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michael oakeshott

Oakeshott as Conservative

The topic of Oakeshott’s conservatism is a contentious one, as Robert Devigne shows in his essay “Oakeshott as Conservative.” Using Burke as a touchstone, Devigne demonstrates that Oakeshott’s conservatism is complex and shifts over time. In his essays from the late 1940s and early 1950s, Oakeshott displays a Burkean antipathy toward rationalism and appreciation for…

liberal education, virtue signalling

The Cultured Life and why it is worth pursuing

Joseph Epstein, still as sharp as a whistle, in The Weekly Standard. JE’s coinage “virtucrat”  (“any man or woman who is certain that his or her political views are not merely correct but deeply, morally righteous in the bargain”) is the precursor to the term “virtue-signaling”, the condition befalling many academics, politicians and in all probability many…

a companion to michael oakeshott

Oakeshott as Conservative

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…

Noël Malcolm

Oakeshott and Hobbes

Here is a trailer from possibly the greatest living Hobbes scholar – Noel Malcolm – who we were lucky enough to nab for our Companion. Even those who know only a little about Michael Oakeshott know that he had a strong and abiding interest in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. His edition of Leviathan (1946)…