FASS Research Gallery
Department of Political Science

Terry Nardin & Luke O’Sullivan

Politics in a modern state is the art of living together within a framework of enforceable laws, and at its centre is deliberation about what those laws should be. Michael Oakeshott discusses politics in these terms while locating it within a wider range of concerns including philosophy, science, history, ethics, religion, education, and art. This breadth makes studying his thought especially useful for gaining a comprehensive view of political experience in the modern world. But Oakeshott also gives us three powerful ideas that resonate within and beyond the world of politics: the idea of a mode of thought, the idea of rationalism as a style of politics, and the distinction between civil and enterprise association. Terry Nardin and Luke O’Sullivan have worked, separately and together, for more than two decades on Oakeshott’s philosophy, the historical contexts of his thought, and his contributions to intellectual culture in Britain, in the West, and now in Asia. Much of this work consists of or rests on archival documents researched by O’Sullivan and published in the series Michael Oakeshott: Selected Writings, of which he is the general editor. Oakeshott is recognized as having been an important political thinker of the twentieth century and his stature continues to grow.

 

Click the hyperlinked book covers or text for more information on each research item.

Peer-reviewed Articles

Nardin, T. ‘Oakeshott on Theory and Practice’, Global Discourse 5:2 (2015), 310–322

O’Sullivan, L. ‘Oakeshott and the Left’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 75:3 (2014), 471‒92

O’Sullivan, L. ‘Oakeshott on Bentham and J.S. Mill’, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies, 8 (2001), 123–42

O’Sullivan, L. ‘Michael Oakeshott on European Political History’, History of Political Thought, 21 (2000), 132–51

Authored and Edited Books

Edited by Terry Nardin Taylor and Francis, 2015	Edited by Terry Nardin Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
Edited by Luke O’Sullivan Imprint Academic, 2014	Co-edited by Terry Nardin & Luke O’Sullivan Imprint Academic, 2007
Edited by Luke O’Sullivan Imprint Academic, 2010	Edited by Luke O’Sullivan Imprint Academic, 2009
Edited by Luke O’Sullivan Imprint Academic, 2008	Edited by Luke O’Sullivan Imprint Academic, 2004
Luke O’Sullivan Imprint Academic, 2003	Terry Nardin Penn State University Press, 2001

Book Chapters

Nardin, T. ‘Michael Oakeshott: Neither Liberal nor Conservative’, in Michael Oakeshott’s Cold War Liberalism, ed. T. Nardin (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 23–37

Nardin, T.  ‘Rhetoric and Political Language’, in The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott, ed. E. Podoksik (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 177–198

O’Sullivan, L. ‘Worlds of Experience: History’ in The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott, ed. E. Podoksik (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 42─63

Nardin, T. ‘Oakeshott’s Philosophy of the Social Sciences’, in The Intellectual Legacy of Michael Oakeshott, ed. C. Abel and T. Fuller (Imprint Academic, 2005), 220–237

 

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