The Language of Morals

1. Introduction

The Language of Morals (1952) is R. M. Hare’s first major work in meta‑ethics and a central text of postwar analytic moral philosophy. It proposes that the key to understanding ethics lies in a careful examination of how ordinary speakers actually use moral language—words such as “ought,” “good,” “right,” and “wrong.” On this basis, Hare develops what later came to be known as universal prescriptivism, a form of non‑cognitivism that nonetheless aims to explain the rational structure of moral thinking.

The book is not a treatise in normative ethics; it does not attempt to tell readers what is right or wrong. Instead, it asks what people are doing when they make moral judgments, what logical features such judgments have, and how these features shape moral reasoning. Hare’s central claims, elaborated in later sections of this entry, are that moral judgments are prescriptive—they function like imperatives—and that they are subject to a demanding requirement of universalizability and consistency.

The work belongs to the tradition of ordinary‑language philosophy associated with mid‑century Oxford, but it combines linguistic analysis with a distinctive insistence that ethical language is inescapably practical and action‑guiding. Hare positions his view against both emotivism, which treats moral talk as mere expression of feeling, and descriptivist or naturalist views, which treat moral judgments as straightforward reports of facts.

Within the broader landscape of twentieth‑century ethics, The Language of Morals is often seen as mediating between purely emotive non‑cognitivism and more robust moral realism by emphasizing the logical constraints built into moral discourse itself. Later developments in expressivism, rule‑consequentialism, and debates over moral objectivity frequently take this work as a starting point or a foil.

2. Historical and Intellectual Context

2.1 Postwar Analytic Philosophy and Oxford

The Language of Morals emerged in the early 1950s within the milieu of Oxford ordinary‑language philosophy, where detailed attention to everyday speech was taken to dissolve or clarify philosophical problems. Figures such as J. L. Austin and Gilbert Ryle influenced the methodological climate in which Hare worked, even though Hare’s project was more systematic and theory‑oriented than some of theirs.

The broader analytic scene was marked by the legacy of logical positivism, a suspicion of speculative metaphysics, and an emphasis on logic and language. In ethics, these tendencies encouraged a shift away from substantive moral theorizing toward analysis of the meaning and logical status of moral judgments.

2.2 Meta‑Ethical Debates of the Early 20th Century

Hare’s work responds to earlier influential positions:

Hare inherits Moore’s critique of the naturalistic fallacy, but rejects Moore’s non‑natural realism. From emotivists he takes the idea that moral language is non‑descriptive, yet he argues that emotivism overlooks the logical and action‑guiding structure of moral discourse. Against naturalist descriptivists, he aligns with the analytic consensus that moral predicates cannot be reduced to empirical descriptions without loss.

2.3 Social and Intellectual Backdrop

The book was shaped by the aftermath of the Second World War and Hare’s own wartime experiences (discussed in the next section). Postwar reflection on fanaticism, obedience, and moral responsibility created a demand for accounts of morality that could accommodate both its practical urgency and its rational dimension.

Within this context, The Language of Morals contributes to a broader movement seeking to retain a role for reasoned moral argument without returning to pre‑positivist metaphysics. Its prescriptivist analysis presents itself as a way of explaining moral disagreement, criticism, and consistency using the tools of linguistic and logical analysis characteristic of mid‑century analytic philosophy.

3. Author and Composition

3.1 R. M. Hare’s Background

Richard Mervyn Hare (1919–2002) was an English moral philosopher educated at Balliol College, Oxford. His early academic trajectory was interrupted by military service during the Second World War. Hare spent time as a prisoner of war in the Far East, an experience he later reported as decisive for his conviction that ethical thought must be practically applicable to life‑and‑death circumstances.

After the war, Hare returned to Oxford, where he joined a faculty dominated by ordinary‑language approaches. His teaching on moral philosophy in the late 1940s and early 1950s provided much of the material that would become The Language of Morals.

3.2 Genesis and Period of Composition

Hare composed the book roughly between 1947 and 1951. Earlier ideas had already been explored in lectures and unpublished papers, as he worked out how to combine a non‑cognitivist view of moral language with the conviction that moral reasoning is subject to logical constraints.

The text reflects sustained engagement with:

• Moorean intuitionism, especially Principia Ethica
• Logical positivist treatments of ethics, particularly Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic
• Stevenson’s more detailed emotivism in Ethics and Language

Hare’s solution takes shape through repeated attempts to reconcile the practical, imperative aspect of moral talk with the apparent argumentative structure of moral discourse observed in his teaching.

