This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.

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com. H.L. Hart, who died in 1992, had a complex identity. A Jewish Englishman who felt himself to be

homosexual though he was married to a fellow academic Jennifer with whom he had four

children. More relevant to philosophy bites he transformed the philosophy of law.

Here to discuss him is Nicola Lacy of the London School of Economics, an author of an acclaimed biography of heart.

Nick Lacy, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you.

The topic we're going to focus on is Hart and legal positivism, that's HLA Hart or Herbert Hart,

the legal philosopher.

I wonder if you could begin by just saying a little bit about who Herbert Hart was.

He's a really interesting man.

He's a very interesting man.

He was born in the early part of the 20th century in Yorkshire. He came from a background where nobody in his family had been to university before. He got a scholarship to Oxford, got a very starry degree, went off to the bar and practiced very successfully during the 1930s as a barrister.

And then during like everybody else in his generation, his career was disrupted by the war. He worked in

MI5. Towards the end of the war he'd gone on reading philosophy during his time

at the bar. A wonderful letter he writes to his wife towards the end of the war when he's facing

up to the fact that he regards the prospect of going back to the bar with great dread, if not

with disgust, as he said to her. And he said that he felt first of all

that his life at the bar had ended up as one of simply saving rich people money. But that

...