Abstract

I believe the title of this book to be something of a pun which Hare employs to point to the two central tasks of this book, his attempt to “sort out” ethical theories by placing them within an exhaustive “taxonomy” of ethical theories and his attempt to use this taxonomy to “sort these theories out,” as the English might say, or “put them in their place” as Americans would put it. That is, he hopes to use this taxonomy to develop a set of very general arguments that could be used against whole classes of ethical theory, thereby eliminating the need to attack each one individually. In this book, Hare does not attempt, in any systematic way, to apply his own ethical theory to cases; nor does he seek to elaborate it in any great detail. Instead, he attempts to defend it first by raising objections to other types of ethical theories, and then by outlining the numerous virtues of his own theory.