H. P. Grice, "S. N. Hampshire on intention and certainty"

S. N. HAMPSHIRE ON CERTAINTY AND H. P. GRICE ON THE OPPOSITE. 


 "What's on your philosophical agenda?" he asked, between bites. "I'm having a drink with Hampshire," I said. "You'll like him very much," John said. "He's still the idol of all the Fellows of All Souls, where he spent many years before coming to London." He added that Hampshire was a great figure, who was not only still admired by All Souls men but looked up to by the whole of Oxford. This I could easily believe, because I remembered how highly he had been regarded in my own undergraduate days. He had also been passionate about Socialism in a youthful kind of way, which had made the undergraduate societies court him as an after-dinner speaker. Intelligent Oxford — at least, since the thirties — was Left Wing, and he had been a patron saint of the politically conscious university. His beliefs were reasoned, and he was emotionally committed to his ideas — a rare thing for an Oxford philosopher — and because his convictions were a matter of the heart as well as of the head, he had the rare ability to electrify clubs and societies. Lie might share his politics with Ayer, but Ayer had only recently returned to Oxford; besides, Ayer's Socialism was perhaps a little remote. I asked John what he recalled about Hampshire. "Well," he said, "as you probably know, he was a star pupil at his school — Repton — and was very much under the influence of one of its masters. Hampshire inherited his liberal principles from his mentor. Sometime in the early thirties, he came up to Balliol, where he fortified his Leftist views with wider reading. The last year of the war found him in the Foreign Office, and they didn't know what to make of him, because he used to start discussions by saying, 'The first tiling to do is to find out if our foreign policy is Socialistic' Hampshire claimed he started doing philosophy because he liked to argue, but in fact he avoided philosophical arguments." Leaving John, I taxied to University College (this time, of London University ) , and found Professor Hampshire standing on the steps of the building where he had his office. His hands were clasped rather boyishly behind his back, and his curly hair was flying in the wind. "Hello!" he called. "I've just locked myself out of the office." He looked at me expectantly, as though I might have brought him the key. Taking hold of the handle of the door, he shook it vigorously and waited in vain for it to spring open. "I like the Oxford system of not locking doors," he said. "This sort of thing would never have happened to me there. There isn't a pub for some stretch." Nevertheless, we started in search of one. We came upon a Lyons Corner House, and ducked in for some tea, because Hampshire was thirsty. Sitting down, he surveyed the motley tea drinkers in the room and said, "This is what I like about London. You always feel close to the people." But the clatter and noise of Hampshire's people were so deafening that we were soon driven out. We finally spotted a pub. When we had settled down in it, I asked him about his latest book, "Thought and Action." "I'm not very good at summing up my own arguments," he said. "But my view of philosophy couldn't be further from Austin's. Like the ancient philosophers, I feel our function is really to advance opinions, and I think philosophy should include the study of politics, aesthetics . . . In fact, I think it should be an all-embracing subject. I also think English philosophers ought to take cognizance of Continental thought. I feel uncomfortable talking about philosophy. I don't really like to talk about things when I'm writing about them, and since I write philosophy, I try to avoid it in conversation as much as possible." But he went on to say he hoped that his new book had put him in the middle of the cultural stream of Europe. He said that, like Miss Murdoch, he was very much interested in Existentialism and literature, and, indeed, was now mostly working on aesthetics. He and Ayer shared many friends, but his closest friend was Isaiah Berlin. He had just spent two weeks with him in Italy. "Isaiah, rather indirectly," he said, "does illustrate one great aspect of Oxford philosophy — the boon of just talking. As you know, he learned most of his philosophy at the feet of Austin. They were both at All Souls at the same time, in the thirties, and they used to sit around in the Common Room and talk philosophy day and night. During the war, once, Isaiah found himself in a plane, without Austin, and some mysterious thing happened that made him decide to give up philosophy." Hampshire thought that Berlin now regretted giving up philosophy, mainly because he missed the intellectual stimulation of talking. He had no one to talk with about his subject — the history of ideas. There were only one or two great historians of ideas, and they were not at Oxord, so Berlin was forced to work in solitude. Since his great conversational gifts could not be exercised in the service of his work, he relied on an occasional American postgraduate student who was studying ideas to bring him out of the isolation ward of his subject. The reason Berlin could not be counted as an Oxford philosopher was simple. He worked not at pure but at political philosophy. Where a pure philosopher might begin by asking the meaning of the word "liberty," Berlin opened one of his lectures by saying, "There are two sorts of no- tions of the word 'liberty' — negative and positive — in the history of thought. Kant, Fichte, Hegel believed . . ." Hampshire rose to get another drink and was pounced upon by a youth of about sixteen who had heard him speak in a public lecture hall. "Sir, do you mind if I join you?" he asked, edging his way over to our table. "If you really want to," Hampshire said, sounding a little discouraged. He bought the boy a double whiskey and placed it before him. The boy only sniffed at it, while discomfiting Hampshire with repeated compliments. "I heard, sir," he said, "you're a man of great vision, really very great vision, and you believe in equality — independence for Algerians and Maltese." Hampshire asked him about his interests, and the boy said that he'd always wanted to be an engineer, but that since hearing Hampshire he had wondered whether he ought not to be a philosopher. "I'm torn in my con- science," he remarked, with a sigh. Hampshire counselled him to be an engineer. "In that way, you can do more for your country," he said. After a while, the boy left, but the philosophical calm — if it could be called that — of our conversation had been shattered. Hampshire moved his hands restlessly, and, after some nervous false starts, began reviewing the gallery of Oxford philosophers. His words were reeled off in the rapid fashion of All Souls conversation, and the philosophical lights whizzed past. "On occasion, Witt- genstein would say, "Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein, Witt- genstein,' the 'W' Anglicized into a soft sound, instead of the Teutonic 'V,' 'you are talking nonsense,' and he would smite his brow. He was the only person permitted — and no doubt the only person qualified — to utter that particular proposition. . . . Among other things, Austin was the chairman of the financial committee of the Oxford University Press — the biggest university press in the world. He occupied the post with an enveloping halo, and his terrifying efficiency raised him above all past and future chairmen. . . . Elizabeth Ans- combe, in some ways, is like Wittgenstein — she even has his mannerisms. Her classes, like the Master's, are brooding seances. She wrote a series of letters to the Listener in which she opposed awarding former Presi- dent Truman an honorary degree, because of his responsibility for dropping the atom bomb. She made an extraor- dinary speech at the concilium, saying, 'If you honor Truman now, what Neros, what Genghis Khans, what Hitlers, what Stalins will you honor next?' . . . Hare is a little puritanical in his views. . . . Miss Murdoch is elusive. . . . Warnock talks slowly — a thin sheath over his sharp mind for those who've only met him once. . . . Strawson, very exciting. Though sometimes may build a spiral staircase for his thought out of hairsplitting distinctions. . . . Ayer, like Russell, well known as a philosopher, brilliant performer on television, who, among all his other achievements, can simplify. . . . Gellner's charge that these philosophers have things in common will not bear examination. Sociology can be bad history. Sometimes classifies its subjects of study indiscriminately. Gellner may be a victim of his own art. Good with the Berbers."