Abstract

Hare explains what he means by ‘Ethical Theory’, and what he means by ‘Taxonomy’. Ethical theory, which Hare contrasts to ‘moral theory’, is a purely formal discipline that is concerned with the meaning and logical properties of moral words. Hare offers a ‘Taxonomy’ of ethical theories in the sense of a classification into genera and differentia, beginning with what he sees as the basic dichotomy in ethical theory between descriptivism and non‐descriptivism. The difference between descriptivist and non‐descriptivist ethical theories is that, according to the former, the meaning of moral statements is determined entirely by their truth conditions; the latter deny that this is so. Hare divides descriptivism into ‘Naturalism’ and ‘Intuitionism’, and non‐descriptivism into ‘Emotivism’ and ‘Rationalism’.