Aristotle and R. M. Hare on Prescriptivism

Moral values are prescriptive both in Hare and Aristotle, but they see the prescriptive quality of moral values through somewhat different perspectives. Whereas Hare thinks that they are prescriptive due to the logical form of moral description, Aristotle thinks that they are so because of our cognitive nature to moral requirements. Therefore, clearly, it will be a mistake to call Aristotle a prescriptivist in the sense that Hare and other contemporary prescriptivists call themselves so. However, I see that although Aristotle and Hare do not derive the same argument, there are some significant common features in their conceptions of moral judgments. Hence, I will claim, showing those common elements between them, that Aristotle’s view of moral judgment is still ‘prescriptive’, it is so only in a qualified sense though.