In 1666, Oxford University ordered the wholesale burning of all copies of copies of Hobbes’s work . . . Such was the backlash against Hobbes, questions were asked in Parliament during the inquest into the Great Fire of London (2-5 September 1666), it was suggested that the burning of Hobbes’s books may have been a…
Noel Malcolm’s monumental 2,355 page edition of Leviathan is rightly attracting attention well beyond philosophical circles. And you can read Malcolm’s chapter on Oakeshott’s Hobbes in the forthcoming A Companion to Michael Oakeshott. But things are looking up for the Monster, thanks to the labours of Noel Malcolm, a polymath at All Souls College, Oxford, and a former journalist…
Here is the “dean” of Oakeshott exposition, Tim Fuller, and a taster from his essay for the Companion. My intention is to reflect on two themes that run through the whole of Oakeshott’s thought: first, the radical temporality of the human condition and, second, the character of modernity’s response to radical temporality. The first is,…
Here is the opening to Elizabeth Corey’s essay for the Companion. I have often thought that one of the best introductions to the philosophy of Michael Oakeshott is a children’s book by Arnold Lobel. Grasshopper on the Road describes the journey of a remarkably even-tempered grasshopper who meets various other insects on his way down…
Martyn Thompson’s contribution to the Companion: My concern is twofold. First, I shall outline what I take Oakeshott to have meant by the phrase “the history of political thought” and then I shall consider some criticisms from Oakeshott’s perspective of the theory and practice of Quentin Skinner, the leading figure in the so-called Cambridge School…
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)…
manwithoutqualities 