This is evidently true of what he had called “rules of thumb”, which an agent applies just so long as this remains the best way in context of achieving his goals. However, Hare came to deprecate that phrase (1981: 38), and to emphasize that the “prima facie principles” he prefers to speak of have the power to produce compunction even where their neglect, since well grounded, cannot produce remorse (1981: 30). Yet how is this to work? No doubt it is possible to combine being convinced both that one has to do X in some difficult situation (say when only lying will save my father), and that doing X remains in some significant way bad. Yet this thought requires the possession of a distinctive concept of being bad whose application, on occasion, though lacking the power to determine an ethical decision, remains obstinately significant and inexpungible. Without such a concept, talk of “compunction” is out of place. Hare makes room for this when he concedes that moral concepts may suffer a sea-change when they are applied at the intuitive and non-critical level. The only particular proposal he makes is that “ought” becomes overridable; yet he should surely be willing to concede that quite new concepts may come into being—all, of course, under the arching guidance of critical thinking. And one such concept might be expressed by a use of “morally bad” of a kind associated with moral philosophies that Hare would otherwise reject.