  This is an extraordinary, and extraordinarily bold, intellectual construction, which invites debate at many points. Zeno Vendler (1988: 181) urged that we keep apart the semantic thesis (which may be true or nearly true) that “I” is a pure indexical, from any metaphysical claim (which may baffle us) that it denotes a pure subject which can take on any state or role. In his reply, Hare clearly shies away from adopting a metaphysical position stranger than Vendler’s own (which rejects Cartesian egos but does admit a transcendental ego). Yet he still supposes it to be true that “I might be Napoleon”, and that “the world in which I was Napoleon would be a different world than this, though not in its universal properties” (1988a: 285). He even supposes that I can consider situations in which I am a stove, a mountain, or a tree—although, since I cannot care what happens to me if I become such a thing, the consideration is idle (1988a: 283). Hare seems here to have entered rather unexpected territory. It would have suited his usual common sense to permit me to imagine not that I am Napoleon, but being Napoleon, i.e., what it was like to be Napoleon; and that can suffice to incline one to ambivalence about the outcome of Waterloo. But he requires there to be a possible situation in which I am, at any rate, relevantly just like Napoleon if he is to maintain that prescribing, say, “All men like Napoleon should receive their come-uppance” applies even to oneself, and so may be imprudent.