ABSTRACT
THE main argument of the last chapter was to the general effect that value judgments can be treated neither as synthetic nor analytic and therefore cannot be treated as statements. At once one wants to ask, if they are not statements, what are they? It is obviously silly to say that if they are not statements, then they are nothing meaningful at all and, as I have already said, the early empiricist view that this was the case lasted only a very short time—if, indeed, it had ever been meant to be taken literally at all. It will be no more possible in this chapter than it was in the last to try to follow the recent history of moral philosophy, from the time of these extremist theories up to the present day. Instead I shall try to put forward the outline of one alternative view that has been very much discussed in the last few years. I shall not be trying to give an exposition of the views of any particular philosopher; but my account is certainly very much influenced by the views of Mr. R. M. Hare 1 , whose work in moral philosophy has been at least as important as that of anyone else in recent times.
