His 1962 work “Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays” stands as one of the most significant and accessible cornerstones of modern Conservative thought.
The Prime Minister is neither a pessimist nor a foxhunter, but there are other ways to be a conservative.
This new government seems to want to concentrate its energies on giving Britain a cutting edge. Will it succeed where others have failed?
What about those who worship different gods, those who delight in civil rights movements, those mothers who want to go out to work?
Charged with managing Whitehall, trouble-shooting, clocking Sturgeon, and preparing government for Brexit, his workload would make lesser mortals crumble.
Otherwise she will provoke a mutiny in her own ranks.
Its defining characteristic is a mix of practical knowledge and an understanding of the best and the worst of which humans are capable.
Politics is “a noble calling”. And in praise of Abraham Lincoln, Edmund Burke and Louis Armstrong.
His critique of the teaching of politics is a simple one. In his view, it is not a mode of experience. So the language of politics is not genuinely a language of explanation.
Gove should encourage loyalty not to lofty abstractions, but to British institutions and the British way of conducting politics.
This new volume establishes Oakeshott as an aphorist of genius on love as well as philosophy.
Ironically, it is Michael Gove who is condemned as the ideologue. He is in fact the most anti-ideological of Education Secretaries.
It is good to see the British conservative philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, featuring in the American Conservative, because, as Kenneth McIntyre explains, mainstream American conservatives don’t really get Oakeshott: “This lack of influence among the movers and shakers of American political life should not be surprising, given Oakeshott’s insistence on the irrelevance of political philosophy to […]
Both are a reminder that politics and political parties are not the most important things in life.