Primary Sources
Samples of Oakeshott
Free samples of Oakeshott’s writing can be obtained from this site as well as a variety of other places on the web. Below is a list of the ones we know about.
Pre-WWII
John Locke (1932, PDF format)
Experience and its Modes, Ch. 3, Historical Experience (1933, PDF format)
History and the Social Sciences (1936, PDF format)
Dr. Leo Strauss [...]
Introduction to Leviathan – compare 1946 vs 1975 editions for free
For several years we have known that the 1975 version of Oakeshott’s famous Introduction to Hobbes’s Leviathan has been available for free online, courtesy of Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty.
Leslie Marsh has now drawn our attention to the fact that the 1946 version can be found on Scribd. Since registration on Scribd is free, [...]
Oakeshott and the Universities 1949
The Time magazine archive discloses a few of Oakeshott’s (amongst other people’s) thoughts from 1949 on the problem facing universities.
Philosophy of History (1948)
In 1948 Michael Oakeshott made a radio broadcast about the philosophy of history on the BBC’s University Program. Leslie Marsh obtained permission from the BBC to play the broadcast at the MO Association’s inaugural conference in 2001 and to make it available on our web site.
Hence, available once again for you to download are the [...]
Oakeshott’s Lectures Now Available
In an early Christmas present for Oakeshott lovers, Imprint Academic has released its edition of Oakeshott’s famous Lectures in the History of Political Thought, a little earlier than the expected January 2006 publication date.
The web page for the volume includes downloadable PDFs of the Table of Contents, indexes, the editors’ Introduction and also a sample [...]
News: Update on Oakeshott’s Selected Writings
Vol. 2 LSE Lectures on the History of Political Thought
Luke O’Sullivan (co-editor) writes: A first draft of the main text of the LSE lectures scheduled for publication in 2006 is now complete. It is based on the final versions of the lectures for 1968-9 in the LSE archive, which differ considerably from the earlier versions [...]
John Locke (1932)
John Locke is a prime 1930s example of Oakeshott’s skill as an essayist.