ABSTRACT
There has recently been much discussion among moral philosophers about the definition of ‘morality’. To emphasize the need for such an investigation is hardly necessary. The foregoing objection is, of course, quite general in the sense that it is intended to have applicability to attempts to define many words besides ‘moral’ and ‘morality’. It is also worth mentioning another possibility. It may be that, in some of their uses, ‘moral’ and ‘morality’ are rather vague words, that there is a range of borderline cases where usage is fluid and there is room for dispute. Finally, having dealt with this objection and before turning to the various types of definition which have been offered, we should perhaps say a little more here about how the satisfactoriness or otherwise of these definitions is to be assessed. Largely owing to the immense influence of Professor Hare’s work the concept of universalizability has recently received a great deal of attention from moral philosophers.
