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Michael Joseph Oakeshott FBA (; 11 December 1901 – 19 December 1990) was an
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
philosopher and political theorist who wrote about philosophy of history,
philosophy of religion Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning p ...
,
aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
, philosophy of education, and philosophy of law.Fuller, T. (1991) 'The Work of Michael Oakeshott', ''Political Theory'', Vol. 19 No. 3.


Biography


Early life and education

Oakeshott was the son of
Joseph Francis Oakeshott Joseph Francis Oakeshott (1860 – 1945) was a British socialist activist and author. Biography Oakeshott was the son of Joseph Oakeshott (1820-1893) and Eliza Maria, née Dodd. From a fairly poor background, one of Oakeshott's ancestors on h ...
, a civil servant (latterly divisional head in the Inland Revenue)Paul Franco, Leslie Marsh, ''A Companion to Michael Oakeshott'', pp. 16 and member of the Fabian Society, and Frances Maude, daughter of George Thistle Hellicar, a well-off Islington silk-merchant. Though there is no evidence that he knew her, he was related by marriage to the women's rights activist Grace Oakeshott, and to the economist and social reformer
Gilbert Slater Gilbert may refer to: People and fictional characters *Gilbert (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters *Gilbert (surname), including a list of people Places Australia * Gilbert River (Queensland) * Gilbert River (South A ...
. The life peer Matthew Oakeshott is of the same family; also the political journalist Isabel Oakeshott. Michael Oakeshott attended
St George's School, Harpenden (Aim Higher) , established = 1907 , type = AcademyDay and boarding school , religious_affiliation = Christian , head_label = Headteacher , head = Helen Barton , r_head_label = , r_head = Stephen Warner ...
, a new co-educational and 'progressive' boarding school from 1912 to 1920. He enjoyed his schooldays, and the Headmaster, the Rev. Cecil Grant, a disciple of Maria Montessori, later became a friend. In 1920, Oakeshott matriculated with a Scholarship at
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of t ...
, where he read history, taking the Political Science options in both parts of the Tripos (Cambridge degree examinations). He graduated in 1923 with a first-class degree, subsequently (as is still normal at Cambridge) took an unexamined MA, and was elected a Fellow of Caius in 1925. While at Cambridge he admired the British idealist philosophers
J. M. E. McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (3 September 1866 – 18 January 1925) was an English idealist metaphysician. For most of his life McTaggart was a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an exponent of the philo ...
and John Grote, and the medieval historian
Zachary Nugent Brooke Zachary Nugent Brooke (1883–1946) was a British medieval historian. Life Born on 1 December 1883, Brooke was educated at Bradfield College in Berkshire and St John's College, Cambridge. In 1908, he was elected to a Drosier Fellowship at Gonvi ...
. He said that McTaggart's introductory lectures were the only formal philosophical training he ever received. The historian
Herbert Butterfield Sir Herbert Butterfield (7 October 1900 – 20 July 1979) was an English historian and philosopher of history, who was Regius Professor of Modern History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He is remembered chiefly for a shor ...
was a contemporary, friend and fellow member of the Junior Historians society. After graduation in 1923 he pursued his interests in theology and German literature in a summer course at the Universities of Marburg and Tuebingen, and again in 1925. In between, for a year, he taught literature as Senior English Master at King Edward VII Grammar School, Lytham St Anne's, while simultaneously writing his (successful) Fellowship dissertation, which he said was a 'dry run' for his first book, ''Experience and its Modes''.


1930s

Oakeshott was dismayed by the political extremism that occurred in Europe during the 1930s, and his surviving lectures from this period reveal a dislike of
Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...
and
Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
. He is said to have been the first at Cambridge to lecture on Marx. At the suggestion of Sir Ernest Barker, who wished to see Oakeshott succeed to his own Cambridge Chair of Political Science, in 1939 he produced an anthology, with commentary, of ''The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe''. For all its muddle and incoherence (as he saw it), he found Representative Democracy the least unsatisfactory, in part because 'the imposition of a universal plan of life on a society is at once stupid and immoral'.


