ABSTRACT
When I described utilitarian theory in the first chapter of this book I made a distinction between two forms of utilitarianism. I contrasted pure utilitarianism on the one hand with impure utilitarianism on the other; and I said that impure utilitarianism recognises standards of conduct which are independent of (or separate from) utility, whereas pure utilitarianism does not. All of the philosophers whose work has been discussed up to this point are utilitarians; but their utilitarianism is of the impure sort. In this chapter and the chapter which follows, however, we shall be concerned with a pure utilitarian theory of morality, the one put forward by R.M.Hare in his book Moral Thinking.1 I intend to argue that whatever Hare describes in that book, it is not moral thinking. Moral thinking, as I said before, must proceed in moral terms; but pure utilitarianism, I shall argue, eliminates moral terms-it contains nothing that can serve as a measure or standard of moral action. This is not true of impure utilitarianism; nevertheless, the arguments I shall advance over the next two chapters will draw upon certain aspects of preceding discussions.
