Aristotelian philosophers British Army personnel of World War II Royal Artillery officers British ethicists British male non-fiction writers British World War II prisoners of war Burma Railway prisoners Consequentialists English Anglicans Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Meta-ethics Moral philosophers People educated at Rugby School People from Backwell Philosophers of ethics and morality Political philosophers Presidents of the Aristotelian Society Royal Artillery personnel Social philosophers University of Florida faculty Utilitarians White's Professors of Moral Philosophy Wittgensteinian philosophers World War II prisoners of war held by Japan