Second World War

Although in his essay "The Claim of Politics" (1939), Oakeshott defended individuals' right to eschew political commitment, he joined the
British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...
after the fall of France in 1940, when he could have avoided conscription on grounds of age. He volunteered for the virtually suicidal
Special Operations Executive The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its p ...
(SOE), where the average life expectancy was about six weeks, and was interviewed by Hugh Trevor-Roper, but it was decided that he was "too unmistakably English" to conduct covert operations on the Continent. He saw active service in Europe with the battlefield intelligence unit
Phantom Phantom may refer to: * Spirit (animating force), the vital principle or animating force within all living things ** Ghost, the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living Aircraft * Boeing Phantom Ray, a stealthy unm ...
, a semi-freelance quasi-Signals organisation which also had connections with the Special Air Service (SAS). Though always at the front, the unit was seldom directly involved in any actual fighting. Oakeshott's military competence did not go unnoticed, and he ended the war as Adjutant of Phantom's 'B' Squadron and acting major.


Postwar

In 1945 Oakeshott was demobilised and returned to Cambridge. In 1949 he left Cambridge for Nuffield College, Oxford, but after only two years, in 1951, he was appointed Professor of Political Science at the
London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 milli ...
(LSE), succeeding the leftist
Harold Laski Harold Joseph Laski (30 June 1893 – 24 March 1950) was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School o ...
, an appointment noted by the popular press. Oakeshott was deeply unsympathetic to the student activism at LSE during the late 1960s, and highly critical of (as he saw it) the authorities' insufficiently robust response. He retired from the LSE in 1969, but continued teaching and conducting seminars until 1980. In his retirement he retreated to live quietly in a country cottage in Langton Matravers in Dorset with his third wife. He was twice divorced and had numerous affairs, many of them with wives of his students, colleagues and friends, and even with his son Simon's girlfriend. He also had a son out of wedlock, whom he abandoned together with the mother when the child was two, and whom he did not meet again for nearly twenty years. Oakeshott's most famous lover was Iris Murdoch. Oakeshott lived long enough to experience increasing recognition, although he has become much more widely written about since his death. Oakeshott declined an offer to be made a Companion of Honour, for which he was proposed by Margaret Thatcher.


Philosophy


Early works

Oakeshott's early work, some of which has been published posthumously as ''What is History? and Other Essays'' (2004) and ''The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence'' (2007), shows that he was more interested in the philosophical problems that derived from his historical studies than he was in the history, even though he was officially a historian. Some of his very early essays are on religion (of a Christian 'modernist' kind), though after his first marital break-up (c. 1934) he published no more on the topic except for a couple of pages in his ''magnum opus'' ''On Human Conduct''. However, his posthumously published and voluminous ''Notebooks'' (1919-) show a lifelong preoccupation with religion and questions of mortality. In his youth he had considered taking Holy Orders, but later inclined towards a non-specific Romantic mysticism.


Philosophy and modes of experience

Oakeshott published his first book in 1933, ''Experience and its Modes'', when he was thirty-one. He acknowledged the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and
F. H. Bradley Francis Herbert Bradley (30 January 1846 – 18 September 1924) was a British idealist philosopher. His most important work was ''Appearance and Reality'' (1893). Life Bradley was born at Clapham, Surrey, England (now part of the Greater ...
; commentators also noticed resemblances between this work and the ideas of thinkers such as
R. G. Collingwood Robin George Collingwood (; 22 February 1889 – 9 January 1943) was an English philosopher, historian and archaeologist. He is best known for his philosophical works, including ''The Principles of Art'' (1938) and the posthumously published ...
and Georg Simmel. The book argued that our experience is usually modal, in the sense that we almost always have a governing perspective on the world, be it practical or theoretical. One may take various theoretical approaches to the world: natural science, history and practice, for example, are quite separate, immiscible modes of experience. It is a mistake, he declared, to treat history on the model of the sciences, or to read into it one's current practical concerns. Philosophy, however, is not a mode. At this stage of his career Oakeshott understood philosophy as the world seen, in Spinoza's phrase, ', literally "under the aspect of eternity", free from presuppositions, whereas science and history and the practical mode rely on certain assumptions. Later (there is disagreement about exactly when) Oakeshott adopted a pluralistic view of the various modes of experience, with philosophy just one voice among others, though it retained its self-critical character. According to Oakeshott, the dominating principles of scientific and historical thought are quantity (the world ') and pastness (the world ') respectively. Oakeshott distinguished the academic perspective on the past from the practical, in which the past is seen in terms of its relevance to our present and future. His insistence on the autonomy of history places him close to Collingwood, who also argued for the autonomy of historical knowledge. The practical world view (the world ') presupposes the ideas of will and value. It is only in terms of these that practical action, for example in politics, economics, and ethics, makes sense. Because all action is conditioned by presuppositions, Oakeshott saw any attempt to change the world as reliant upon a scale of values, which themselves presuppose a context in which ''this'' is preferable to ''that''. Even the conservative disposition to maintain the ''status quo'' (so long as the latter is tolerable) relies upon managing inevitable change, a point he later elaborated in his essay "On Being Conservative".


