A Life of H. L. A. Hart
The Nightmare and the Noble Dream
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 16 September 2004
- ISBN 9780199274970
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages448 pages
- Size 242x165x30 mm
- Weight 843 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 16pp halftone plates 0
Categories
Short description:
To generations of lawyers, H. L. A. Hart is known as the twentieth century's greatest legal philosopher. Whilst his scholarship revolutionized the study of law, as a social commentator he gave intellectual impetus to the liberalizing of society in the 1960s. But behind his public success, Hart struggled with demons. His Jewish background, ambivalent sexuality, and unconventional marriage all fuelled his psychological complexity; allegations of espionage, though immediately quashed, nearly destroyed him. Nicola Lacey s biography explores the forces that shaped an extraordinary life.
MoreLong description:
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was born in Yorkshire in 1907 to second generation Jewish immigrants. Having won a scholarship to Oxford University, he went on to become the most famous legal philosopher of the twentieth century.
From 1932-40 H.L.A Hart practised as a barrister in London. He was pronounced physically unfit for military service in 1940, and was recruited by MI5, where he worked until 1945. During his time at the Bar he had continued to study philosophy and at M15 his interest was further stimulated by his philosopher colleagues in M16, Stuart Hampshire and Gilbert Ryle. After the war, Hart returned to Oxford to take up a philosophy fellowship, later to become Professor of Jurisprudence.
H.L.A Hart single-handedly reinvented the philosophy of law and influenced the nation's thinking in the 1960s on abortion, the legalization of homosexuality, and on capital punishment. Hart's approach to legal philosophy was at once disarmingly simple and breathtakingly ambitious, combining as it did the insights of Austin and Bentham and the new linguistic philosophy of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He sought to elucidate a concept of law which would be of relevance to all forms of law, wherever or whenever they arose: his bestselling book, The Concept of Law, has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide.
In 1941, he married Jenifer Williams (a high-ranking civil servant, later an Oxford academic) with whom he had four children. Their relationship was an enduring if unconventional one. In the early 1950s, Jenifer was rumoured to be having a long-standing affair with Isaiah Berlin, one of Hart's closest friends. She was also, falsely, accused by the Sunday Times of having been a Russian spy, an allegation which was all the more scandalous given Hart's position at MI5 during the War.
Nicola Lacey draws on Hart's previously unpublished diaries and letters to reveal a complex inner life. Outwardly successful, Hart was in fact tormented by doubts about his intellectual abilities, his sexual identity and his capacity to form close relationships. Her biography also sheds fascinating light on the origins of his ideas, and assesses his overall contribution. Above all, it chronicles of a life which had a depth ands impact far greater than many of Hart's readers have realized.
[Lacey's] biography of the greatest legal philosopher since Jeremy Bentham is worthy of its illustrious subject. It is an excellent, gripping piece of work that sheds valuable light on the life of Hart and the lives of many of his contemporaries...An abundance of fasinating material in Lacey's book...One of the many virtues of Lacey's book is that it enhances one's respect for the greatness of Hart's philosophical work by revealing adroitly the emotional turmoil that Hart underwent in so many of his personal and intellectual endeavours...Lacey deserves considerable credit for highlighting the magnitude of Hart's achievements by setting them in the context of his troubled life.
Table of Contents:
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Biographer's Note on Approach and Sources
Introduction: An Outsider on the Inside
Part I: North and South
1: Harrogate, Cheltenham, Bradford
2: An Oxford Scholar
3: Success Snatched from Defeat: London and the Bar
Part II: Change and Continuity
4: Jenifer
5: From the Inns of Court to Military Intelligence: MI5, Marriage, and Fatherhood
6: Oxford from the Other Side of the Fence
Part III: The Golden Age
7: Selling Philosophy to the Lawyers: The Chair of Jurisprudence
8: American Jurisprudence through English Eyes: Harvard 1956-7
9: Law in the Perspective of Philosophy: Causation in Law, The Concept of Law
10: West and East, California and Israel: Law, Liberty, and Morality; Kelsen Visited; The Morality of the Criminal Law
11: Discipline, Punishment, and Responsibility
Part IV: After the Chair
12: Old Turks and Young Fogeys: Bentham and Brasenose
13: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream
Notes
Bibliography: HLA Hart
Bibliography: Other authors
List of Interviewees
Biographical details on figures appearing in the book
