Hare had attempted to show that there could be a rational basis for moral disagreement, even after Ayer’s ethical weedkiller had stripped reality bare of value. It was this that elicited the joint ‘No!’ from Philippa, Mary, Iris and Elizabeth. Philippa Foot certainly couldn’t stomach this repackaged version of Ayer’s subjectivism. She wanted to be able to say to the Nazis: ‘But we are right, and you are wrong.’ She wanted the idea of an objective moral reality against which actions could be judged wrong or bad and not just inconsistent or irrational.
