In his article “The universal prescriptivism” contained in A Companion to Ethics, organised by Peter Singer, Richard M. Hare divides the descriptivist theories in three branches: naturalism, intuitionism and subjectivism.

«Descriptivistic theories can be divided broadly into naturalism and intuitionism. Both terms can be misleading, but they will serve. The dispute between these is about wheter or not the true-conditions or moral judgements, which according to descriptivism give them their meaning are to be determined by definitions (or, more loosely, explanations of meaning) which refer only to non-moral truth or properties. Naturalists think that this is possible: intuitionists, by contrast, think that no such definitions or explanations can capture the meanings of the moral words.» (R.M.Hare, Universal Prescriptivism, in A Companion to Ethics, pages 452-453, Blackwell Publishers; the bold is added by us).

«One further kind of descritiptivism may be mentionated here, namely subjetivism.» (R.M. Hare, ibid, page 454).

It is evident that R.M. Hare commits a theoretic error by lack of a dialectical thought.

This division should suppose that the three theories would be species of the same genus but they are not. Naturalism is opposed to no naturalism, not to intuitionism. Naturalism concerns to nature, an ontological region, but intuitionism concerns to a form of human knowledge, to the subject. What Hare means by intuitionism should be called supernaturalism or metaphisicism, i mean, a region beyond physical nature. This error had been already commited by George Moore, in his ethical theory.

The greatest error of Hare is to put at the same level subjectivism, naturalism and intuitionism: subjectivism is not necessarily extrinsic to naturalism, there can exist a naturalistic subjectivism (for example: a man considers the birds as gods and try to preserve bio nature as the good ethics) as it can exist a naturalistic objectivism (for example: war and murder are, in general, bad actions because they produce suffering and horror to many people).

On the other side, subjectivism – a sociological concept – is partially incorporated in intuitionism – an epistemological concept. They are not extrinsic necessarily. For example: a person who considers, by intuition, that the «secret esoteric centre of the world is Cibele ´s square in Madrid» is a subjectivist intuitionist.

So, R. M.Hare, this celebrity in ethics, on writing the article studied here, could not think in a dialectical way, and did not rank correctly the genus and species.

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© (Direitos de autor para Francisco Limpo de Faria Queiroz)