Hart’s biography

Posted by Micah

I haven’t had a chance yet to read Nicola Lacey’s biography of H.L.A. Hart, but it’s not every day you see this kind of exchange in the London Review of Books. Unfortunately, Nagel’s initial review is only available to subscribers. (Brian Leiter had a link posted to some comments from John Gardner on Lacey’s biography, but it doesn’t seem to be working now. Maybe Gardner has published his comments?)

posted on Saturday, March 5th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
comments

  1. Can it really be true that “every student of philosophy is puzzled by the point of Austin’s minute investigations of English usage”???

    I’m an AI-and-literature guy, not a philosopher, but Wittgenstein bores me stiff, while I find Austin thrilling…

    I read somewhere that he envisioned a sort of Manhattan project in ordinary-language analysis, where hundreds of Austin-trained introspectors would go thru the dictionary word by word, and untangle the Rest of Philosophy. Which is a little like what Lenat’s Cyc project is after (see url below).

    Posted by Jorn Barger · March 5th, 2005 at 9:52 pm

  2. There’s also an interesting review in Prospect. Subscribers only, but worth a click for the opening para.

    Posted by John Quiggin · March 5th, 2005 at 11:35 pm

  3. I apologize for being off-topic here, but Jorn, if you’re an ai-and-literature guy, I’d recommend trying blogging. It really enables you to share ideas, particularly ecletic ones, with a diverse audience; and many folks are trying it out nowadays.

    Posted by Jonathan · March 5th, 2005 at 11:37 pm

  4. I’ve been blogging for some good while (see:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblogs#Blogging_begins)

    and I started for that very reason—to build an audience for my obscure ideas. I did manage to build an audience, but if you Google for links to my obscure pages, it’ll break your heart (or mine, anyway).

    Posted by Jorn Barger · March 6th, 2005 at 12:35 am

  5. I know—joke.

    Posted by Jonathan · March 6th, 2005 at 1:42 am

  6. Wow, Jorn’s back! This is fantastic. Hooray. Unconfined joy etc.

    Posted by dave heasman · March 6th, 2005 at 9:47 pm

  7. (Nobody has an opinion on JL Austin?)

    Posted by Jorn Barger · March 7th, 2005 at 5:39 pm

  8. i have heard that brett hart died in a car accident is it true please email me at jessicamclghln@yahoo.com i would appreciate it

    Posted by jessica mclaughlin · March 11th, 2005 at 12:52 pm