Post-war essays

During this period, Oakeshott published what became his best known work during his lifetime, the collection entitled ''Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays'' (1962), and notable for its elegance of style. Some of his near-polemics against the direction that Britain was taking, in particular towards
socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...
, gained Oakeshott a reputation as a traditionalist conservative, sceptical about
rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...
and rigid ideologies. Bernard Crick described him as a "lonely nihilist". Oakeshott's opposition to political utopianism is summed up in his analogy (possibly borrowed from a pamphlet by the 17th-century statesman George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, ''The Character of a Trimmer'') of a ship of state that has "neither starting-place nor appointed destination... nd wherethe enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel". He was a severe critic of
E. H. Carr Edward Hallett Carr (28 June 1892 – 3 November 1982) was a British historian, diplomat, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography. Carr was best known for '' A History of Soviet R ...
, the Cambridge historian of Soviet Russia, claiming that Carr was fatally uncritical of the
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
regime and took some of its propaganda at face value.


''On Human Conduct'' and Oakeshott's political theory

In his essay "On Being Conservative" (1956) Oakeshott characterised conservatism as a disposition rather than a political stance: "To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss." Oakeshott's political philosophy, as advanced in ''On Human Conduct'' (1975), is free of any recognisable
party politics A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...
. The book's first part ("On the Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct") develops a
theory A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may ...
of human action as the exercise of intelligent
agency Agency may refer to: Organizations * Institution, governmental or others ** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients ** Employment agency, a business that ...
in activities such as wanting and choosing, the second ("On the Civil Condition") discusses the formal conditions of association appropriate to such intelligent agents, described as "civil" or legal association, and the third ("On the Character of a Modern European State") examines how far this understanding of human association has affected politics and political ideas in post-Renaissance European history. Oakeshott suggests that there had been two major modes or understandings of political organization. In the first, which he calls "enterprise association" (or '), the state is (illegitimately) understood as imposing some universal purpose ( profit, salvation, progress, racial domination) on its subjects. (As its name indicates, enterprise association is perfectly appropriate to the management of ''enterprises''; however, except in emergencies such as war, where all resources must be commandeered into the pursuit of victory, the state is not an enterprise, properly so called.) By contrast, "civil association" (or ') is primarily a legal relationship in which laws impose obligatory conditions of action but do not require the associates to choose one action rather than another. (Compare Robert Nozick on 'side-constraints'.) The complex, technical and often rebarbative style of ''On Human Conduct'' found few readers, and its initial reception was mostly one of bafflement. Oakeshott, who rarely responded to critics, replied sardonically in ''Political Theory'' to some of the contributions made in a symposium on the book in the same journal. In his posthumously published ''The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism'' Oakeshott describes enterprise associations and civil associations in different terms. In politics, an enterprise association is based on a fundamental faith in human ability to ascertain and grasp some universal good (leading to the Politics of Faith), and civil association is based on a fundamental scepticism about human ability to either ascertain or achieve this good (leading to the Politics of Scepticism). Oakeshott considers power (especially technological power) as a necessary prerequisite for the Politics of Faith, because it allows people to believe that they can achieve something great and to implement the policies necessary to achieve their goal. The Politics of Scepticism, on the other hand, rests on the idea that government should concern itself with preventing bad things from happening, rather than enabling ambiguously good events. Oakeshott was presumably dissatisfied with this book, which, like much of what he wrote, he never published. It was evidently written well before ''On Human Conduct''. In the latter book Oakeshott employs the analogy of the
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
to describe the kind of restraint that law involves. Laws prescribe "adverbial conditions": they condition our actions, but they do not determine their substantive chosen ends. For example, the law against murder is not a law against killing as such, but only a law against killing "murderously". Or, to choose a more trivial example, the law does not dictate that I have a car, but if I do, I must drive it on the same side of the road as everybody else. This contrasts with the rules of enterprise associations, in which the actions required by the management are made compulsory for all.


