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Books

Why don't we have statues of Michael Oakeshott?

A review of Michael Oakeshott’s ‘<i>Selected Writings</i>, Vol VI: <i>Notebooks, 1922-86</i>’. Other nations know how to honour their philosophers – and this was a major philosopher

12 April 2014

9:00 AM

12 April 2014

9:00 AM

Selected Writings, Vol VI: Notebooks, 1922-86 (edited by Luke O’Sullivan) Michael Oakeshott

Imprint Academic, pp.596, £50, ISBN: 9781845400545

Who or what was Michael Oakeshott? How many of our fellow citizens — how many even of the readers of this journal — could confidently answer the question? I guess, not many.

One of the paradoxes of Britain’s intellectual history is that a country which, alongside the Greeks and the Germans, has contributed more than any other to
philosophical inquiry is extraordinarily uninterested in its own philosophers.

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