3.3 Publication and Early Circulation

The Language of Morals was first published by Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press) in 1952. It rapidly became a standard text in Oxford ethics courses and was soon discussed internationally within analytic circles.

Hare himself later clarified and augmented some of the book’s arguments in subsequent works—most notably Essays on the Moral Concepts (1972) and Moral Thinking (1981)—but he consistently regarded The Language of Morals as the foundational statement of his meta‑ethical views. Its composition reflects both a personal response to moral catastrophe and a professional immersion in the methodological assumptions of postwar analytic philosophy.

4. Aims and Method of The Language of Morals

4.1 Stated Aims

Hare explicitly frames the book as an exercise in meta‑ethics rather than in substantive ethical theory. Its principal aims include:

• To explain the logical properties of moral expressions such as “ought,” “good,” and “right”
• To determine what kind of speech acts moral judgments are
• To show how these logical properties can make sense of moral reasoning, disagreement, and criticism without positing special moral facts or intuitions

He aims neither to vindicate nor to undermine morality, but to clarify what moral language commits its users to when they employ it sincerely and seriously.

4.2 Ordinary‑Language and Logical Analysis

Hare’s method combines:

He distinguishes his project from empirical linguistics or psychology: the analysis proceeds by reflecting on competently used language from the “armchair,” aiming at conceptual clarification rather than experimental data.

4.3 Anti‑Metaphysical Orientation

A further methodological aim is to avoid contentious metaphysical or epistemological assumptions about moral properties or knowledge. Hare proposes that many traditional disputes in moral philosophy arise from misunderstanding the logic of moral language. By clarifying this logic, he hopes to undercut the motivation for some metaphysical theories, while leaving room for a variety of normative positions.

4.4 Relation to Other Methods

Compared with earlier empiricists and emotivists, Hare’s method places greater emphasis on logical consistency and inference among moral judgments. Compared with intuitionist or realist approaches, it is more austere, refusing to treat moral terms as referring to sui generis properties. The work’s methodological stance—linguistic, logical, and anti‑metaphysical—sets the stage for the more specific theses about prescriptivism and universalizability developed in its central chapters.

5. Structure and Organization of the Work

5.1 Overall Layout

The Language of Morals is organized into a sequence of chapters that build a cumulative argument about the nature of moral language. While Hare does not divide the book explicitly into formal “parts,” commentators often group chapters according to thematic focus.

5.2 Progression of Argument

The book’s argumentative structure is cumulative:

1. Early chapters set constraints on any plausible theory of moral language by examining how moral terms function in ordinary talk (e.g. advising, guiding action).
2. Subsequent chapters formalize these constraints via the notions of prescriptivity and the logic of imperatives.
3. Later chapters extend this framework to the analysis of specific moral words, especially “good,” and to the principle of universalizability.
4. The concluding parts show how this analysis bears on rival meta‑ethical views and on the possibility of moral reasoning.

5.3 Use of Examples and Logical Devices

Throughout the work Hare deploys simplified examples—such as a speaker advising another person what they “ought” to do in specific situations—to illustrate how moral terms are actually used. He supplements these with quasi‑formal discussions of logical relations between imperatives and with distinctions between descriptive and evaluative meaning.

The structure is thus both expository and argumentative: each chapter introduces distinctions or logical tools that are then used in later chapters to refine the overall account of moral language.

6. Prescriptivism and the Nature of Moral Judgments

6.1 Core Prescriptivist Thesis

Hare’s prescriptivism holds that moral judgments are fundamentally prescriptions—a type of imperative—rather than descriptions of moral facts. To say “You ought to keep your promises” is, on his view, to prescribe or commend promise‑keeping, not to report that some moral property attaches to such actions.

He characterizes this in terms of practical force: sincere moral judgments are intimately connected with action and choice. A person who affirms a moral “ought” but is entirely unwilling to act accordingly in relevantly similar situations is, on Hare’s analysis, misusing the term or being insincere.

6.2 Distinction from Descriptive Judgments

Prescriptivism emphasizes the difference between:

Hare maintains that moral judgments may include descriptive elements—for instance, specifying facts relevant to a decision—but their distinctive moral role is prescriptive. Attempts to reduce moral meaning to purely descriptive content are said to ignore this action‑guiding dimension.

6.3 Non‑Cognitivist but Rationally Constrained

Prescriptivism is a form of non‑cognitivism: moral judgments, strictly as such, do not assert propositions capable of being true or false in the same way descriptive statements are. However, Hare aims to show that this does not trivialize morality or reduce it to mere exclamation. Moral prescriptions, he argues, are subject to logical relations (such as consistency and implication) and to the requirement of universalizability.

