Collingwood Conference Italy 2010
The R.G. Collingwood Society will be holding a conference in Italy, 19-22 July 2010.
Theme: The Empire of Idealism.
The conference is a multi-university and multi-national affair: sponsored by the Australian Research Council, the venue is run by Monash, the organizers hail from Macquarie, and you can find more information at Cardiff’s Collingwood & British Idealism Centre.
The deadline for abstracts is currently set at 15 December 2009.
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, it is possible to download and compare both editions for free.
Oakeshott vs Bloom re Education
“Tory anarchist” Daniel McCarthy has posted some thoughts on the differences between Oakeshott and Allan Bloom’s views of education in The American Conservative magazine
Get ‘em while they’re (almost) affordable
An email message from Amazon.com has just drawn my attention to the fact that the site is — for a limited time — offering a substantial discount on one soon-to-be-published Oakeshott book.
The book is Michael Oakeshott by Edmund Neill, one book in a series from Continuum on Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers.
The book normally has a rather severe sticker shock (US$130 or 65 pounds for a 160-page hardback, which compares poorly with the US$29.95 or 18.99 pounds that the same publisher offers for the 256-page hardback of Roger Scruton’s Understanding Music), so any discount is worth noticing.
Amazon’s offer is a pre-order price of $81.90 (37% off) until the book’s release date of 1st October.
Interestingly, as of today, Amazon.co.uk is only offering 5% off the standard price.
The Continuum Books web site has a description of the book.
Registration Extended for Conference
You can still register for November’s MOA conference in Texas. The registration period for the conference has been extended until 15 October.
Read more about the conference on the conference page.
Conference Spoilers
The draft conference program does not give away much about the keynote speeches. We can reveal a little more.
Timothy Fuller, entering with gusto into the comparative spirit of the conference, will be looking not just at Oakeshott, Strauss and Voegelin, but Hannah Arendt, too. In a paper tentatively titled “Victims of Thought”, he will explore how all four thinkers, despite their differences, can be seen as represenatives of a “common effort to restore an ancient tradition”.
Roger Scruton, in “Politics and Conversation”, will pursue the analogy, made at several points by Oakeshott, between the conservative view of civil association and our ordinary understanding of conversations. He will ask what makes conversations possible, how they succeed, and how they go wrong.
As for our third keynote speaker, Robert Grant – well, we can’t give everything away! Come to the conference and find out.
Conference Program Released
The draft program for this November’s MOA Conference has now been released.
Update 29 October: A revised conference program is now available
Reminder: Registration closes in a few days
Update: Registration has been extended until 15 October
Read more about the conference on the conference page.