A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream

Melbourne University Law Review, April, 2005 by G. Edward White

Jenifer's liaisons, and the Harts' marital tendency to act as ships passing in the night, each receive ample treatment from Lacey. She is especially interested in linking the regular periods of estrangement in the Harts' marriage--on the two occasions Hart made extensive academic visits to the United States, in 1956-57 at Harvard and in 1961-62 to the University of California at Los Angeles, Jenifer accompanied him for only very short portions--to Hart's concern about his sexual identity. She quotes from a letter Hart wrote to Christopher Cox in 1937, while in the course of debating whether to leave the bar for Oxford, in which he said that he 'would become more ... homosexual and less suppressed' in an Oxford position. (55) Lacey also quotes from a conversation Hart had with Jenifer that same year, and a subsequent letter he wrote her, in which he said that he was 'useless to [her] at this stage as a lover' because 'I've so long suppressed the physical expression of my feelings (because I thought all my feelings were homosexual) that my whole faculty for expression has atrophied and is only gradually coming to life.' (56)

Hart may have had homoerotic urges, he may well have resented Jenifer's tendency to enter into intimate relationships with other men and he undoubtedly dealt with domestic tensions in his life by adopting a stance of passivity and withdrawal. All of this may have contributed to deep tensions between the Harts. However, it is hard to see how the domestic and sexual dynamics of the Hart household had an effect on the development of Hart's ideas and the course of his career. After a period of uncertainty in his first years in the New College philosophy fellowship, Hart began to develop a modicum of comfort and competence as a teacher and scholar. By the mid-1950s, he had begun to publish some original philosophical work and had begun the collaboration with Honore that would result in Causation and the Law. He had been appointed to a chaired professorship at Oxford. It was clear that he was going to be a successful and visible scholar, and that, for all his intense self-criticism, he would find this role fulfilling.

In the same period, Jenifer Hart was launching her own academic career, and continuing her pattern of seducing intellectually powerful men. In her autobiography she identifies several academics with whom she had affairs, and Lacey adds some more, including Hart's lifelong intimate friend, Isaiah Berlin. (57) In commenting on Hart's reaction to her 'tendency to have romantic liaisons with other men', Jenifer suggested that 'he was content to see us leading what he called "parallel lives"', and speculated that '[t]his willingness to leave me an unusual degree of freedom was mainly due to the high value he attached to tolerance and liberty.' (58) Although Jenifer's comments barely seem to scratch the dynamics of the Harts' relationship--Lacey does far better on that topic--(59) the question remains whether anything about the Harts' marriage, or their experience as parents, or their abundant social life, or their employing a nanny for 36 years, or their hiring Karen Armstrong to serve as a caretaker to Joshua between 1970 and 1972, (60) shaped the development of H L A Hart's career. These factors certainly affected Hart's private life, and they may well have had deep consequences for his psychological wellbeing. But Hart had a tendency to be a highly self-critical, perfectionist, ambitious scholar, well before he met Jenifer Williams. Indeed he remained so from his undergraduate days, until the last years of his life. His marriage to Jenifer may have been unfortunate or it may have been fulfilling, but--even with Lacey's exposition--it is hard to see how, and to what extent, it shaped his academic work.