Here is my chum Ivo Mosley’s latest book. In addition to his writing career (poetry, plays, social commentary) Ivo was a highly distinguished ceramicist – see the wonderful photo of him and his work below captured by either Snowdon or Lichfield – I forget. Ivo, surprisingly, also read Japanese at Oxford.
Here is everything you need to know about Priorat – IMHO the most exciting fireworks in a bottle along with some of the much more modestly priced Chilean wines. See Jancis Robinson‘s assessment from 2004 along with a couple of more recent articles from the WSJ and the NYT. I first had a glass in NYC in 2009 when the Spanish barman insisted I sample something special. The nose on it alone was like nothing I’d ever come across – itself a most wonderful and intense qualic experience. After tasting it, the barman knew the deal had been done and that he had to shift the rest of the open bottle. Well aware that I was obliged to cover the full cost of the bottle I offered a taste to my companions – they willingly forked over the $xxx per glass for the remaining wine. All in all well worth it since I still think about that experience. It turns out the wine was L’Ermita. And outside of NOLA food, Spanish cuisine is where it’s at.
Robert Devigne’s intro to his chapter.
The identification of Michael Oakeshott with conservatism is fraught with debate. To be sure, some analysts consider Oakeshott to be the modern incarnation of Burke. Moreover, during the closing decades of the twentieth century, conservative thinkers in the United Kingdom made the greatest claims to Oakeshott. Yet different features of Oakeshott’s thought have made it possible for him to be read as a liberal, a pragmatist, a historicist, an existentialist, a postmodernist, and a conservative. What, then, is conservative in Oakeshott’s political philosophy?
Conservative political thought, as most fully expressed by Burke’s response to the French Revolution, developed throughout the West in opposition to Enlightenment beliefs that societies could be guided along a secular, egalitarian, and self-governing path. Burke’s thought was characterized by a respect for history as the source of progress, a rejection of the view that individuals and their rights existed prior to institutions, an extolling of the virtue of prudence when introducing political reform, an appreciation for habits and traditional modes of conduct, an opposition to institutions based on rational models of behavior, and distrust for Enlightenment political philosophy in particular and philosophy more generally.2 Because Burke and others argued that history, not philosophy, is the source of a nation’s most important institutions and values, the conservative outlook, unlike its liberal counterpart, did not constitute a set of substantive ideas or an “ought” concerning the best form of government or best form of society. It defined only a framework for a variety of the defenses being raised throughout Europe against an ascendant liberal outlook.
How does Oakeshott line up in relation to Burke? Does Oakeshott’s thought, like Burke and traditional conservatism more generally, assume that individuals belong to some continuing and preexisting social order, and does this understanding influence his positions when determining better or worse political associations? We examine Oakeshott’s middle and late works, written from the late 1940s to the early 1980s, to identify significant points of continuity and difference with Burke in the middle period. On the one hand, Oakeshott and Burke develop similar assessments of the value of traditions, the dissolving effect of rationalism on those practices, and the importance of a prescriptive approach to political reform. On the other hand, unlike Burke, Oakeshott places high value on philosophy itself and the role it plays in identifying better or worse political practices. And contra Burke, Oakeshott identifies a problematic English history not necessarily leading to the political good.
Turning to the late works, we discover that the differences between each thinker become more pronounced, as Oakeshott moves in a more liberal direction, focusing on the role that law plays in preventing conflict among individuals and groups pursuing variegated ends. We also see Oakeshott explicitly distancing himself from Burke’s thought. Despite these differences, however, a new line can be drawn between a current of Oakeshott’s and Burke’s thinking during this time as well, as Oakeshott develops a more traditional European conservative position: respect for modern European history, whereby the “is” is not quite the “ought” but is certainly close to it.
Finally, in conclusion, I contrast Oakeshott’s thinking with the other seminal conservative thinker of the second half of the twentieth century, Leo Strauss. Here I explain how Strauss’s different assessments of modernity, Burke, and history clarify the distinct character of their respective conservatisms and illuminate why Strauss has become associated with a more proactive neoconservatism, while Oakeshott is often linked to a more traditional, historicist conservatism.
Rob Gonsalves‘ painting of the various epistemic “clergy” – the title above is my doing – the original title is “Community Portrait”.
The video of this discussion very kindly brought to my attention by Alex Kealy at The Institute of Art and Ideas. For more on Strawson see the very excellent review of his Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? by my chum and occassional collaborator Chris Onof.
Andy Clark lecture.
This published in Classics Ireland Vol 2 (1995), the journal of the Classical Association of Ireland
In 1982, horrified by the meanness, tedium and depravity of my existence as I toured the American South playing rock and roll music and going crazy in public, I purchased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saunders, Penguin). The grandeur of the subject appealed to me, as did the cameo illustration of Edward Gibbon, the author, on the front cover. He looked like a heavy dude. Being in a political business, I had long made a habit of reading biographies of wilful characters – Hitler, Churchill, MacArthur, Brando – with large profiles, and I also enjoyed books on war and political intrigue, as I could relate the action to my own situation in the music business, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of religion-rental.
I would read with pleasure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels, savouring the clash of beliefs, personalities and values, played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vulgar, led by huge archetypal characters. And that was the end of that. Or so I thought.
Eleven years later I stood in a dilapidated but elegant room in a rotting mansion in New Orleans, and listened as a piece of music strange to my ears pulled me back to ancient Rome and called forth those ghosts to merge in hilarious, bilious pretence with the Schwartzkopfs, Schwartzeneggers and Sheratons of modern American money and muscle-myth. Out of me poured information I had no idea I ever knew, let alone retained, in an extemporaneous soliloquy I called ‘Caesar’. When I listened back, it made me laugh my ass off because it was so true. America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? All of Western life and institutions today are traceable to the Romans and their world. We are all Roman children for better or worse.
The best part of this experience came after the fact – my wife gave me a beautiful edition in three volumes of the magnificent original unabridged Decline and Fall, and since then the pleasure and profit have been all mine as I enjoy the wonderful language, organization and scope of this masterwork. Here are just some of the ways I benefit:
1. I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there were others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.
2. I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins – military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial – are all there to be scrutinized in their infancy. I have gained perspective.
3. The language in which the book is written is rich and complete, as the language of today is not.
4. I find out how little I know.
5. I am inspired by the will and erudition which enabled Gibbon to complete a work of twenty-odd years. The guy stuck with things.
I urge anyone who wants life on earth to really come alive for them to enjoy the beautiful ancestral ancient world.
Since pretty much any subject matter these days is open to be musicalized (or Andrew Lloyd “Vombo”rized) why not this? (H/T to my chum and Russell scholar Andrew Irvine).
The world premiere of a fascinating and unusual new work by Tyrone Landau based on ‘Principia Mathematica’ by Alfred North Whitehead & Bertrand Russell, published in the full 3-volume version 100 years ago this year.
For the past 20 years, a festival not to be missed has been Jazz on the Bayou. Held at the Bayou Liberty estate of Gardner and Ronnie Kole, this “backyard festival” has raised more than $1 million dollars for the charities it supports.
Every year, Jazz on the Bayou spotlights many of the area’s top chefs who bring their featured dish to the event for all to enjoy. This year, guests will be treated to the work of such celebrated chefs as John Besh’s La Provence, Paul Prudhomme’s K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, Drago’s Seafood Restaurant, Andrea’s, Trey Yuen, Michael’s Restaurant, LA Pines and Southside Café, just to mention a few. In all more than 30 chefs and their restaurants will be featured over the two days.
