In “The Victim of Thought: The Idealist Inheritance,” David Boucher examines the relationship of this theory of knowledge or experience to philosophical—and especially British—idealism. He makes two fundamental points about this relationship. First, he argues that although idealism was on the wane in Britain the 1920s and 1930s, Oakeshott’s brand of idealism was hardly as…
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…
This from David Boucher’s The Victim of Thought: The Idealist Inheritance: Idealists and realists were not as antagonistic toward each other as is commonly thought. Harold Joachim, for example, submitted the second chapter of The Nature of Truth to his “friend Bertrand Russell” before the book was published. R. G. Collingwood was a respected figure internationally…
The penultimate chapter to be trailed – David Boucher on Oakeshott’s idealism. Oakeshott’s indebtedness to philosophical idealism has been touched upon by many commentators as incidental to their main concerns, and his relative silence after the Second World War compared with his defiant proclamations of loyalty before it gave rise to suspicions that he was…
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…
