Innocence and Experience

Hampshire writes from the perspective of a wise and thoughtful philosopher of ethics near the end of an illustrious career. Drawing on personal lessons learned from interviewing Nazis for British intelligence after WW2, Hampshire adds true depth to his work, so rare in the world of Anglo-American philosophy, marked usually by clever, if superficial, logical angling. Hampshire picks up on recent discussions of procedural (thin) versus substantive (thick) theories of justice by arguing, elegantly and soberly, for a Heraclitean vision: "innocence" tells us that there is some common vision we could all come to through reason or imagination, but "experience" shows us that the best we can do, or hope for, is a thin procedural justice which keeps us from killing one another. In fact, in our truest moments, we might realize that our deepest loves and ideals (the heart of "innocence") are not rational values (and thus good foundations for a Common Good all should strive for), but are attempts to recover a "Golden Age," quite possibly from our own childhood, or at least deeply rooted on our own psyches, and activated in transcendenct moments of seeming perfection (such as profound moments of experiencing high art).Wisdom not to be ignored by one of the great, and deepest, of 20th century Anglo-American philosophers. A great read.