BOO KS
477
Now, as I understand him, Hampshire's contention is that powers
of physical things, including our own bodies, are merely general capaci–
ties or dispositions to receive change; as such, they have nothing to do
with the actual determination of behavior. And it is precisely for this
reason that John Locke referred to them as "passive powers." But the
"powers" of individual persons to make choices and to act, as Locke, long
before Hampshire, also pointed out, are not long-term capacities or dis–
positions at all, but efficacious present causes of action. And, again, it is
for this reason that Locke called
them
"active powers." Just on this score,
however, the difference between Locke and Hampshire is instructive,
for it displays precisely the difference between the new approach to lan–
guage of the contemporary linguistic philosophers and the approach of
most traditional philosophers. For Locke the term "active power" (like
the terms "yellow" and "sweet") is simply the name of a certain simple
abstractable idea. But for Hampshire what we call the active power of
an individual to do something is not an abstractable quality of any
sort; on the contrary, in speaking of our active power to do something,
we
serve notice
of our determination to do it, and, by implication, that the
form of discourse in which we are involved has a practical rather than
a merely descriptive or abstractive intention. And though both Locke and
Hampshire connect the freedom of the individual with his active power
to initiate change, their accounts of this freedom are accordingly entirely
different. For Locke, again, the "discovery" of one's active powers is,
paradoxically, no different from the discovery, through perceptual dis–
crimination, of a distinct sense quality or taste; all, that is to say, are
mere
objects,
the discriminating contemplation of which is not intrinsical–
ly connected with what we do. But for Hampshire, the discovery that
one can do something is not the perception of an object or datum of
experience, but itself a setting of the mind
to
do something, an initial
stage in fact in the doing of it.
This leads to a further stage of Hampshire's argument. Unlike the
empiricists, of whom Locke is a somewhat uncertain progenitor, Hamp–
shire in effect denies that all knowledge derives essentially from observa–
tion. What we call self-knowledge turns, on the contrary, on our active
powers of will and on our awareness of what we really want or ought
to be and do. This knowledge, which Socrates regarded as the ultimate
aim of philosophy and most classical moralists identified with wisdom,
is itself nonobservational, although of course it depends upon experience
and is formed in the light of experience imaginatively relived and re–
enacted. And, although he does not himself employ the term, it is in
this wisdom of critical self-knowledge that Hampshire locates the core
of personal freedom.