Proponents of prescriptivism highlight that this view can explain:

• Why moral discourse is deeply practical
• Why insincere or hypocritical moral judgments are defective
• How logical criticism of moral views is possible even without positing moral facts

Critics, by contrast, have questioned whether prescriptivism can accommodate the apparently truth‑apt and belief‑like character of many moral assertions, a debate examined more fully when considering the book’s reception.

7. The Logic of Imperatives

7.1 Imperatives as a Model for Moral Judgments

A central component of Hare’s project is the development of a logic of imperatives and its application to ethics. He argues that moral judgments are best understood as a special class of imperatives—universalizable prescriptions—so the logical behavior of imperatives more generally illuminates moral reasoning.

Imperatives include commands, requests, and advice, such as “Close the window” or “Please help him.” Hare claims that these utterances can stand in logical relations analogous to those among indicative sentences.

7.2 Logical Relations Among Imperatives

Hare explores patterns such as:

On this basis, he argues that talk of logical inconsistency, conflict, and inference is meaningful even when the sentences involved are not truth‑apt in the usual sense.

7.3 Application to “Ought” and Related Terms

Moral “ought”‑sentences, Hare suggests, function as universal prescriptions. Their logical properties can be understood by analogy with imperatives addressed to all relevantly similar agents in similar situations.

He maintains that a person who accepts “I ought to do A in circumstances C” thereby commits themselves to the corresponding prescription “Let anyone in circumstances C do A,” on pain of logical inconsistency. The logic of imperatives thus underpins the later discussion of universalizability.

Alternative accounts in the literature have either doubted that imperatives admit of a genuine logic or proposed different logics (for example, deontic logics formulated in truth‑functional terms). Hare’s approach remains distinctive in tying logical relations among moral judgments directly to relations among prescriptions.

8. The Meaning of ‘Good’ and Evaluative Language

8.1 Critique of Descriptive and Naturalistic Analyses

In his treatment of “good”, Hare surveys and criticizes attempts to define the term in purely descriptive or naturalistic ways—for example, equating “good” with “pleasure‑producing” or “desired.” He argues that such definitions either commit what he sees as a version of the naturalistic fallacy (by identifying an evaluative term with a descriptive property) or fail to account for the practical, commendatory force of “good.”

According to Hare, two speakers might agree on all descriptive facts about an object yet differ on whether it is “good,” suggesting that the evaluative element cannot be reduced to description.

8.2 “Good” as Commendatory

Hare proposes that the central moral use of “good” is commendatory: to call something “good” is, in ordinary contexts, to recommend it, to commend it for choice, use, or admiration. This commendatory function aligns “good” with prescriptive language.

He distinguishes between:

Hare holds that in both cases an element of commendation is present, though in attributive uses it is tied to standards internal to a role or function.

8.3 Descriptive Meaning as Dependent

While emphasizing commendation, Hare does not deny that “good” often carries descriptive meaning. For instance, to call a strawberry “good” may imply that it is ripe and sweet. However, he maintains that such descriptive content is parasitic on underlying standards of commendation: the factual features matter only because, given our purposes and practices, they are what we typically commend.

Subsequent commentators have debated whether Hare’s account can fully capture the richness of evaluative language, including aesthetic and thick ethical terms. Nonetheless, within the book, the analysis of “good” serves to illustrate how evaluative meaning can be explained in prescriptivist terms without positing special moral properties.

9. Universalizability and Moral Consistency

9.1 Universalizability as a Logical Feature

Hare introduces universalizability as a formal, logical feature of moral judgments. When a speaker uses moral terms like “ought” sincerely, they are, he argues, committed to applying the same judgment in all relevantly similar cases, regardless of who occupies the positions involved.

Universalizability does not in itself specify which features of a situation are relevant; it requires only that once those features are fixed, the judgment cannot be arbitrarily restricted to some individuals.

9.2 Commitment Across Cases and Persons

On Hare’s view, a person who says “I ought to keep my promises” but refuses to say “Others in like circumstances ought to keep theirs,” while acknowledging the situations are relevantly similar, is logically inconsistent in their use of “ought.” Moral agents must, he contends, be willing to imagine themselves in others’ positions and endorse the same prescriptions from any such standpoint.

This leads to the idea that moral reasoning involves a kind of role reversal: agents must ask whether they can consistently will a prescription that would also apply if they were in the place of any affected party.

9.3 Universalizability and Consistency of Prescriptions

Universalizability is closely linked to consistency among prescriptions. A set of moral judgments is inconsistent if, when universalized across relevantly similar cases, it issues mutually incompatible prescriptions. For example, a person cannot coherently prescribe that promises made by them need not be kept, yet also insist that promises made to them must always be honored, where the cases are otherwise alike.

