H.L.A. Hart And Conceptual Analysis Of Law

In the field of Anglo-American jurisprudence, work on conceptual analysis generally proceed along two directions: First, what is the conceptual analysis and which understanding of conceptual analysis is appropriate for legal philosophy.Second, in the field of legal philosophy or just philosophy, is the method of conceptual analysis a feasible method. Due to space limitations, only the first aspect will be described in this article.From "The Concept of Law",the title adopted by Professor Hart, we know roughly that he used the method of conceptual analysis to clarify the legal concept or word, but He did not elaborate the exact meaning of his method of conceptual analysis. Different understanding about it eventually led to different understanding of the nature of Hart’s claimed law theory, that is, different ways of understanding descriptive theory of law. Moreover, the nature of this theory the possibility of this kind of nature of legal theory is based on the deeper understanding of conceptual analysis,then put forward the theory of normative law. In other words, the theoretical discussion of the nature of the law is also based on the understanding of the conceptual analysis.Today in the field of philosophy, the leading advocate for conceptual analysis is Frank Jackson. Jackson defended the conceptual analysis by focusing on such an argument: the conceptual analysis is crucial for serious metaphysics. He summed up two characteristics for conceptual analysis:(1) conceptual analysis is to deal with this one thing: When a word or whether the narrative story(story) is alleged by some more basic vocabulary narrative story( story) really made;(2) it is called conceptual analysis, because it is trying to survive the method of possible cases. This not only provides a preliminary understanding of the conceptual analysis, and for the understanding of the conceptual analysis adopted by Hart is also very helpful, and through it, also raised some issues worthy of our consideration, such as conceptual analysis of two features, analysis and concept analysis of the relationship between words, the role of intuition in conceptual analysis, conceptual structure, a prioriconceptual analysis and so on. Clarification of these issues is very important work in Hart’s concept of theory.Return to Hart, conceptual analysis generally can have two such understanding:conceptual analysis adopted by Hart is a method of semantic analysis, Hart’s theory of law is a kind of semantic theory. Conceptual analysis is similar to or just is words analysis, it has a strong semantics foundation. Another view is that conceptual analysis is to point out some important features of the clear and undisputed instances of a concept- that paradigm. It differs from the word analysis, which is a relative conceptual analysis, and sensitive to our particular confusion. Based on his analysis of the concept(regardless of the manner in which to understand), Hart claimed that the nature of his legal is descriptive. Hart’s analysis of the concept of different understanding of law theory led directly to different understanding approach for his alleged descriptiveness.the reason why there are two different understanding for Hart’s conceptual analysis is that they are based on different philosophy context, in other words is to ask jurisprudence on the concept of law in the end is what kind of cause? Studies should be conducted under what sub-discipline of philosophy? What kind of background resources on the philosophy is appropriate for jurisprudence? Generally presented as a debate on the philosophy of language and practice of philosophy. This article shares the view that the issues of the concept of law should be analyzed under the background of the philosophy of language, compared to philosophy of practice more thorough, more enlightening.