Stuart Hampshire

Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire (1 October 1914 – 13 June 2004) was an English philosopher, literary critic and university administrator. He was one of the antirationalist Oxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought in the post-World War II era.

Biography

Hampshire was born in Healing, Lincolnshire, the son of George Newton Hampshire, a fish merchant in nearby Grimsby. Hampshire was educated at Lockers Park School in Hertfordshire (where he overlapped with Guy Burgess), Repton School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he matriculated as a history scholar. He did not confine himself to history, switching instead to the study of Greats and immersing himself in the study of painting and literature. As was the culture at Balliol, his intellectual development owed more to his gifted contemporaries than to academic tutors. Having taken a first class degree, in 1936 he was elected to a Fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford, where he researched and taught philosophy initially as an adherent of logical positivism. He participated in an informal discussion group with some of the leading philosophers of his day, including J. L. Austin, H. L. A. Hart, and Isaiah Berlin.

In 1940, at the outbreak of World War II he enlisted in the army and was given a commission. Due to his lack of physical aptitude he was seconded to a position in military intelligence near London where he worked with Oxford colleagues such as Gilbert Ryle and Hugh Trevor-Roper. His encounters as interrogator with Nazi officers at the end of the war led to his insistence on the reality of evil.

After the war, he worked for the government before resuming his career in philosophy. From 1947 to 1950, he taught at University College London, and was subsequently a fellow of New College, Oxford. His study ''Spinoza'' was first published in 1951. In 1955, he returned to All Souls, as a resident fellow and domestic bursar.

In 1962 Hampshire was asked by the UK Treasury to conduct a review of GCHQ, covering technical, political, economic and strategic factors over the next ten years, including the relationship with the US National Security Agency through the UKUSA relationship. The 'Hampshire Report' set direction and funding for GCHQ for the future and put its relationship with the NSA at the centre of its growth.

His innovative book '' Thought and Action'' (1959) attracted much attention, notably from his Oxford colleague Iris Murdoch. It propounded an ''intentionalist'' theory of the philosophy of mind taking account of developments in psychology. Although he considered most continental philosophy vulgar and fraudulent, Hampshire was much influenced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He insisted that philosophy of mind "has been distorted by philosophers when they think of persons only as passive observers and not as self-willed agents". In his subsequent books, Hampshire sought to shift moral philosophy from its focus on the logical properties of moral statements to what he considered the crucial question of ''moral problems as they present themselves to us as practical agents.''

In 1960, Stuart Hampshire was elected a member of the British Academy and became Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London, succeeding A. J. Ayer. His international reputation was growing and from 1963 to 1970 he chaired the department of philosophy at Princeton University to which he had happily escaped from the robust atmosphere of London to which his mandarin style, conveyed in a rather preposterous growling accent, was ill-suited, as Ayer implied in his memoirs. In 1970, he returned to Oxford as Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Wadham was in the first group of men-only Oxford colleges to admit women in 1974. Hampshire considered his wardenship to be one of his most significant achievements in reviving the fortunes of the college. He was knighted in 1979 and retired from Wadham in 1984, when he accepted a professorship at Stanford University.

His last book, ''Justice Is Conflict'' (1999), inaugurated the ''Princeton Monographs in Philosophy'' series.

Stuart Hampshire wrote extensively on literature and other topics for ''The Times Literary Supplement'' and ''The New York Review of Books'' amongst others. He was head of the literary panel of the Arts Council for many years. In 1962–63, he was selected by the UK government to conduct a review of the effectiveness of GCHQ.

He married his first wife, Renée Ayer (née Lees), the former wife of the philosopher A. J. Ayer, in 1961. They had a daughter by this marriage which ended with Renée's death in 1980. In 1985 he married Nancy Cartwright, who was then his colleague at Stanford and is now Professor of Philosophy at Durham University and at the University of California, San Diego. The couple had two daughters.

Publications

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* ( The Mentor Philosophers.)
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* (An inaugural lecture delivered at University College, London, 25 October 1960.)
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* (Gwilym James Memorial Lecture.)
* (Thank-offering to Britain Fund Lecture.)
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References

Sources

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External links

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The Problem Of Nationalism
' a dialogue between Stuart Hampshire and Isaiah Berlin

''Isaiah Berlin's obituary of Stuart Hampshire''
final draft and revised version as published in ''The Times''.
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Professor Sir Stuart Hampshire
Daily Telegraph'' obituary.
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Memorial Resolution: Stuart Hampshire
' published in the ''Stanford Report'' (Archived)

"I'm Going to Tamper with Your Beliefs a Little"
(1972) episode of "Logic Lane" in which Hampshire and Isaiah Berlin discuss philosophy in Oxford in the 1930s, and J. L. Austin

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hampshire, Stuart
1914 births
2004 deaths
Academics of University College London
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
20th-century English philosophers
British Army personnel of World War II
Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford
Fellows of New College, Oxford
Fellows of the British Academy
Intelligence Corps officers
Knights Bachelor
The New York Review of Books people
People educated at Repton School
People from the Borough of North East Lincolnshire
Spinoza scholars
Stanford University Department of Philosophy faculty
Wardens of Wadham College, Oxford
Analytic philosophers