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Michael Oakeshott

Thinking of this great subtle humane thinker — his birth and death dates are close together (December 11, 1901 — December 19, 1990) — whose work stands as one of the greatest challenges to salvation peddlers. For a freebie overview check out Terry Nardin’s SEP entry and two collections — Paul and my Penn State volume and…

Some recent Oakeshottiana

Here’s a roundup of some recent Oakeshottiana: Rationalism and Traditionalism in Politics. The Correspondence Between Karl R. Popper and Michael Oakeshott — Spartaco Pupo in SCIENZA & POLITICA, vol. XXVIII, no. 54, anno 2016, pp. 121-14 Michael Oakeshott and Hayden White on the practical and the historical past — Jonas Ahlskog in Rethinking History: The Journal of…

Experience and its Modes: Reissued

It’s been brought to my attention that Experience and its Modes has been reissued with a preface by Paul Franco — see below. E+M is one of the most influential books across all genres to my thinking not to mention being one of the most entertaining. Dreadful new cover though . . . If you…

Michael Oakeshott and the Postulates of Individuality

A newly published paper by Andrew Norris in Political Theory Michael Oakeshott’s political philosophy is the most sophisticated and compelling liberal alternative to the progressive, state-centered liberalism of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Oakeshott’s version of liberalism as the civil association of individuals underwrites more ideological positions (usually characterized as libertarian or conservative) that play a…

Oakeshott on friendship

Friends are not concerned with what might be made of one another, but only with the enjoyment of one another; and the condition of this enjoyment is a ready acceptance of what is and the absence of any desire to change or to improve. A friend is not somebody one trusts to behave in a…

The Rule of Law in the Modern European State

David Boucher’s article from a decade ago freely available here. The shit-storm that we are now in is a consequence of complicitous “ruling class chatter” (Left and Right) and “enlightened” technocracy, a politics of faith that has become way out of wack with the politics of scepticism. The European Union required of its aspirant members formal…