Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-4ws75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-06T00:31:58.702Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Philosophical Autobiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

R. M. Hare
R. M. Hare
Affiliation:
Late of University of Oxford and University of Florida, Gainesville
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I had a strange dream, or half-waking vision, not long ago. I found myself at the top of a mountain in the mist, feeling very pleased with myself, not just for having climbed the mountain, but for having achieved my life's ambition, to find a way of answering moral questions rationally. But as I was preening myself on this achievement, the mist began to clear, and I saw that I was surrounded on the mountain top by the graves of all those other philosophers, great and small, who had had the same ambition, and thought they had achieved it. And I have come to see, reflecting on my dream, that, ever since, the hard-working philosophical worms have been nibbling away at their systems and showing that the achievement was an illusion. True, their skeletons, indigestible to worms, remained, and were surprisingly similar to one another. But I was led to think again about what one can, and what one cannot, achieve in this direction.

Information

Type
In Memoriam R. M. Hare
Information
Utilitas , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , November 2002 , pp. 269 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Methods, and Point, Oxford, 1981Google Scholar; Plato, Oxford, 1982Google Scholar.

2 Ratio, ii (1960)Google Scholar; repr. Essays on Philosophical Method, London, 1971.

3 Oxford, 1952.

4 The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, ed. Schilpp, P., New York, 1959Google Scholar.

5 ‘Practical Reason’, Philosophy, xvii (1942)Google Scholar; ‘Rationalism and Intellectualism in the Ethics of Aristotle’, Mind, li (1942)Google Scholar; ‘Kant's Distinction between Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, xliii (1942–1943)Google Scholar.

6 See e.g. Ethics, ed. Thomson, J. and Dworkin, G., New York, 1968Google Scholar.

7 ‘Ethics and the Archangelic Prescriber’, Cogito, ii (1984)Google Scholar.

8 On Law and Justice, London, 1958Google Scholar.

9 See Moral Thinking, p. 109.

10 See Foot, P., Virtues and Vices, Oxford, 1977Google Scholar.

11 Freedom and Reason, pp. 168 f.; Moral Thinking, pp. 52 f.

12 I discuss this passage more fully in ‘Comments’, Hare and Critics, ed. Seanor, D. and Fotion, N., Oxford, 1988, pp. 201 fGoogle Scholar.

13 See also ‘Universalisability”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, lv (1955)Google Scholar; repr. Essays on the Moral Concepts, London, 1972.

14 See Hare, R. M., ‘Principles’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, lxxiii (1972)Google Scholar; repr. Essays in Ethical Theory, Oxford, 1989.

15 See Hare, R. M., ‘Supervenience’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. lvi (1984)Google Scholar; repr. Essays in Ethical Theory.

16 Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Becker, L., New York, 1992Google Scholar.

17 ‘Ethics and Polities’, Listener, liii (10 1955)Google Scholar; repr. Applications of Moral Philosophy, London, 1972.

18 ‘What are Cities For? The Ethics of Urban Planning’, Ethics and the Environment, ed. Taylor, C. C. W., Oxford, 1992Google Scholar; repr. Objective Prescriptions and Other Essays, Oxford, 1999.

19 On Dying Well, London, 1975Google Scholar.

20 ‘Theology and Falsification’, University, i (1950)Google Scholar; repr. Essays on Religion and Education, Oxford, 1992.

21 Religion and Morality, ed. Outka, G. and Reeder, J. P. Jr, New York, 1973Google Scholar.

22 Oxford, 1992.

23 See Hare, R. M., ‘Ontology in Ethics’, Morality and Objectivity, ed. Honderich, T., London, 1985Google Scholar; repr. Essays in Ethical Theory.

24 Oxford, 1997.

25 ‘Meaning and Speech Acts’, Philosophical Review, lxxix (1970)Google Scholar; repr. Practical Inferences, London, 1971.

26 Mind, xciviii (1989)Google Scholar; repr. Objective Prescriptions.

27 Prior, A. N., ‘The Runabout Inference Ticket’, Analysis, xxi (1960)Google Scholar.

28 Grice, H. P. and Strawson, P. F., ‘In Defense of a Dogma’, Philosophical Review, lxv (1956)Google Scholar.

29 I have discussed this problem briefly in ‘Moral Terms’, Becker, ed.

30 ‘Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism’, Contemporary British Philosophy, vol. 4, ed. Lewis, H. D., LondonGoogle Scholar.

31 Moral Thinking, pp. 96 f.

32 Ibid., p. 96n.

33 ‘You may get rid of naturalists with a pitch-fork, but they're always going to come back.’ ‘Descriptivism’, Proceedings of the British Academy, xlix (1963)Google Scholar; repr. Essays on the Moral Concepts.

34 MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, London, 1981Google Scholar. See Hare, R. M., ‘AReductio ad Absurdum of Descriptivism’, Philosophy in Britain Today, London, 1986Google Scholar; repr. Essays in Ethical Theory.

35 ‘Universal Prescriptivism’, A Companion to Ethics, ed. Singer, P., Oxford, 1991Google Scholar; ‘Moral Terms’, ‘Prescriptivism’, ‘Universalizability’, Becker, ed.; ‘Objective Prescriptions’, Naturalism and Normativity: Philosophical Issues, vol. 4, ed. Villanueva, E.Google Scholar; repr. Objective Prescriptions.

36 Objective Prescriptions.