Update on The Meanings of Oakeshott’s Conservatism
Sadly, Imprint Academic’s “See inside” link for the new book, The Meanings of Oakeshott’s Conservatism, does not work.
Happily, thanks to the book’s editor, Corey Abel (who is also the MO Association’s current President), we can provide you with a downloadable preview of the table of contents (PDF format).
As previously mentioned, a draft version of one chapter, Leslie Marsh’s “Ryle and Oakeshott on the ‘Knowing-How/Knowing-That’ Distinction”, is available at Scribd.
In addition, an earlier version of another chapter, Ivo Mosley’s “A Dark Age Devoted to Barbaric Affluence” (again, in PDF) has been available on this web site with the author’s permission since it was presented to the 2006 MOA Conference.
Early political writings
A new Oakeshott primary source appeared in late 2010, to complement the three secondary sources published around that time.
The new book is Michael Oakeshott: Early Political Writings 1925-30: ‘A Discussion of Some Matters Preliminary to the Study of Political Philosophy’ and ‘The Philosophical Approach to Politics”). Edited by Luke O’Sullivan, the new anthology contains two previously unpublished works, a manuscript entitled ‘A Discussion of some Matters preliminary to the Study of Political Philosophy’, and the first version of a course of lectures on ‘The Philosophical Approach to Politics’ that Oakeshott gave between 1928 and 1930.
According to the publisher’s blurb, “these works establish that politics was a central concern in the first decade of Oakeshott’s intellectual career, and show beyond any doubt that the ideas of Experience and its Modes actually grew out of Oakeshott’s prior philosophical interest in politics.”
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3 secondary sources from late 2010
The tail end of 2010 saw the publication of three new secondary sources about Oakeshott.
Oakeshott’s Skepticism
Princeton University Press brought out Aryeh Botwinick’s Michael Oakeshott’s Skepticism. According to the blurb on the publisher’s web site, “Botwinick presents an original account of Oakeshott’s skepticism about foundations, an account that newly reveals the unity of his thought.” In this account, Oakeshott’s skepticism appears as having been so thorough-going that it “even extended paradoxically to skepticism about skepticism itself “, and it was precisely his “rejection of all-embracing intellectual projects” that made him “a friend to liberal individualism”.
A few pages from Botwinick’s first chapter can be sampled at Amazon US, or the whole of the first chapter can be downloaded as a sample from the publisher’s web site.
Recent Scholarship
In Britain, Imprint Academic brought out Corey Abel’s (ed) The Meanings of Oakeshott’s Conservatism, which collects a host of recent papers about Oakeshott. This is the blurb (courtesy Leslie Marsh’s blog):
This collection of recent scholarship on the thought of Michael Oakeshott includes essays by distinguished and established authors as well as a fresh crop of younger talent, reflecting the sustained and ever growing interest in Oakeshott . Together, they address the meanings of Oakeshott’s conservatism through the lenses of his ideas on religion, history, and tradition, and explore his relationships to philosophers ranging from Hume to Ryle, Cavell, and others. Befitting the nuances of Oakeshott’s conception, the collection assigns no single or final meaning to his conservatism, but finds in him a number of possibilities for thinking fruitfully about what conservatism might mean, when it is no longer considered as a doctrine, but as a disposition.
A draft of one of the papers in the collection, Leslie Marsh’s “Ryle and Oakeshott on the ‘Knowing-How/Knowing-That’ Distinction”, is available at Scribd.
German Adventures
And last but not least, from Germany there came Pit Kapetanovic’s Intellektuelle Abenteuer: Philosophie, Geschichte und Erziehung bei Michael Oakeshott (rough English translation: Intellectual adventures: Philosophy, history and education with Michael Oakeshott). This is reportedly only the second German monograph on Oakeshott, based on a University of Heidelberg PhD thesis, and revolves around Oakeshott’s concern that the “conversation of mankind” was being spoiled by the dominance of practice, and his ideas about education in philosophy and history as a counterweight to practice.
Vale Anthony Quinton
One of the MO Association’s Honorary Founding Fellows, the Oxford analytic philosopher Lord Anthony Quinton, died on 19 June, aged 85.
Leslie Marsh has posted an obituary for Quinton that highlights Quinton’s magnanimity (and also reveals his role in the formation of the MOA). Leslie also includes links to the obituaries published on English newspaper sites.
Feaver on Oakeshott on Representative Democracy
George Feaver was a sympathetic student of Oakeshott and during his own academic career wrote repeatedly about his old teacher’s thoughts. One of his MOA conference papers, now available online courtesy of the new George Feaver web site, is “Michael Oakeshott on Representative Democracy”.