HAMPSHIRE
(1914 2004 )
ANALYTIC
PHILOSOPHY/
'DESCRIPTIVE METAPHYSICS'
Sir
Stuart Hampshire was born in Lincolnshire and educated at Repton School and
Balliol College, Oxford. He was elected
to a Fellowship of All Souls in 1938. After the war he taught philosophy at University College, London and
from 1950 at Oxford, where he was a Fellow of New College, before returning to
University College, London as Professor of Mind and Logic. In 1960 he was
elected a Fellow of the British Academy. From 1970-84 he was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. He later taught at Stanford and Princeton
Universities. He was knighted in 1979.
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND MIND
[1] Hampshire [Thought
and Action] subscribes to the view that careful analysis of linguistic usage can lead to the
resolution of philosophical problems. In
particular he is concerned with identifying those features of our conceptual
scheme which are required for language and thought. While such features may be in a sense basic,
he allows for the possibility that our concepts may change. He does
not give 'ordinary' language a special status [a]. More general surveys of our
conceptual schemes may be required especially in relation to human choice and
action. Hampshire's position can be seen
clearly in his examination of the concept of a person [ibid.]. If we look at the way language functions we can see that for it to be
used to pick out objects the concept of a person must be fundamental; an
appeal to sensations alone would fail. What then is a person? Persons may be described by
reference both to physical features and conscious states [b]. Hampshire goes on
to distinguish between explanations
of a person's behaviour as supplied both by someone else (and with
reference to scientific
accounts in terms of causes) and accounts given by the individual agent himself. He thus clearly distinguishes between self-determined human actions and
externally predictable events. Psychoanalytic techniques can also be employed to reveal unconscious
factors which may underlie dispositions. Human dispositions, open to general explanation, are contrasted with
dispositional properties of material things (the solubility of salt in water,
for example). These accounts presuppose the possibility of direct
'recessive' introspection of inner mental states, feelings, intentions, and
dispositions (as reasons) to behave
in various ways, and not amenable to scientific investigation and causal
analysis, and therefore the possibility of 'standing back' from our situation [c]. Herein lies the possibility of achieving
greater self-knowledge of how we shall actually act in specific
circumstances. And the greater our understanding of the ways our
mental life operates the more control we have over our behaviour, and the more
free we become [d]. However, Hampshire argues that such self- knowledge requires also
to be considered in the context of a physical environment with the possibility
of communication with other persons. And he stresses that while the concept of a self-conscious
intentional agent is the fixed point for an understanding of ourselves, our
idea of a human nature is conditioned by or relative to changing historical
circumstances [e].
These factors clearly have ethical
implications in that they force us to consider motives, decisions, ends, and
responsibilities. Hampshire's arguments
are developed and elaborated in Freedom of the Individual.
ETHICS/ POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY
[2] In his later writings Hampshire
examined the distinction between 'public' and 'private' morality and the kinds of conflicts that can
arise between them, and attempted to develop a 'universal ethics' grounded in a
'minimalist' view of justice.
Central to his thesis [a clear statement is to be found in 'Justice is Strife'] are the concepts of
reason, conflict, and justice. Rather than starting from the
Platonic-Aristotelian view that reason is the highest 'faculty' of the divided
soul he looks to the role played by rationality in human institutions where it
finds application and is exercised [a]. Reason, he says, comprehends a multitude of
activities, such as the study of mathematics and logic, the weighing of
evidence in the natural sciences or in historical or criminal
investigations. But it is also
manifested in other activities (which since Vico and Kant have been attributed
to the imagination), for example, story-telling, poetry, religious ritual,
singing and playing music, in ceremonies celebrating the dead, marriage
customs, and the description of ideal societies and ideal persons and ways of
life. These activities vary greatly from
society to society, and in different historical times. Such diversity, like that of natural
languages, helps to establish the identity of populations and cultures. But inevitably they are also the source of
conflict. How are conflicts to be
resolved?
Hampshire rejects the idea of a 'substantial' justice, that is, a
normative justice which evalutes political or legal decisions apart from the
procedures that determine them and which refers to some specific moral theory
or set of moral principles. There are as
many different principles of substantial justice as there are distinct ideals and
moral theories [b]. And concepts of substantial justice are
divisive. In developing his own position he acknowledges the
importance of the contribution made by Rawls's theory of justice, particularly
with respect to the notion of fairness. But he argues that Rawls's restriction of principles of justice to those
which are rationally chosen by those who live in a liberal and democratic
society is insufficient [c] (1) because illiberal and antidemocratic citizens will have
no good reason to accept some of them, for example, the principle of liberty
(and people whose conception of good and evil is founded on a supernatural
authority may regard tolerance of any contrary view as evil); and (2) because
such limitation ignores the relation between traditional societies (in which a
single conception of good is maintained by priests, imams, and "other experts in the will of God") and
liberal democratic societies which permit, or encourage, a plurality of
conceptions of the good. So what is
Hampshire's solution?
