Birthday profile

R. M. Hare

British moral philosopher (1919–2002)

Born
March 12, 1919
Died
January 29, 2002
Zodiac sign
Pisces
Birth year
1919

About R. M. Hare

Richard Mervyn Hare (21 March 1919 – 29 January 2002) was a British moral philosopher who held the post of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. He subsequently taught for a number of years at the University of Florida. His meta-ethical theories were influential during the second half of the twentieth century. Hare is best known for his development of prescriptivism as a meta-ethical theory, which he argues is supported by analysis of formal features of moral discourse, and for his defence of preference utilitarianism based on his prescriptivism. Some of Hare's tutorial students, such as Brian McGuinness, John Lucas, and Bernard Williams, went on to become well-known philosophers. Hare's son, John E. Hare, also became a philosopher. Peter Singer, known for his involvement with the animal liberation movement (who studied Hare's work as an honours student at the University of Melbourne and came to know Hare personally while he was an Oxford BPhil graduate student), has explicitly adopted some elements of Hare's thought, though not his doctrine of universal prescriptivism.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when R. M. Hare was born

R. M. Hare was born in 1919. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1919

  • Best-selling book"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" – Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBlack Sox scandal — 1919 World Series fixed
  • Top headlineTreaty of Versailles signed — 18th Amendment (Prohibition)
  • Technology milestoneFirst nonstop transatlantic flight (Alcock & Brown)
  • Defining fadOuija boards
  • Notable inventionPop-up toaster
  • World population~1.79B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWoodrow Wilson
  • U.S. population103.2M

1919 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in R. M. Hare's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19192026
Gas$0.25$3.45/gal
Average home$5,000$435,000
Average income$2,000$67,500
Movie ticket$0.15$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population103.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.