[lit-ideas] Stuart Hampshire
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:30:02 EDT
From: The New York Times. June 27, 2004 Sunday. Late Edition - Final.
SECTION: Section 1; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 32
Stuart Hampshire, 89, Moral Philosopher, Dies
By WOLFGANG SAXON
Stuart Hampshire, an influential philosopher at Oxford and Princeton
universities, died June 13 at his home in Oxford, England. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Nancy Cartwright. Professor
Hampshire, who headed the philosophy department at Princeton from
1963 to 1970, was especially influential in the field of moral
philosophy.
Among his interests was the relevance of moral philosophy to
politics. In his view aesthetics, ethics and political philosophy
were all part of the same intellectual quest, which he described as
the philosophy of mind.
Writing or lecturing, he reflected on how morality and law fare when
confronting the reality of, say, a war like the one in Vietnam. He
weighed the benefits against the social costs of momentous events,
like the industrial revolution or the sudden discovery of petroleum
wealth under the North Sea.
His first published work, ''Spinoza'' (1951), examined the
17th-century Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza, whose thinking left
an imprint on the author's own world view.
He wrote ''Thought and Action'' (Viking, 1960); ''Freedom of the
Individual'' (1965), an expanded edition of which was published by
Princeton in 1975; ''Philosophy of Mind'' (Harper, 1966); ''Modern
Writers and Other Essays'' (Knopf, 1970); ''Knowledge and the
Future'' (University of Southampton, 1976); and ''Two Theories of
Morality'' (Oxford, 1977).
His books currently in print in the United States include ''Morality
and Conflict'' (Harvard, 1983); ''Innocence and Experience''
(Harvard, 1989); and ''Justice Is Conflict'' (Princeton, 1999).
Stuart Newton Hampshire was born in Healing, Lincolnshire, England,
and studied at Oxford's Balliol College, where he befriended Isaiah
Berlin and earned his first degree in 1936. Having won a fellowship
to All Souls College at Oxford, he lectured in philosophy there until
he entered military service in 1940.
He eventually landed in army intelligence and a position of
interrogator of enemy prisoners, among them war criminals. The
experience left him acutely aware of questions of morality in the
realm of philosophy.
He returned to teaching at University College London and New College
Oxford, and went back to All Souls in 1955. His Spinoza biography
having buttressed his academic standing, he was appointed Grote
Professor of Mind and Logic at University College London in 1960.
Princeton claimed him as a professor and department chairman in
1963. He returned to Oxford as Warden, or head, of Wadham College, a
post he filled from 1970 to 1984. From then until 1991, he was a
professor of philosophy at Stanford University.
Professor Hampshire is survived by his second wife, Ms. Cartwright,
a professor of philosophy, whom he married in 1985; their two
daughters, Emily and Sophie Cartwright, both of Oxford; a son and a
daughter by a previous marriage, Julian Ayer and Belinda Low, both of
London; and three grandchildren. He was previously married to Renee
Orde-Lees Ayer, former wife of the philosopher A.J. Ayer, from 1961
until her death in 1980.
Professor Hampshire was elected a fellow of the British Academy in
1960 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968. While
at Princeton, he served as president of the American Philosophical
Association. Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 1979.
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