Country United Kingdom Pages 276 Originally published 1959 Page count 276 | Language English ISBN 978-0268018474 Subject Action theory | |
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Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Similar Stuart Hampshire books, Philosophy books | ||
Thought and Action is a 1959 book by Stuart Hampshire. The book has received praise from commentators, and is considered Hampshire's major work.
Contents
Summary
Hampshire develops in greater detail ideas about freedom and the philosophy of mind that he had already explored in his Spinoza (1951). He examines a set of contrasts between that which is unavoidable in human thought and that which is contingent, between knowledge and decision, criticism and practice, philosophy and experience. He argues that empiricist theories of perception descending from George Berkeley and David Hume mistakenly represent people as passive observers receiving impressions from "outside" of the mind, where the "outside" includes their own bodies.
Scholarly reception
Historian Peter Gay wrote that Thought and Action is a "brilliant" and "lucid" contribution to the philosophy of action, and a subtle vindication of free will. Philosopher Roger Scruton, writing in Sexual Desire (1986), credited Hampshire with providing a seminal discussion of two contrasting outlooks on the future that can be called "predicting and deciding." Philosopher Anthony Quinton wrote that Hampshire's "systematic aim and fine mandarin prose were both unusual for an Oxford philosopher of the time."