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Stuart Hampshire

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Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire (October 1, 1914 - June 13, 2004) was an Oxford philosopher, literary critic and university administrator.

Hampshire was educated at Repton School and at Balliol College, Oxford where he was matriculated as a history scholar. He did not confine himself to history, switching to the study of Greats and immersing himself in the study of painting and literature. As is the culture at Balliol, his intellectual development owed more to his gifted contemporaries than to academic tutors. In 1936 he won a scholarship to 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 and Isaiah Berlin.

At the outbreak of World War II he enlisted and was given a commission. He was seconded to an intelligence unit near London, where he worked with Oxford colleagues such as Gilbert Ryle and Hugh Trevor-Roper. After the war, he worked for the government before resuming his career in philosophy. He taught at University College, London and at New College, Oxford where he produced a notable study of Spinoza. In 1955 he returned to All Souls College, Oxford, where he became domestic bursar. His most innovative work was Thought and Action (1959) on the philosophy of mind; it propounded an intentionalist theory taking account of developments in psychology.

In 1960 Stuart Hampshire was elected a member of the British Academy and became Grote Professor of Philosophy at London University, succeeding A.J. Ayer. His international reputation was growing and from 1963 to 1970 he chaired the department of philosophy at Princeton University. In 1970 he returned to Oxford as Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. His liberal and socialist views were apparent when Wadham was in the first group of men-only Oxford colleges to admit women in 1974. He was knighted in 1979 and retired from Wadham in 1984, when he accepted a professorship at Stanford University.

His last book, the thought-provoking and accessible Justice Is Conflict (1999), inaugurated the Princeton Monographs in Philosophy series. In this succinct work, he denies that harmony is achievable in moral and social issues. He demotes the role of rationally determined outcomes and stresses the need for debate in deciding these matters; only by trusting the mechanisms of justice can opposing sides accept the outcome peacefully.

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 held in high esteem in British society and was one of the Great and the Good. He was head of the literary panel of the Arts Council for many years. In 1965-6 he was selected by the UK government to conduct a review of the effectiveness of GCHQ.