The Wild Goose Chase : L'influenza di Are There Any Natural Rights? di Herbert Hart sulla formazione di John Rawls

During his long career, John Rawls frequently declared, both in his work and interviews, his intellectual debt to H.L.A. Hart. However, it is not easy to retrace the nature of that debt starting simply from the extremely rare interviews and texts provided by Rawls. In my contribute to this volume, I maintain that the first and most important influence of Hart on Rawls dates at early 1950s, in particular back at the Oxford period. I assume that a careful reading of Are There Any Natural Rights?, a work in which Hart offered a sketch of the theory of justice based on the principle of equal freedom, could reveal several elements of continuity between British philosopher’s ideas and those of his young colleague. One could say, therefore, that the philosophical agenda of Rawls is partly determined by some problematic bonds well-rendered inside the argument of Hart in Are There Any Natural Rights?