Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire FBA (1 October 1914 – 13 June 2004) was an English philosopher, literary critic and university administrator.
Having taken a first class degree, in 1936 he was elected to a Fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford,[1] 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.
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.
In 1960, Stuart Hampshire was elected a member of the British Academy[2] and became Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London, succeeding A. J.
[1][2] His international reputation was growing and from 1963 to 1970 he chaired the department of philosophy at Princeton 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.
Stuart Hampshire wrote extensively on literature and other topics for The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books amongst others.