Here’s a review of Aryeh Botwinick’s recent book Michael Oakeshott’s Skepticism by my co-editor Paul Franco. Here is the opening salvo:
This is a strange book. From the title, one might expect that it would take up Oakeshott’s complicated understanding and deployment of skepticism throughout his philosophical career; perhaps also his relationship to such favorite skeptical authors as Montaigne, Hobbes, Pascal, Hume, and F. H. Bradley. But Aryeh Botwinick has something else in mind in his book; something both more ambitious and less satisfying. Instead of providing a detailed analysis of Oakeshott’s own views on and uses of skepticism, Botwinick uses Oakeshott to illustrate a larger thesis about how skepticism—which he construes largely in terms of a radical antifoundationalism—issues in a profoundly religious or mystical view of the world. This is not an uninteresting thesis, but whether it captures what is most important and distinctive about Oakeshott’s skepticism or his philosophy in general is doubtful.
manwithoutqualities 