To: Graystone who wrote (9979 ) 4/19/1998 2:03:00 AM From: JF Quinnelly Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Logic and Ethics may be related. This notion of universalizability can also be used to test whether a difference that is alleged to be relevant--for instance, skin colour or even the position of a freckle on one's nose--really is relevant. Hare emphasized that the same judgment must be made in all conceivable cases. Thus if a Nazi were to claim that he may kill a person because that person is Jewish, he must be prepared to prescribe that if, somehow, it should turn out that he is himself of Jewish origin, he should also be killed. Nothing turns on the likelihood of such a discovery; the same prescription has to be made in all hypothetically, as well as actually, similar cases. Since only an unusually fanatical Nazi would be prepared to do this, universalizability is a powerful means of reasoning against certain moral judgments, including those made by the Nazis. At the same time, since there could be fanatical Nazis who are prepared to die for the purity of the Aryan race, the argument of Freedom and Reason allows that the role played by reason in ethics does have definite limits. Hare's position at this stage, therefore, appeared to be a compromise between the extreme subjectivism of the emotivists and some more objectivist view of ethics. As so often happens with those who try to take the middle ground, Hare was soon to receive criticism from both sides.
