Who now reads Michael Oakeshott? Until to the end, stands to lose more by have seen the rationalistic excesses of to- and generalises an understanding of hu- recently, very few people indeed. It took 30 professionalism and its impedimenta talitarian societies; as politicians are forced man practice, uses that understanding to years for his first book, Experience and Its than any other study. And it is perhaps to acknowledge both their own limitations explore the classical idea of civil association, Modes (1933), to sell out its initial print run of more important that we should keep in power and those of the state; and while and then locates that idea in the ambiguous ourselves unencumbered with merely 1,000 copies. Nor was its author well known western societies wrestle with the social emergence of the modern European state. parasitic opinion than that we should even towards the end of his life. The possibly be aware of all, or even the best, that effects of our highly materialistic and nar- The result is philosophically profound apocryphal story goes that after her election has been thought and said. For a rowly economic cultures. in at least three ways. It gives new depth to in 1979 Mrs Thatcher was keen to celebrate philosophy, if it is to stand at all, must As political reflection, this vision owes the idea of civil association – as the associa- the conservative intellectuals who, as she stand absolutely upon its own feet and more to Edmund Burke than Oakeshott tion of equals not bound by any governing saw it, had helped make victory possible. anything which tends to obscure this fact was perhaps prepared to acknowledge. But enterprise or purpose. It allows Oakeshott “Let’s give that man Oakeshott a title!” she must be regarded with suspicion. Oakeshott was undoubtedly a more purely logical scope to extend his thought to em- cried. A knighthood was duly produced . philosophical thinker, who joined a Hu- brace the rule of law, conceived modally in but for Walter Oakeshott, the (no less deser- As these Notebooks show, he managed to mean scepticism with a desire to interrogate its own right, as he did in his final work, On ving) former vice-chancellor of Oxford and keep himself almost entirely free of “merely the deepest aspects of human activity and History (1983). And it enables him to bring specialist in medieval literature. parasitic opinion” for his entire working experience in the tradition of Spinoza and these two strands together in a rigorous It is unlikely that his distant cousin will life, some 60 years. More than that: they Hegel. His eye is always a conditionalising and original philosophical grounding for have minded, for Michael was, by all ac- show how deeply he was imbued in “the one: for him philosophy has no absolutes, modern ideas of limited government, per- counts, the most unassuming of men. Dur- best that has been thought and said”. They except that all human experience is corban sonal freedom and the basic legitimacy of ing the Second World War the young Per- are profound, provocative, moving and to its presuppositions. Only through an the state. It is in this sense that Oakeshott egrine Worsthorne, a future editor of the endlessly quotable. And they cast further awareness of this can philosophy “stand is, ultimately, a “conservative” philosopher. Sunday Telegraph, found himself sharing a light on his life and thought, and on the hu- on its own feet”. It follows that the modern tent for six months with another recruit to man predicament. yearning for objectivity, for a supposition- **** the Phantom special reconnaissance unit. less authority underwriting human action So far, so solid, so massive and marmoreal. Having recently won a scholarship to Peter- **** through claims of science or religion or na- To those who have gazed in wonder at this house, Worsthorne lost no time in favour- On the face of it, the body of intellectual tional identity, is as intellectually spurious complex intellectual edifice, it is a profound ing his new companion with his wide-rang- work published during Oakeshott’s long as it is disastrous in practice. shock to turn the corner and discover some- ing views on politics, history, philosophy lifetime is slender: two monographs, sepa- thing very, very different. and other topics. One can hardly imagine rated by some 40 years, and two rather We have seen Oakeshott as a thinker from his embarrassment, on arriving at Cam- more accessible collections of essays on pol- He has only one subject, another age, one who delights in metaphor bridge, to attend the university’s lectures itics and history. Most of his readers come and it is the subject: and disdains the modern fashion for isms, on European political thought and discover to him through the first of these collections, and the minutiose and argumentative logic- the same tent-mate delivering them. Rationalism in Politics (1962). This set out human experience chopping by which so much of today’s aca- Yet at his death in 1990, aged 89, Michael a vigorous but elegant philosophical attack demic philosophy talks past itself. He has Oakeshott did not lack public recognition. on the postwar consensus in favour of plan- The very idea of rationalism is thus one only one subject, and it is the subject: hu- The Daily Telegraph described him as “the ning and technical expertise within govern- expression of a much deeper analysis by man experience, in all its pain and joy and greatest political philosopher in the Anglo- ment. In a favoured metaphor of the time, Oakeshott of human experience as divided glory. This is, in its own way, subversive Saxon tradition since Mill – or even Burke”. politicians were seen as officers on the deck into different “modes”, or organising con- enough. Yet it is precisely for this reason The Guardian called him “perhaps the most of the ship of state, steering the vessel under ceptual frameworks, through which we that in the end what mattered to Oakeshott original academic political philosopher of expert guidance and yanking civil-service encounter the world; it is what occurs when was not work but life, and specifically love. this century”, and he was marked as a brilliant levers to increase or reduce speed. the quantitative categories of science are Philosophy was, it seems, an antidote. interpreter of Hobbes, a generous teacher Oakeshott shows how such an enterprise confused with the very different categories The present volume has been culled from and a highly effective chair of the department is fated to end on the rocks. As a philoso- to be found within history and practice. But a vast array of journals written by Oake- of government at the London School of Eco- pher, he takes aim at the deepest point: not these modes are marked by their internal shott between 1922 and 1986. These in- nomics. There ensued a warm, unbidden at specific plans and schemes but at the as- consistency, and they develop an institu- clude his own reflections, quotations and exchange of reminiscences across the Atlan- sumptions underlying them, in particular tional basis within society: indeed, Oake- passages transcribed from other writers, as This modest man: Oakeshott argued that the job of politics was “to keep afloat on an even keel” tic, between friends, pupils and admirers. the belief that skilled activities such as that shott came to see them as distinct voices, well as mini-essays and purely personal cris There is now a rapidly burgeoning field of of governing can be reduced to a set of ex- and the interplay between them as constitu- de coeur. They were not written for publica- BOOKS “Oakeshott studies”. Virtually everything plicit rules or instructions. The effect of this tive of culture and civilisation, the “life inter tion, and have not now been assembled into he wrote has been published or is in the view, one might note, is to denigrate politi- homines”. For him, then, education is not a anything remotely resembling a single line course of publication, and the same is true cal understanding and exalt youth and inex- technocratic process of creating future work- of thought (how could they be? Oakeshott of his lectures and broadcasts – with the perience, for its implication is that the tacit, ers, or even a simple transfer of knowledge. described them as “a Zibaldone – a written Not work, but exception (so far) of A Guide to the Classics inarticulable knowledge built up over time It is an adventure, an initiation into what he chaos”). Their editor, Luke O’Sullivan, has (1936), the book he co-authored on horse by the craftsman has no place in politics. called “the conversation of mankind”. It is worked wonders to bring them to book. racing. The great university presses of Ox- To the contrary, Oakeshott suggests: “In how we learn to be human. The result is a treasury of apothegm, ideas always love ford, Cambridge and Yale have taken him political activity . men sail a boundless But this modal analysis was revised and and wisdom. Nearly every one of its more up. He has been the subject, or perhaps the and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour refined over time. The result was Oake- than 500 pages contains some pungent and The conservative thinker who went beyond politics victim, of numerous studies, companion for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither shott’s late masterpiece, On Human Con- arresting thought: “Citizenship is a spiritu- By Jesse Norman volumes and collections of essays, including starting-place nor appointed destination. duct (1975). Gone is the seductive smooth- al experience, not a legal relationship.” “To five since 2012 alone.