It is now ten years since Michael Oakeshott died, in his ninetieth year and long after retiring from the chair of political science at the London School of Economics (LSE). So it is not surprising that some people should think that the time has come to rescue him from the limbo that claims celebrated writers after death and celebrated academics after retirement. It has been a long, quiet limbo, marked only by the publication of two small books he left in his desk drawers and not by the rise of any Oakeshottian school that might have applied or developed his teachings. Indeed, the only attention he has received in recent years has taken the form of musings about what possible relevance his metaphysical doctrines could have to political theory, not practical politics. As his most sympathetic expositor, Paul Franco, concluded, "To begin to work out what this political philosophy means for political life as we know it is the next step in understanding . . . Oakeshott's thought." Less sympathetic students might have discouraged that "next step" by recalling Dr. Johnson's observation, "A High Tory makes government unintelligible-it is lost in the clouds." The great height from which Oakeshott poured scorn not only on politicians but on political scientists and even political philosophers gave his beautifully crafted essays (and his famously spellbinding lectures were essays read out loud) a rarefied charm, urbanity and dignity; but more practical (and more realistic) students were left hungry.
