Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings Voume I Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings Volume II Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings Volume III Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings Volume IV What is History? and other essays by Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings, Vol. I, ed. Luke O'Sullivan 2004, 480 pp., 0907845-835 (hbk.), £30/$58 Search Inside the Book at Amazon.com Search Inside the Book at Amazon.co.uk Secure Order Form Table of Contents Sample Chapter Indexes also of interest: British Idealist Studies: Series 1 (Oakeshott)

This highly readable new collection of thirty pieces by Michael Oakeshott, almost all of which are previously unpublished, covers every decade of his intellectual career, and adds significantly to his contributions to the philosophy of historical understanding and political philosophy, as well as to the philosophy of education and aesthetics. The essays were intended mostly for lectures or seminars, and are consequently in an informal style that will be accessible to new readers as well as to those already well acquainted with Oakeshott’s works.

Early pieces include a long essay ‘On the Relations of Philosophy, Poetry, and Reality’, and Oakeshott’s comments on ‘The Cambridge School of Political Science’ through which he himself had passed as an undergraduate. The collection also reproduces a substantial wartime essay ‘On Peace with Germany’. There are two new essays on the philosophy of education, and the essay which gives the work its title, ‘What is History?’, is just one of over half a dozen discussions of the nature of historical knowledge. Oakeshott’s later sceptical, ‘hermeneutic’, thought is also well represented by pieces such as ‘What is Political Theory?’ and ‘The Emergence of the History of Thought.’ Reviews of books by English and European contemporaries such as Butterfield, Hayek, Voegelin, and Arendt also help to place him in context more clearly than before.

The book will be indispensable for all Oakeshott’s readers, no matter which area of his thought concerns them most.
 

(January 2006) Lectures in the History of Political Thought Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings, Vol. II Edited by Terry Nardin & Luke O’Sullivan £19.95/$39.90 9781845400934 (paper) March 2007 Secure Order Form Search Inside the Book at Amazon.com Search Inside the Book at Amazon.co.uk Table of Contents Editorial Introduction Sample Chapter Indexes "A tour de force in literary terms no less than intellectual." TLS

"Oakeshott's lectures are a major contribution both to political education in general and the history of political thought in particular. It is this text which Terry Nardin and Luke O'Sullivan have edited with such skill."  Kenneth Minogue, Times Literary Supplement

"The lectures were a tour de force." Peter Coleman, Quadrant
 

The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: Essays and Reviews 1926-1951 Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings, Vol. III Edited by Luke O’Sullivan 400 pages £30/$58 978-1845400309 (cloth), Dec. 2007 Secure Order Form Search Inside the Book at Amazon.com Search Inside the Book at Amazon.co.uk

The Vocabulary of a Modern European State: Essays and Reviews 1952-1988 Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings, Vol. IV Edited by Luke O’Sullivan 400 pages £30/$58 978-1845400316 (cloth), 2008

Vol. III covers the period 1926-51;  Vol. IV the years 1952-88.