Preview: Leslie Marsh and Paul Franco, eds. COMPANION TO MICHAEL OAKESHOTT.

Marsh, Leslie, and Paul Franco, eds.  Companion to Michael Oakeshott.  University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, forthcoming.

A forthcoming volume of specially commissioned essays on all aspects of Michael Oakeshott’s thought.

For further details: http://acompaniontomichaeloakeshott.wordpress.com/.

Cfp: "Michael Oakeshott’s Political Philosophy in Comparative Perspective," California State University, Santa Monica, October 2011.

British philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) was a theorist of individualism in a time of conformism. He did not follow any of the major “schools” of philosophy of his day, preferring to strike his own path. His work has sometimes been called “liberal” and sometimes “conservative”, and it is certainly “radical” in some ways as well, such as in its rejection of moralism in politics. He was one of the deepest thinkers about what is known as liberal education, which is one of the goals of a university education. But a true liberal education, he observed, cannot result in a uniform, mass-produced, conformist product. In these days of crisis in higher education, perhaps it is time to look at his work again.

Oakeshott drew heavily on the English tradition in political philosophy, on such thinkers as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill. He was himself often compared to twentieth century thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, and C. B. Macpherson. But his connections, historical or conceptual, with a wider range of thinkers also bear rethinking, and that is one of the purposes of this conference. His work will be compared with that of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian genius who overlapped with him some years at Cambridge, and José Ortega y Gasset, one of the great Spanish thinkers of the twentieth century. We will also return to the French connection with Jean Jacques Rousseau: there are affinities as well as huge antipathies. Oakeshott’s first major book drew on Hegel at a time when Hegel was unpopular in England; there is more to be done in exploring this aspect of his work.

It is too much to say that Oakeshott scholarship has been exclusively dominated by English reflection on their own great thinker, but there is something original in our project: to bring American experts together with a research group from Spain which has been involved in the cosmopolitan project of interpreting Oakeshott. Looking at Oakeshott from a distance, so to speak, may help us find overlooked implications of his thought.

For more information, contact Dr. Cyrus Masroori at: cmasroor@csusm.edu.

Cfp: "Religion, Politics and the Future of Liberal Education," Tenth Anniversary Meeting, Michael Oakeshott Association, University of Tulsa, October 13-16, 2011.

2011 marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Michael Oakeshott Association, a group established to encourage the critical study of one of the twentieth century’s most important political philosophers. Previous conferences have taken place at the London School of Economics, Colorado College, the University of Jena in Germany, and Baylor University.

The University of Tulsa will host the Association’s meetings this year. The focus of the conference will be Oakeshott’s understanding of liberal education and the contemporary university. Also central will be the possible relationships between university education, politics and religion. Potential authors should strive both to engage Oakeshott’s work on its own terms and to locate it in broader discussions about education, religion and politics. Papers that compare Oakeshott to other relevant thinkers are encouraged.

Abstracts, no more than 500 words, should be sent by April 15, 2011 to Elizabeth_Corey@baylor.edu. Abstracts should also include: title of paper, full name(s), affiliation, current position, and an email address.

Visit: http://www.michael-oakeshott-association.com/.

Minogue, Kenneth. "The Elusive Oakeshott." THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE October 1, 2009.

At the end of his Inaugural Lecture at the London School of Economics, Oakeshott, whose conservatism rested on his skepticism of all grand plans for human improvement, expressed the conservative position in a famous image:

In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea: there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel: the sea is both friend and enemy: and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.

It is clear that Oakeshott was a philosopher concerned not at all with what policies a government ought to adopt but with political reality as it is experienced through the haze of illusions in which we live. Unlike recent political philosophers, he was not interested in normative questions. The idea of human rights he thought a rather second-rate caricature of the inherited Common Law freedoms of English-speaking peoples. Social justice was merely a bit of political salvationism trading by its name on the real conceptions of justice found in any stable state. In most of these views, Oakeshott was part of that remarkable generation of political philosophers who lived through the totalitarian excesses of the 20th century and, after World War II, reflected on them. It is striking that those concerned with the reality of politics in that period—figures such as Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and Hannah Arendt—still speak to us more directly than more recent figures dealing in normative argument. . . . Read the rest here: http://amconmag.com/article/2009/oct/01/00024/.

Cfp: "Oakeshott, Strauss and Vogelin," Biennial Conference, Michael Oakeshott Association, Baylor University, November 12-14, 2009.

Update 2: The Programme has now been updated and may be downloaded here: http://www.michael-oakeshott-association.com/files/2009_moa_conference_program.pdf. Update 1: Visit the conference webpage here: http://www.michael-oakeshott-association.com/?page_id=707. Also, of course, the Association website is back up and running. Original Post (February 9, 2009): 2009 marks the fifth meeting of the Michael Oakeshott Association, a group founded in 2001 to encourage the study of one of the 20th century’s most important political philosophers. Previous conferences have taken place at the London School of Economics, Colorado College, and the University of Jena in Germany. This year, Baylor University will host the conference, broadening its scope to include the thought of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. Because Oakeshott, Strauss and Voegelin overlapped so extensively in their interests and yet differed sharply on certain points of method and teaching, comparisons among them often prove fruitful and enlightening. This is why readers of one thinker often become serious readers of the others. And yet we rarely if ever have an occasion to come together as a group and to benefit directly from each other’s insights. We thus especially invite papers on topics that all three thinkers address, such as the function and place of liberal education, the fruitful tensions between reason and revelation, the relationship of religion and politics, the meaning of political philosophy, the crisis of modernity, and the role that studying the ancients may play in better understanding our modern situation. This list is not exhaustive, but we strongly encourage potential presenters to engage such comparative topics. Abstracts, no more than 500 words, should be sent by April 30, 2009 to Elizabeth_Corey@baylor.edu. Abstracts should also include: title of paper, full name(s), affiliation, current position, and an email address. The conference will take place at the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Michael Oakeshott Bibliography Update, April 2009.

Visit http://www.michael-oakeshott-association.com/index.php/bibliography for the latest update by Efraim Podoksik.