The art of "waffling"

Two weeks ago I decided that I was going to write a dissertation. The module is Philosophy of Law, the question was: what did I want to "dissertate" about?

Only a week after, I needed to submit a 200 word outline of my dissertation. As if it wasn't hard enough to find a topic...and to try and learn philosophy in a year...and to attempt to understand Hart and write a criticism about someone who is criticizing him...

When you know nothing, the art of waffling comes in handy...

In my dissertation I propose to conduct a philosophical investigation to Stephen Guest’s opinion piece “Two strands in Hart’s theory of law: A comment on the Postscript of Hart’s The Concept of Law”.
In the 1994 edition (published posthumously) Hart added a Postcript to his masterpiece “The Concept of Law”, in which he intended to address the criticisms made by Ronald Dworkin in several of his books. In his article, Stephen Guest provides an insight to this postscript. By giving his perspective on what Hart was trying to explain in his Postscript, he puts forward the theory that there are two strands in Hart’s Theory of Law.
In my dissertation, I plan to analyze Stephen Guest’s constructive criticism of Hart’s Postscript to “The Concept of Law”, and provide my informed critique of his article. This will raise questions about the way he presents his arguments, as well as his account of what Hart says in “The Concept of Law”. By means of a philosophical investigation of his arguments, it will hopefully become clear whether or not, in my informed opinion, Stephen Guest was right in his discovery of “two strands in Hart’s theory of law”.


"Marta, now that I know that you are doing an informed critique, that it is not going to be all rubbish, I am more than ever looking forward to reading what you have to say!"