Philosophy of history

In the final work that Oakeshott published in his lifetime, ''On History'' (1983), he returned to the idea that history is a distinct mode of experience, but this time building on the theory of action developed in ''On Human Conduct''. Much of ''On History'' had emerged from Oakeshott's post-retirement graduate seminars at LSE, and had been written at the same time as ''On Human Conduct'', in the early 1970s. During the mid-1960s Oakeshott declared an admiration for Wilhelm Dilthey, one of the pioneers of
hermeneutics Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate ...
. ''On History'' can be interpreted as an essentially neo-Kantian enterprise of working out the conditions of the possibility of historical knowledge, work that Dilthey had begun. The first three essays set out the distinction between the present of historical experience and the present of practical experience, as well as the concepts of historical situation, historical event, and what is meant by change in history. ''On History'' includes an essay on
jurisprudence Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning ...
("The Rule of Law"). It also includes a retelling of '' The Tower of Babel'' in a modern settingReprinted as in which Oakeshott expresses disdain for human willingness to sacrifice individuality, culture, and quality of life for grand collective projects. He attributes this behaviour to fascination with novelty, persistent dissatisfaction, greed, and lack of self-reflection.


Other works

Oakeshott's other works included a reader, already mentioned, on ''The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe''. It consisted of selected texts illustrating the main doctrines of
liberalism Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostilit ...
, national socialism,
fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and t ...
,
communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
, and
Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
(1939). He edited
Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book '' Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...
's '' Leviathan'' (1946), with an introduction that has been recognised as a significant contribution to the literature by some later scholars. Several of Oakeshott's writings on Hobbes were collected and published in 1975 as ''Hobbes on Civil Association''. With his Cambridge colleague
Guy Thompson Griffith Guy Thompson Griffith, FBA (7 January 1908 – 10 September 1985) was an English ancient historian and classicist. He was a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1931 to his death, and the Laurence Reader in Classics at the Unive ...
Oakeshott wrote ''A Guide to the Classics, or How to Pick The Derby Winner'' (1936), a guide to the principles of successful betting on horse-racing. This was his only published non-academic work. Oakeshott was the author of well over 150 essays and reviews, most of which have now been republished. Just before he died Oakeshott approved two edited collections of his works, ''The Voice of Liberal Learning'' (1989), a collection of his essays on education, and a second, revised and expanded edition of ''Rationalism in Politics'' (1991). Posthumous collections of his writings include ''Morality and Politics in Modern Europe'' (1993), a lecture series he gave at Harvard in 1958; ''Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life'' (1993), essays mostly from his early and middle periods; and ''The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism'' (1996), an already-mentioned manuscript from the 1950s contemporary with much of ''Rationalism in Politics'' but written in a more considered tone. The bulk of his papers are now in the Oakeshott Archive at the
London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 milli ...
. Further volumes of posthumous writings are in preparation, as is a biography, and a series of monographs devoted to his work were published during the first decade of the 21st century, and continue to be produced.


