Abstract

Ethics of Richard M. Hare is widely considered as a classical example of the strong internalistic theory of motivation: he is thought to believe that having a moral motive is a sufficient condition to act accordingly. However, strong internalism has difficulties with explaining the phenomenon of acrasia and amoralism. For this reason some critics charge him with developing a false theory of moral motivation. In the article I present Hare's answer to these questions by dividing the discussion about motivation into three levels: semantical, epistemological, and ontological. I also explain his concept of internal motivation and argue that his theory, contrary to what his critics assume, may be called a weak motivational internalism.