Abstract

The contemporary approaches to moral philosophy have experienced diverging directions regarding the possibility and justification of reasoning. Hare claims that in spite of the fact that intuitivists like Moore, Ross, and Prichard block the use of reasoning by accepting the intuitiveness of knowledge of good and bad, emotivism takes the same rout by focusing on emotions and emphasizing the freedom of choice. While descriptivism and also naturalism accept the possibility of reasoning through admitting the indicative nature of ethical speech, they reject or limit the freedom of choice. He tries to justify both the freedom of choice and the possibility of rational reasoning in moral. In so doing, Hare takes refuge in the non-self-contradiction and compatibility principles to insist on the universalizability of rules of moral reasoning. To make judgments of relevance is the prerequisite in morals which subsequently encompasses universalizability and the possibility of reasoning. Using the linguistic analysis, Hare tries to show that as language in which predicate-logic governs statements, imperatives and moral sentences are governed by rational relationships and principles of compatibility. From this point of view, an individual’s judgments are justifiable, provided that it is not in contradiction with his previous judgments. The aim of this study is to state, analyze, and criticize Hare’s views regarding the provision of rational reasoning and its possibility in terms of the challenges he faces with regard to competing schools of thought.