In this interactive article Dr Stephen Loxton discusses Philippa Foot’s criticisms of Hare’s prescriptivism.  Foot was an ethical naturalist who in her book Natural Goodness (2001) takes a very different view to the non-naturalist Hare.  This article gives an excellent, clear introduction to the idea of prescriptive language and a defence of the classical naturalist tradition attacked by emotivists (such as AJ Ayer)and prescriptivists (such as RM Hare) in the twentieth century.

philippa_foot1.pdf