One of the really striking revelations in Nicola Lacey's new biography of the great legal and political philosopher H.L.A. Hart is that Hart--like so many others it turns out--felt that Dworkin had badly and in some ways irresponsibly misrepresented Hart's work. A few illustrative examples from Professor Lacey's account ("Herbert" is Hart):
Herbert's sensitivity to Dworkin's criticisms was fuelled by a sense that there was something wilful or even lacking in honesty about Dworkin's reading of his work. (330)
[Hart] tried a number of approaches [to Dworkin's 1986 book Law's Empire]. First, he attempted to make sense of Dworkin's kaleidoscopic range of new distinctions and of his own place within them. But should he concentrate on a rebuttal of Dworkin's caricature of positivism as suffering from 'the semantic sting'....; or should he train his attention on Dworkin's charge that his version of positivism was an unsatisfactory form of "conventionalism," incapable of explaining the nature of legal argumentation in controversial cases? He tried to address these questions by resorting to the technique of exceptionally close readings of Dworkin's text: but he found that this usually successful method...was hard to apply to Dworkin's fluid and sometimes elusive analytic style. (350)
Once others...had confirmed that Herbert was working on a response to his work, Dworkin asked him if he would like to discuss it. Herbert responded in a cool and discouraging way. Perhaps he felt that Dworkin had not paid him the reciprocal compliment of discussing his criticisms of The Concept of Law before trying them out on others; perhaps he had simply had enough of intellectual encounters in which he felt the parameters kept changing. (352)
One of the peculiar features of legal philosophy--which is, shall we say, an uncomfortably small field--is that two of the three dominant figures in recent decades (the third being Joseph Raz, of course) should be so profoundly at odds, not just disagreeing with each other--that is familiar enough in many subfields-- but rather with one feeling (with much justice) that the other was not an entirely honest or reliable intellectual intelocutor. That strikes me as fairly unique in English-speaking philosophy of recent decades. There are plenty of fierce debates, to be sure, but nothing like the widespread sense among legal philosophers that one of the most prominent figures can't engage fairly with his major opponents. (The worry has arisen, alas, about Dworkin's treatment of Raz as well, as we have discussed previously.)
UPDATE: Coincidentally, I found this morning, via Weatherson's site, this quote describing a very different kind of philosopher, the late great David Lewis:
In everything he wrote he was rigorous, committed, and clear, but perhaps the most distinctive thing about him was his attitude to other philosophers, and especially to criticism: one can scarcely find a book or paper attacking Lewis’ views that doesn’t contain an acknowledgement to him for his help. What mattered to him - what he loved - were the ideas, the arguments, the philosophy, not winning or being right. He was the ideal, the model philosopher....
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