In anticipation of a talk I’m giving later on in the week on Oakeshott’s so-called “dispositional conservatism”, here is a nice little piece by my chum Gene Callahan serving as a good introduction to RIP. The British philosopher and historian Michael Oakeshott is a curious figure in twentieth-century intellectual history. He is known mostly as…
For those of you who haven’t heard Oakeshott here is a rare BBC recording. The transcript can be found here – and the audio is here. Since the topic is philosophy of history, here is the opening paragraph of Geoff Thomas’ essay for Paul and my Companion: Omnis determinatio est negatio, says Spinoza: to specify the…
At last, our cover! Even if I say so myself I think we made the right choice with Bruegel’s “Tower of Babel.” The Penn State University Press designer has done a great job (the image below is of course compressed – the hardcopy really looks great, the colours being very lush). Here is the Table of Contents…
Here’s a plug for a very nice little recently released book by David Boucher and Andrew Vincent, two of the leading expositors of British Idealism. It’s about time an accessible and reliable work hit the shelves. David, by the way, has written a chapter on Oakeshott’s idealism for Paul and my “Companion” entitled “The Victim…
Here is a recent (2009) review of one of my favourite books. The review is infinitely warmer than the snippy Stebbing review I mentioned in a post some two years ago. HistoryMichael OakeshottOakeshottPhilosophyPhilosophy of historyrationalism
The release of this book is some way off (December 2013). Michael OakeshottOakeshott
Here’s a very brief review published in Political Studies Review. Michael Oakeshott: The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence by Luke O’Sullivan ( ed. ). Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008. 384 pp., £30.00, ISBN 978 1845 400309 In this book, Luke O’Sullivan presents us with Oakeshott the philosopher and Oakeshott the political commentator. The philosophical Oakeshott is…
I see that CUP now have a page up for Efraim Podoksik’s forthcoming Companion. One doesn’t have to be an astute reader to see that CUP are being slack in that the graphic has Steven Crowell as the editor (Crowell is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism). Judging by the TOC, Podoksik’s volume will be a good…
Here’s a very recent paper from the Philosophy of Education. Here is the correct link for Francis Schrag’s reference to Bob Grant’s “On Writing Michael Oakeshott’s Biography.” Speaking of which, Bob Grant has written a fantastic biographical essay “The Pursuit of Intimacy, or Rationalism in Love” for Paul and my Companion. Bob GrantMichael OakeshottPhilosophy of Educationrationalism
A review in The Economist of Stefan Collini’s What Are Universities For? The best articulation of the instrumental/intrinsic debate is still Oakeshott’s The Voice of Liberal Learning. Here is the first essay from VLL online. And Paul Franco is tackling this topic for the Oakeshott Companion. Mr Collini is moved by Newman’s insistence that a liberal education is…
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