Sir Stuart Newton HampshireFBA (1 October 1914 – 13 June 2004) was an Englishphilosopher,literary critic and university administrator.^[1] He was one of theantirationalistOxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought in the post-World War II era.

Sir Stuart Hampshire
Born	Stuart Newton Hampshire (1914-10-01)1 October 1914 Healing, Lincolnshire, England
Died	13 June 2004(2004-06-13) (aged 89) Oxford,Oxfordshire, England
Education
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Philosophical work
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Institutions	Princeton University Stanford University
Doctoral students	Robert Stalnaker
Main interests	Philosophy of mind,moral philosophy,history of philosophy

Hampshire was born inHealing, Lincolnshire, the son of George Newton Hampshire, a fish merchant in nearbyGrimsby.^[2] Hampshire was educated atLockers Park School in Hertfordshire (where he overlapped with Guy Burgess),^[3]Repton School andBalliol College, Oxford, where he matriculated as ahistory scholar.^[1] He did not confine himself to history, switching instead to the study ofGreats^[2] and immersing himself in the study ofpainting 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 ofAll Souls College, Oxford,^[1] where he researched and taughtphilosophy initially as an adherent oflogical positivism. He participated in an informal discussion group with some of the leading philosophers of his day, includingJ. L. Austin,H. L. A. Hart, andIsaiah Berlin.^[2]

In 1940, at the outbreak ofWorld War II he enlisted in thearmy and was given a commission. Due to his lack of physical aptitude he was seconded to a position inmilitary intelligence nearLondon where he worked with Oxford colleagues such asGilbert Ryle andHugh Trevor-Roper.^[2] His encounters as interrogator withNazi officers at the end of the war led to his insistence on the reality ofevil.^[1][4]

After the war, he worked for the government before resuming his career in philosophy. From 1947 to 1950, he taught atUniversity College London, and was subsequently a fellow ofNew College, Oxford.^[1] His studySpinoza was first published in 1951.^[2] In 1955, he returned toAll Souls, as a resident fellow and domestic bursar.^[1]

In 1962 Hampshire was asked by theUK Treasury to conduct a review ofGCHQ, covering technical, political, economic and strategic factors over the next ten years, including the relationship with the USNational Security Agency through theUKUSA 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.^[5]

His innovative bookThought and Action (1959) attracted much attention, notably from his Oxford colleagueIris Murdoch.^[6] It propounded anintentionalist theory of thephilosophy of mind taking account of developments inpsychology. Although he considered mostcontinental philosophy vulgar and fraudulent, Hampshire was much influenced byMaurice 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 shiftmoral philosophy from its focus on the logical properties of moral statements to what he considered the crucial question ofmoral problems as they present themselves to us as practical agents.

In 1960, Stuart Hampshire was elected a member of theBritish Academy^[2] and becameGrote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London, succeedingA. J. Ayer.^[1][2] His international reputation was growing and from 1963 to 1970 he chaired the department of philosophy atPrinceton University^[1][2] 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 asWarden of Wadham College, Oxford.^[1][2] 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 atStanford University.^[2][7]

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

Stuart Hampshire wrote extensively on literature and other topics forThe Times Literary Supplement andThe New York Review of Books amongst others.^[2] He was head of the literary panel of theArts Council for many years. In 1962–63, he was selected by the UK government to conduct a review of the effectiveness ofGCHQ.^[2]

He married his first wife, Renée Ayer (née Lees), the former wife of the philosopherA. J. Ayer, in 1961.^[1][2] They had a daughter by this marriage which ended with Renée's death in 1980.^[8] In 1985 he marriedNancy Cartwright, who was then his colleague at Stanford^[9][2] and is now Professor of Philosophy atDurham University and at theUniversity of California, San Diego. The couple had two daughters.^[8]

• Hampshire, Stuart (1951).Spinoza. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Pelican Books.OCLC 4248345.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1956).Age of reason: the 17th century philosophers. New York: New American Library.OCLC 552805. (The Mentor Philosophers.)
• Hampshire, Stuart (1960).Spinoza and the idea of freedom(PDF). London: Oxford University Press.OCLC 71768261.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1962).Feeling and expression. London:H. K. Lewis & Co. Ltd.OCLC 36870104. (An inaugural lecture delivered at University College, London, 25 October 1960.)
• Hampshire, Stuart (1975) [1965].Freedom of the individual. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.ISBN 9780691019840.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1969).Modern writers, and other essays.Chatto & Windus.ISBN 978-0-7011-1320-9.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1970) [1959].Thought and action. London: Chatto and Windus.ISBN 9780701107390.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1972).Freedom of mind, and other essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.ISBN 9780198243830.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1976).Knowledge and the future. Southampton, England: University of Southampton.ISBN 9780854321667. (Gwilym James Memorial Lecture.)
• Hampshire, Stuart (1977).Two theories of morality. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780197259757. (Thank-offering to Britain Fund Lecture.)
• Hampshire, Stuart;Scanlon, T.M.;Williams, Bernard;Nagel, Thomas;Dworkin, Ronald (1978).Public and private morality. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 9780521293525.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1982), "Morality and convention", inSen, Amartya;Williams, Bernard (eds.),Utilitarianism and beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 145–158,ISBN 9780511611964.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1983).Morality and conflict. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.ISBN 9780674587328.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1988).Spinoza: an introduction to his philosophical thought. Penguin Philosophy Series. Penguin.ISBN 9780140136562.
• Hampshire, Stuart (1991).Innocence and experience. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.ISBN 9780674454491.
• Hampshire, Stuart (2000).Justice is conflict. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.ISBN 9780691089744.
• Hampshire, Stuart (2005).Spinoza and Spinozism. Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780199279548.

• Ryan, Alan (2007)."Stuart Newton Hampshire 1914-2004"(PDF).Proceedings of the British Academy.150:107–123.

• 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 inThe Times.
• Professor Sir Stuart HampshireDaily Telegraph obituary.
• Memorial Resolution: Stuart Hampshire published in theStanford Report (Archived)
• "I'm Going to Tamper with Your Beliefs a Little"; (1972) episode of "Logic Lane" in which Hampshire andIsaiah Berlin discuss philosophy in Oxford in the 1930s, andJ. L. Austin