In seeking to answer this question, Hart departs from his usual procedure of elaborating hispreferred view by means of a dialectical encounter with some of the leading positions in the
history of the subject. This illuminating procedure is often a precursor to Hart’s deployment
of the beguiling strategy of presenting his own position as a sane middle course, one thatcaptures and illuminates truths that are distorted in opposite directions by rival views. This isa strategy he famously adopts both in his critique of formalism and rule-scepticism, on theone hand, and of command theories of law and natural law theories, on the other hand.Instead, the analysis that he provides of the concept of justice, as the endnotes to the chapterattest (pp.299-
302), is one deeply influenced by Aristotle’s classic discussion in Book V of
the
Nicomachean Ethics
, as modified by what Hart takes to be the most illuminating modern
treatment, that presented in chapter 6 of Henry Sidgwick’s
The Method of Ethics
. Thislimited historical focus is unfortunate, since what Aristotle (as an ancient Greek philosopher)shares with Sidgwick (as a utilitarian), albeit for different reasons, is a tendency to eschewaccording the notion of moral rights any heavy-lifting explanatory role in moral philosophy.
Yet, it is arguable that this very notion is central to at least the modern understanding of justice.