Proponents of Hare’s view argue that this formal requirement explains why certain egocentric or discriminatory moral stances can be subjected to rational criticism. Critics have suggested that fanatical or self‑sacrificial prescriptions might still pass Hare’s test of universalizability, raising questions about how demanding or contentful the requirement is. Within The Language of Morals, however, universalizability mainly functions to show that even a non‑cognitivist view imposes strong logical constraints on moral judgment.

10. Critique of Emotivism and Descriptivism

10.1 Emotivism Under Scrutiny

Hare devotes significant attention to emotivism, especially as developed by Ayer and Stevenson. Emotivists maintain that moral judgments primarily express emotions or attitudes—“Boo to stealing!”—rather than state facts. Hare agrees that moral language is non‑descriptive and linked to attitudes, but he raises several objections:

• Insufficient account of logic: Emotivism is said to struggle to explain logical relations among moral judgments, such as valid argument or inconsistency, because mere expressions of feeling do not obviously stand in logical relations.
• Neglect of practical commitment: Hare argues that moral judgments involve a commitment to act in certain ways, not just a display of emotion.
• Rational argument: Moral debate often proceeds by appealing to consistency and universalizability, not merely by influencing emotions, which Hare thinks emotivism underplays.

Emotivists respond by emphasizing the sophisticated role of attitudes and the possibility of “emotive meaning” having its own patterns of influence and rationale, but Hare maintains that prescriptivism better captures the action‑guiding and logically constrained structure of morality.

10.2 Critique of Descriptivist Theories

Hare also targets descriptivist accounts which treat moral statements as factual reports—for example, about natural properties (pleasure, desire‑satisfaction) or about non‑natural moral properties accessible to intuition. His criticisms include:

Hare contends that descriptivism mislocates the source of normativity: the practical, prescriptive force of moral language cannot be captured simply by adding further facts to the world. Descriptivists, in turn, argue that moral judgments appear truth‑apt and often behave linguistically like assertions of fact.

10.3 Hare’s Intermediate Strategy

Within the book, prescriptivism is presented as an alternative that preserves what emotivists get right (non‑descriptiveness) and what descriptivists emphasize (the possibility of rational moral discussion) without affirming robust moral facts. It does so by relocating the key explanatory work to the logical features of prescriptions—a move that later commentators have both developed and challenged.

11. Moral Reasoning and Practical Deliberation

11.1 From Prescriptions to Reasoning

Given that moral judgments are prescriptions, Hare asks how moral reasoning is possible. He argues that reasoning can occur among prescriptions because they stand in logical relations—especially consistency and implication—revealed by the logic of imperatives and the requirement of universalizability.

To deliberate morally is, on this view, to examine one’s prescriptions, explore their implications when universalized, and revise them to achieve a consistent set that one can wholeheartedly endorse.

11.2 Role of Facts in Practical Deliberation

Although moral judgments are non‑descriptive, Hare stresses that empirical facts are indispensable in moral thinking. Facts determine which descriptions correctly apply to the situation; once the factual description is fixed, the agent considers which prescriptions they are prepared to universalize for all similarly described cases.

Hare’s framework distinguishes:

Moral disagreement may arise either from factual disagreement or from clashes in prescriptions.

11.3 Consistency, Role‑Reversal, and Imagination

Hare emphasizes the importance of imaginative identification: agents must be willing to imagine themselves in the position of any affected party and still endorse the universalized prescription. If they cannot do so, their current set of prescriptions is inconsistent or unstable.

Moral reasoning therefore tests one’s prescriptions for:

• Intra‑personal consistency across cases
• Inter‑personal symmetry when roles are exchanged

Proponents hold that this account shows how a non‑cognitivist theory can still support rigorous moral deliberation. Critics have questioned whether such role‑reversal suffices to generate determinate moral guidance, suggesting that agents with unusual preferences or fanatical commitments might still pass the test.

12. Implications for Normative Ethics

12.1 Meta‑Ethical Constraints on Moral Theories

While The Language of Morals is not itself a work of normative ethics, Hare draws implications for what a plausible normative theory must look like given his analysis of moral language. Any such theory, he contends, must:

• Respect the prescriptive, action‑guiding nature of moral judgments
• Accommodate universalizability, ensuring that its principles can be endorsed from any affected standpoint
• Allow for logical consistency among the prescriptions it recommends

These constraints are intended to be formal rather than content‑specific, leaving open which particular rules or values are ultimately justified.

