What Is Prescriptivism? R.M. Hare's Moral Theory

Direct Answer

Prescriptivism is the metaethical theory that moral judgments express prescriptions — practical commands or recommendations — rather than descriptions of fact. Its leading architect is R.M. Hare, who set out the theory in The Language of Morals (1952) and refined it in Freedom and Reason (1963). On the prescriptivist view, when I say "You ought to keep your promises," I am not reporting a fact about promising; I am prescribing that you keep your promises, in much the same way that the command "Keep your promises!" prescribes it. But moral prescriptions are special in two ways. They are universalizable: a moral judgment must be applicable to all relevantly similar cases, including my own, which builds consistency and impartiality into moral thought. And they are overriding: moral prescriptions defeat competing non-moral prescriptions. Prescriptivism is a form of non-cognitivism — moral judgments are not truth-apt beliefs — but it treats moral language as governed by logic, giving moral reasoning a rigor that emotivism lacked.

Historical Context

Prescriptivism arose in the middle decades of the twentieth century as a sophisticated successor to emotivism. The emotivists — A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson — had argued that moral judgments express emotions or attitudes. Their theory was criticized for making moral disagreement and moral argument look irrational: if moral judgments are mere expressions of feeling, what could moral reasoning possibly be? Hare, working in the Oxford linguistic tradition shaped by Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, answered that moral language functions like a special kind of prescription. He was inspired in part by Kant's idea of the categorical imperative: the requirement that moral principles be universalizable is the linguistic descendant of Kant's demand that maxims be fit to be universal laws. Hare's theory dominated English-speaking metaethics through the 1950s and 1960s and powerfully shaped the emerging field of applied ethics, since it provided a method — universalizability testing — for reasoning about concrete moral problems.

Key Arguments & Debates

The prescriptivist argument begins with the observation that moral language is essentially practical. Moral judgments guide action; they are used to advise, command, commend, and resolve practical questions. If moral judgments were descriptions of fact, the prescriptivist argues, they could be accepted or rejected while leaving action untouched — but a genuine moral judgment that an action is wrong is inseparable from the practical guidance not to do it. The theory's great strength is its account of moral logic. Because prescriptions can be embedded in conditionals and syllogisms, prescriptivism handles the logical complexity of moral argument far better than emotivism. Universalizability supplies the normative substance: to make a moral judgment is to bind oneself by a rule, which explains why moral judgments are the same in all relevantly similar circumstances. The main objections concern the nature of the prescription itself. Critics ask what distinguishes moral prescriptions from commands of force or prudence; whether "ought" sentences in the third person ("He ought to be punished") can plausibly be analyzed as commands; and whether the theory can account for moral truth. Contemporary expressivists have incorporated Hare's insights about prescription and universalizability while attempting to give moral judgments a truth-like status within an expressivist framework.

Contemporary Relevance

Prescriptivism's legacy is visible in two places. In applied ethics, the universalizability test remains a standard tool: to judge a practice wrong is to be committed to judging relevantly similar practices wrong, whoever performs them. This structure underlies arguments about consistency in moral criticism — for example, condemning an action by others that we tolerate in ourselves. In metaethics, prescriptivism is the direct ancestor of contemporary expressivism, which keeps the prescriptivist insight that moral judgments are practical while solving the problems of truth and logic that Hare's own version left open.

Related Concepts

Prescriptivism is best understood in the context of non-cognitivism, where it stands alongside emotivism as the leading alternative. The cognitivism vs non-cognitivism debate frames the entire question, and prescriptivism's universalizability requirement echoes Kant's categorical imperative. Like all non-cognitivist theories, it participates in the larger contest between moral realism and anti-realism.

Further Learning

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on R.M. Hare offers the definitive scholarly account. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's survey of cognitivism and non-cognitivism places prescriptivism in its dialectical context. Hare's own The Language of Morals (Oxford University Press, 1952) and Freedom and Reason (Oxford University Press, 1963) are the primary texts.