ABSTRACT
The British philosopher Stuart Hampshire makes no references to Foucault, but one to Montaigne, and not more than a few (but, as with the reference to Montaigne, not unimportant) references or allusions to Nietzsche. Nor to my knowledge has his thinking been discussed along with or as pertinent to understanding and assessing the work of the other thinkers considered here. It is nevertheless a secondary aim of this and the following chapter to show that, along with important differences, Hampshire’s numerous writings address many of the same issues, and evidence important formal and substantive continuities, with the ideas and ideals of the three philosophers primarily engaged in the previous chapters. The most obvious of these commonalities is Hampshire’s persistent concern with the concept of freedom and with the various conceptions thereof that have been formulated and advanced in the long history of thinking about it. But his construals of and arguments concerning concepts such as thought and action, reason, custom and desire, language, community and individuality, all of which are central to his thinking about freedom, also resonate with ideas salient in Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Thus in engaging with his thinking we can continue and enlarge upon the reflections essayed thus far. Because the discussions are lengthy and complex, in both chapters I provide, at the outset, footnotes that outline the topics and subtopics that organize them.1