Bibliography

* 1933. ''Experience and Its Modes''.
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...
* 1936. ''A Guide to the Classics, or, How to Pick the Derby Winner''. With G.T. Griffith. London: Faber and Faber * 1939. ''The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press * 1941. ''The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe'', 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press * 1942. ''The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe'' with five additional prefaces by F.A. Ogg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press * 1947. ''A New Guide to the Derby: How to Pick the Winner''. With G.T. Griffith. London: Faber and Faber * 1955. ''La Idea de Gobierno en la Europa Moderna''. Madrid: Ateneo * 1959. ''The voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind: an essay''. Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes * 1962. ''Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays''. London: Methuen (Expanded edition – 1991, by Liberty Fund) * 1966. ''Rationalismus in der Politik''. (trans. K. Streifthau) Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhard * 1975. ''On Human Conduct''. Oxford:
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
* 1975. ''Hobbes on Civil Association''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell * 1983. ''On History and Other Essays''. Basil Blackwell * 1985. ''La Condotta Umana''. Bologna: Società Editrice il Mulino * 1989. ''The Voice of Liberal Learning''. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Univers ...


Posthumous

* 1991. ''Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays''. Indianapolis: Liberty Press * 1993. ''Morality and Politics in Modern Europe''. New Haven: Yale University Press * 1993. ''Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life''. New Haven: Yale University Press * 1996. ''The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism''. New Haven: Yale University Press * 2000. ''Zuversicht und Skepsis: Zwei Prinzipien neuzeitlicher Politik''. (trans. C. Goldmann). Berlin: Fest * 2004. ''What Is History? And Other Essays''. Thorverton: Imprint Academic * 2006. ''Lectures in the History of Political Thought''. Thorverton: Imprint Academic * 2007. ''The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: Essays and Reviews 1926–51''. Thorverton: Imprint Academic * 2008. ''The Vocabulary of a Modern European State: Essays and Reviews 1952–88''. Thorverton: Imprint Academic * 2010. ''Early Political Writings 1925–30''. Thorverton: Imprint Academic


References


Further reading

* Corey Abel & Timothy Fuller, eds. ''The Intellectual Legacy of Michael Oakeshott'' (Imprint Academic, 2005, ) * Corey Abel, ed, ''The meanings of Michael Oakeshott's Conservatism'' (Imprint Academic, 2010, ) * * Elizabeth Campbell Corey, ''Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics'' ( University of Missouri Press, 2006, ) *
Paul Franco Paul N. Franco (born 1956) is a professor of government at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and a leading authority on the British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Franco holds a B.A. from Colorado College, where he studied under Oa ...
, ''Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction'' (Yale, 2004, ) * Paul Franco & Leslie Marsh, eds,
A Companion to Michael Oakeshott
' (Penn State University Press, 2012) . * Robert Grant, ''Oakeshott'' (The Claridge Press, 1990). *
W. H. Greenleaf William Howard Greenleaf (14 April 1927 – 10 March 2008) was a British political scientist. Rodney Barker,WH Greenleaf, ''The Guardian'' (12 June 2008), retrieved 13 February 2020.Terry Nardin Terry W. Nardin (born January 19, 1942) is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Common Curriculum at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Formerly, he served as the head of the Political Science Department at the National University of ...
,
The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott
' (Penn State, 2001, ) * Efraim Podoksik,

' (Imprint Academic, 2003, ) * Efraim Podoksik, ed, ''The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott'' (
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...
, 2012) . *
Andrew Sullivan Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ' ...
,
Intimations Pursued: The Voice of Practice in the Conversation of Michael Oakeshott
' (Imprint Academic, 2007)


External links


Michael Oakeshott Association


* Michael Oakeshott
"Rationalism in Politics"
''Cambridge Journal,'' Volume I, 1947 (broken link – go through your State or Provincial library's subscription service)
Catalogue of the Oakeshott papers
at th

of the
London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 milli ...
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Oakeshott, Michael 1901 births 1990 deaths 20th-century British non-fiction writers 20th-century British philosophers 20th-century essayists 20th-century English historians Academics of the London School of Economics Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Conservatism Critics of Marxism Cultural critics English essayists English male non-fiction writers English political philosophers European conservative liberals Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford Fellows of the British Academy Historians of political thought Hobbes scholars Idealists Lecturers Liberal conservatism People educated at St George's School, Harpenden People from Bromley Philosophers of art Philosophers of culture Philosophers of education Philosophers of history Philosophers of law Philosophers of religion Philosophy academics Social critics Social philosophers British Army personnel of World War II