12.2 Compatibility with Competing Normative Views

Hare suggests that various normative positions—such as utilitarianism, deontology, or virtue ethics—could, in principle, be reformulated in prescriptivist terms, provided they meet the structural requirements noted above. For example, a utilitarian could frame the principle of utility as a universal prescription regarding choices that maximize overall happiness, while a deontologist might express categorical duties as prescriptions binding on all agents in specified conditions.

Commentators have debated whether some normative outlooks fit more naturally with Hare’s framework than others. Many have seen strong affinities between prescriptivism and forms of rule‑consequentialism, a connection Hare himself develops more explicitly in later work, though The Language of Morals does not endorse a full‑blown normative theory.

12.3 Objectivity and Disagreement

Hare’s analysis suggests a distinctive way of understanding objectivity in ethics. Rather than grounding objectivity in mind‑independent moral facts, he locates it in the shared logical constraints of prescriptivity and universalizability. Normative theories, on this approach, can be assessed for their coherence, universality, and responsiveness to all affected parties’ situations.

Supporters regard this as a way to preserve meaningful moral criticism and progress without invoking robust moral realism. Critics argue that, without substantive moral truths, the resulting “objectivity” is too thin to underwrite strong normative claims. The Language of Morals itself primarily delineates the formal implications for normative theorizing, leaving these broader debates open.

13. Key Concepts and Technical Terms

This section gathers central notions employed in The Language of Morals and clarifies their roles within Hare’s framework.

14. Reception and Criticisms

14.1 Contemporary Reception

Upon its 1952 publication, The Language of Morals was widely recognized within the Anglo‑American philosophical community as a significant contribution to meta‑ethics. It quickly became a central text in Oxford moral philosophy and influenced teaching elsewhere. Many contemporaries praised the book’s clarity, rigorous argumentation, and detailed engagement with everyday moral talk.

Some philosophers, however, were wary of its non‑cognitivist orientation and its resistance to metaphysical accounts of moral truth. Intuitionists and moral realists in particular regarded Hare’s approach as too austere, fearing it undermined the apparent objectivity of moral claims.

14.2 Major Lines of Criticism

Subsequent discussion has raised several enduring critiques:

14.3 Developments in Response

Hare responded to some of these criticisms in later writings, elaborating on the motivational force of prescriptions, their connection with preferences, and the practical upshot for normative theory. Other philosophers developed alternative non‑cognitivist frameworks—such as sophisticated expressivism—that retain some of Hare’s insights about practical language while modifying or rejecting his strict prescriptivist logic.

Debate over these criticisms continues to shape assessments of the book’s lasting philosophical significance.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

15.1 Influence on Meta‑Ethics

The Language of Morals is widely regarded as a landmark in twentieth‑century meta‑ethics. It systematized a non‑cognitivist view that goes beyond simple emotivism by stressing the logical structure and universalizability of moral judgments. Later expressivists, including Allan Gibbard and Simon Blackburn, have engaged with Hare’s ideas—sometimes taking prescriptivism as a precursor to their own theories, sometimes criticizing its limitations while preserving its emphasis on the practical nature of ethical discourse.

The book also helped consolidate the fact–value distinction within analytic philosophy, providing a detailed model of how evaluative language might differ from descriptive language while still supporting rational argument.

15.2 Impact on Normative Theory

Although meta‑ethical in focus, Hare’s framework influenced normative ethics, especially the development of rule‑consequentialist and utilitarian theories. His later work, Moral Thinking, explicitly builds on the prescriptivist foundations of The Language of Morals to defend a two‑level consequentialist approach. Commentators such as Brad Hooker have examined this trajectory, treating Hare’s early analysis of moral language as essential to understanding his mature normative views.

15.3 Role in Analytic Philosophy of Language and Logic

Hare’s attempt to articulate a logic of imperatives stimulated further investigation into non‑indicative logics and the semantics of practical language. While alternative formal systems have since been proposed, his work remains an early, influential effort to show that commands and prescriptions are amenable to systematic logical treatment.

15.4 Place in the History of Moral Philosophy

Historically, The Language of Morals is often situated between Moorean intuitionism and later realist or expressivist theories. It represents a distinctive postwar attempt to reconcile empiricist scruples and anti‑metaphysical tendencies with the demands of serious moral reflection. The book’s combination of ordinary‑language analysis, logical rigor, and focus on the action‑guiding character of ethics has made it a staple of curricula in moral philosophy.

Even among those who reject prescriptivism, the work is frequently cited as a model of clear philosophical writing and as a key reference point for understanding subsequent debates over non‑cognitivism, universalizability, and the nature of moral discourse.