Essays on Religion and Education

A collection of the author's most important essays in the related fields of religion and education. Professor Hare's work in moral philosophy sheds new light on the relations between religion and morality and on the problems involved in educating children to think freely about moral questions.

R. M. Hare is one of the most widely discussed of today''s moral philosophers. In this volume he has collected his most important essays in the related fields of religion and education, some newly published and others now inaccessible. The book starts with an exposition of his ideas on the meaning of religious language. There follow several essays, theoretical and practical, on the relations between religion and morality, which have deep implications for moral education. The central question addressed in the rest of the volume is how children can be educated to think for themselves, freely but rationally, about moral questions, and the effects on society of failure to achieve this. Professor Hare argues that those who want to dispense with morality are in effect resigning from a vital educational task. Attitudes to euthanasia and to equality of educational opportunity are taken as examples of how our thinking can go wrong.