Michael Oakeshott: Notes on »Political Thought« and »Political Theory« in the history of political thought 1966–69

Abstract

Of all the intellectual monuments that Michael Oakeshott has left us, the most transient will be his Master of Science Degree course in the History of Political Thought at the London School of Economics (LSE). Yet that course was enormously influential, its fame stretching far beyond the circle of those privileged enough to have participated in it. The focal point was a weekly seminar in which staff, students and guest-speakers presented papers. Oakeshott himself offered several. Many of their titles will be familiar: »History as a Mode of Thought«; »Historical Events: Necessary, Fortuitous or Contingent?«; »Historical Identity«; »Historical Understanding«; »The Emergence of a History of Thought«; »Politics and the Political«; and »Political Theory«. Oakeshott’s papers as presented were not intended for publication and their content and approach varied from year to year, sometimes quite markedly. The first four papers did, however, see the light of published day, many years later — in a different but nonetheless recognizable form. They constitute the first three essays in On History and Other Essays (1983). But the other seminar papers were never published, even though much of the content of the last two of them can be discerned in parts of the essays contained in On Human Conduct (1975). But the context of Oakeshott’s discussion of politics, the political and political theory in On Human Conduct is very different from the context of his discussion in his History of Political Thought Seminar. And a question that any student of Oakeshott is bound to ask is why he decided not to rework his seminar papers on intellectual history and the character of a history of political thought into a continuation of his published historical essays in On History? This, after all, was their function in the seminar.