The chapter has a twofold ambition. The first is to explain the nature of justice as one specificmoral value among others and, in the course of doing so, to assess the widely-credited thoughtthat justice has a peculiarly intimate connection with the law. The second is to identify whatdistinguishes moral standards from legal and other standards of conduct. In characterizing thissecond task Hart, mistakenly I believe, apparently assumes that all moral standards areobligation-imposing, a topic to which I shall return.
3
In any case, the first task is that of limning the contours of justice within the general structure of our moral thought, while thesecond task is that of distinguishing moral standards among the general class of practicalstandards. In keeping with the preoccupations of the Oxford philosophical environment of the
1950s, Hart conceives of both undertakings as aimed at conceptual clarification, a matter of
achieving ‘a separation of some long
-
entangled issues’. Moreover, he expresses theconviction that success in these undertakings is attainable without proceeding ‘far into moral philosophy’
(p.157).