Hare R(ichard) M(ervyn) (b.1919), English philosopher who is one of the most influential moral philosophers of the twentieth century and the developer of prescriptivism in metaethics. Hare was educated at Rugby and Oxford, then served in the British army during World War II and spent years as a prisoner of war in Burma. In 1947 he took a position at Balliol College and was appointed White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford in 1966. On retirement from Oxford, he became Graduate Research Professor at the University of Florida (1983–93). His major books are Language of Morals (1953), Freedom and Reason (1963), Moral Thinking (1981), and Sorting Out Ethics (1997). Many collections of his essays have also appeared, and a collection of other leading philosophers’ articles on his work was published in 1988 (Hare and Critics, eds. Seanor and Fotion). According to Hare, a careful exploration of the nature of our moral concepts reveals that (nonironic) judgments about what one morally ought to do are expressions of the will, or commitments to act, that are subject to certain logical constraints. Because moral judgments are prescriptive, we cannot sincerely subscribe to them while refusing to comply with them in the relevant circumstances. Because moral judgments are universal prescriptions, we cannot sincerely subscribe to them unless we are willing for them to be followed were we in other people’s positions with their preferences. Hare later contended that vividly to imagine ourselves completely in other people’s positions involves our acquiring preferences about what should happen to us in those positions that mirror exactly what those people now want for themselves. So, ideally, we decide on a universal prescription on the basis of not only our existing preferences about the actual situation but also the new preferences we would have if we were wholly in other people’s positions. What we can prescribe universally is what maximizes net satisfaction of this amalgamated set of preferences. Hence, Hare concluded that his theory of moral judgment leads to preference-satisfaction act utilitarianism. However, like most other utilitarians, he argued that the best way to maximize utility is to have, and generally to act on, certain not directly utilitarian dispositions – such as dispositions not to hurt others or steal, to keep promises and tell the truth, to take special responsibility for one’s own family, and so on. See also EMOTIVISM , ETHICS, PRESCRIP – TIVISM , UTILITARIANIS. B.W.H.