He starts from the premiss that not only is
diversity of moral conviction natural to humanity but also that the habit of
hearing evidence and argument from two or more sides before settling a conflict
is equally natural. And this too is a
rational procedure. Moral enemies are finally driven to come together to build
political and legal institutions temporally acceptable to them all as arenas
for fair negotiation, because they know that the substance of political and
social majority can never in proinciple
be reduced to a few self-evident principles. We cannot appeal to an ideal of justice to be enforced by
'philosopher-kings'. Political prudence, Hampshire
argues, must expect a perpetual contest between hostile conceptions of justice;
what is generally thought substantially just and fair today will not be thought
so tomorrow. What matters is that both
old and new claims can expect to be given a hearing. "The rock-bottom justice is in the contests
themselves, in the tension of open opposition, always renewed." And political prudence must develop acceptable procedures for
regulating them [d]. For the individual
as well as for society compromise is "both the normal and the most desirable
condition of the soul for a creaure whose desires and emotions are often
ambivalent and always in conflict with each other." This proposal, he says, inverts the
Protestant and Kantian moralities in that it puts the protection of just
procedures in competition with the pursuit of substantial justice and balances
them. It is wrong to take individual morality to override
public commitments (as is the case in the 'liberal' tradition), given that moral conflicts are a
permanent distinguishing feature of humanity and not a contingent and, in
principle, alterable phenomenon [d].
CRITICAL
SUMMARY
While showing the influence of the
analytical philosophy of both Wittgenstein and Austin, Hampshire's
philosophical writings are characterized also by a more systematic approach, a
refreshing openness to twentieth century 'continental' thought, and indeed by
the account taken of other disciplines such as aesthetics and psychoanalysis.
The distinction he makes between scientific explanation and 'understanding'
(akin to the Verstehen of hermeneutic
philosophers) of the inner mental life of persons has not surprisingly been
criticized by physicalist and functionalist philosophers of mind and by
methodologists who argue in favour of extending covering-law models to the
human sciences. Other views of
Hampshire, concerning (1) persons as self-conscious intentional and autonomous
agents albeit 'conditioned' by history; (2) introspective access by the
'recessive 'I' to one's own inner life and decision-making; and (3) the
relationship between self-knowledge and freedom, and control of one's
dispositions, are also contentious and have been criticized by a variety of
physicalist and extensionalist-orientated philosophers. But with such positions Hampshire has made a
major contribution to theories of agency and in the wider field of
philosophical anthopology.
His liberal and pluralist views on ethics and political
philosophy (which have much in common with those of his friend, Sir Isaiah
Berlin, and indeed of Ricoeur and Habermas) are meritorious for their emphasis on openness and the search for consensus and
reconciliation implicit in his appeal for the subordination of claims to
moral supremacy to the demands of a common humanity and the need for co-existence,
and in his (and Berlin's) recognition that there are no utopian solutions, and
that conflicts belong as much to the essence of the human condition as does the search for rational procedures to
minimise them. These claims may of
course be contested both by many thinkers who subscribe to various kinds of
normative ethics (Kantian, Thomistic), by Marxists, or by Enlightenment and
positivist philosphers. Many people may
also find them naïve. But, in the last
analysis, it is difficult to discern any viable alternative other than force.
Hampshire: Thought and Action (1959); Freedom
of the Individual (1965); Freedom
of Mind and Other Essays (1971); Morality and Conflict (1983); Innocence
and Experience (1989); 'Justice is
Strife' (1991) elaborated in Justice is Conflict (1999).
Studies: No comprehensive study of
Hampshire's work seems to be available. However, some of the arguments present in Thought and Action and Freedom of the Individual are
examined in D. F. Pears (ed.), The Freedom of the Will.
Note: Hampshire, Ricoeur, and Habermas although
there is no apparent influence on Hampshire's philosophy (and none should be
expected), the parallels between some of his ideas on justice and conflict and
the central themes of Ricoeur's moral and political philosophy (relating to
conflict, justice, consensus) in his Oneself as Another are worth
exploring, as are also the parallels
with Habermas's 'communicative ethics' (which informs Ricoeur's arguments).
CONNECTIONS
Hampshire
[1a] |
Analysis of language use to resolve problems; search for features of conceptual scheme required for language (concepts changeable) |
Wittgenstein→
Ryle
Austin→
Strawson |
[1a 3d 3c]
[1a]
[1a]
[1a 2a] |