Now, Hart’
s execution of his two-pronged project is hampered not only by the limited spacemade available by a single, not too-long chapter, but also by the fact that it is not always clearwhether he is addressing critical morality or social (or positive) morality. There is, as Hart
himself points out in an endnote, a ‘very important distinction between a social morality andthose moral principles which transcend it and are used in criticism of it’ (p.301). Indeed, Hart
subsequently deployed this distinction in his
celebrated critique of Patrick Devlin’s case for
the legal enforcement of social morality.
5
However, there is a shift of focus from critical tosocial morality as we move from section 1 to section 2 of Chapter VIII. Hart might reply thatthis is unproblematic, since his analysis is intended to apply to critical and social moralstandards alike. Principles of both social morality and critical morality are, for all their
differences, equally ‘moral’ principles, and it is this latter quality that his conceptu
al analysisseeks to elucidate.