People From London

"Oakeshott's Burkean emphasis on continuity set him at some distance from Margaret Thatcher... Yet there was a convergence between them. Oakeshott insisted that the proper role of the state is not to protect the interests of individuals as such but to ensure that they, and the social groups in which they naturally and freely associate, can pursue their own purposes with a minimum of frustration. In this sense, both favoured a strong state, but one with limited agenda... Mrs Thatcher might seem closer to Hayek than to Oakeshott, who was less concerned than either with market economics and the pursuit of wealth. But where Hayek, in the spirit of classical liberalism, criticised central planning and the omnicompetent state on a global scale, Mrs Thatcher and Oakeshott had more a confined and local scope. The rights and interests that concerned them are the rights enjoyed and the interests pursued by the British people, as a result of along and unique historical process. Oakeshott's contribution to the conservative revival was thus to make its liberalism truly "conservative", to imply a planing of the rough edges from Thatcherism's radical agenda. Rarely are philosophers also architects of politics, but Oakeshott can safely claim his place in postwar political history."

"Oakeshott calls himself a conservative but it is not easy to determine what kind of conservative he is. We look in vain in Oakeshott’s political writings for a specific political doctrine, and there is nothing there that would help us to decide which side to come down on on any particular political issue. Oakeshott believes that there is such a thing as political philosophy which has got nothing to do with the world of political practice beyond saying that it has nothing to do with the world of political practice. Philosophy and the world are worlds apart."

"For if their association was void of purpose, why should individual agents ever accept a public authority at all? In Oakeshott's construction, government without goal yields what looks very much like an état gratuit. His famous image of politics – a vessel endlessly ploughing the sea, without port or destination – is all too apt. For why then should any passengers want to board the ship in the first place? Oakeshott attempted to answer the question with another analogy, formally more developed, actually yet more extravagant, in On Human Conduct. Subscription to civil association was entirely non-instrumental. But a non-instrumental practice – acts performed for their own sake, not for ulterior ends – was the definition of moral conduct. It might seem from this as if Oakeshott, having dismissed any prudential case for the civil condition, was going to give his will-less state an ethical foundation. But this would be an illusion. For what Oakeshott proceeds to identify as a morality is a 'colloquial idiom' of conduct, spoken with varying degrees of skill and verbal style by different speakers. Civil association, in other words, is actually modelled on language rather than dictated by virtue."

"[H]e was perhaps the most important conservative thinker since Burke."

"In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion."

"Rationalism in politics, as I have interpreted it, involves an identifiable error, a misconception with regard to the nature of human knowledge, which amounts to a corruption of the mind. And consequently it is without the power to correct its own short-comings; it has no homeopathic quality; you cannot escape its errors by becoming more sincerely or more profoundly rationalistic."

"To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."

"The predicament of our time is that the Rationalists have been at work so long on their project of drawing off the liquid in which our moral ideals were suspended (and pouring it away as worthless) that we are left only with the dry and gritty residue which chokes us as we try to take it down. First, we do our best to destroy parental authority (because of its alleged abuse), then we sentimentally deplore the scarcity of 'good homes', and we end by creating substitutes which complete the work of destruction. And it is for this reason that, among much else that is corrupt and unhealthy, we have the spectacle of a set of sanctimonious, rationalist politicians, preaching an ideology of unselfishness and social service to a population in which they and their predecessors have done their best to destroy the only living root of moral behaviour; and opposed by another set of politicians dabbling with the project of converting us from Rationalism under the inspiration of a fresh rationalization of our political tradition."

"Whatever shape his ideas would have taken, the book on Blake makes one thing probable. They would have been uncovenanted. He was not in a mood to settle. A Life of Dissent is the affecting film Tariq Ali made of Edward and Dorothy Thompson earlier this year, recently re-shown. While it was being shot, there was talk of mutual acquaintances. ‘What’s Perry up to these days?’, he enquired. Tariq mentioned something I’d written on conservatism. ‘Yes, I know,’ Edward replied. ‘Oakeshott was a scoundrel. Tell him to stiffen his tone.’"

"Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat."

"Michael Oakeshott, all things considered, is probably the greatest living philosopher. He is certainly the greatest in the Anglo-Saxon tradition since Burke, or even (the geometrically-minded might claim) since Hobbes. Oakeshott has a foot in both the aforementioned camps. He is a notable Hobbesian, yet his formal "myth" or theoretical system is perhaps best understood as (what he may even have meant it to be) a disposable scaffolding behind which its outward antithesis, a solid Burkean pragmatism, has steadily been taking a shape fit for intellectual habitation. Oakeshott, indeed, has often been likened to Burke (to whom, however, I can recall only two passing references in his works). His practical relevance, accordingly, is considerable. But above all he has created a complete world of imagination, a poetic vision of great scope, depth, and power. It contains, I believe, major, and perplexing, inconsistencies. But he is, nevertheless, a matchlessly civilised mind, to whom one constantly returns for stimulus and invigoration."

"Whatever is satisfactory in experience is true, and it is true because it is satisfactory."

"Experience to be experience must be reality; truth to be true must be true of reality. Experience, truth and reality are inseparable."

"Oakeshott was not without illusions of his own. He was able to disparage ideology because he believed tradition contained all that was needed for politics; he could not conceive of a situation in which a traditional way of doing politics was no longer possible. Yet that has been the situation in which the Conservative Party has found itself over the past generation."

"You may not sell the cow and sup the milk."

"To protect those who are not able to protect themselves is a duty which every one owes to society."

"It is a public scandal when the law is forced to uphold a dishonest act."

"It is not the function of a Court of justice to enforce or give effect to moral obligations which do not carry with them legal or equitable rights."

"It is for the legislature to alter the law if Parliament in its wisdom thinks an alteration desirable."

"People cannot escape from the obligation of a statute by putting a private interpretation upon its language."

"Smith’s book [Different for Girls] is, nevertheless, an acute and enjoyable analysis of misreadings and misrepresentations of women in popular culture. Put simply, her argument is that women are far less different from men than the media, religion, politicians, pundits and the fashion world would have it. And indeed there is a kind of ‘new woman’ abroad: a more androgynous, much tougher creature than the postwar or even Sixties model. The new woman, according to Smith, enjoys her own power, her own money, her own sexuality. She can play with self-image without burning her fingers. She is unimpressed by the ever-after promises of marriage (or of men, as it happens) and the easy seductions of motherhood. Smith has often written on the growing numbers of women – one in five, the most reliable figure – who refuse motherhood, and is particularly scathing on the patriarchal implications of infertility treatment."

"That's me done. I wrote to Keir Starmer and spoke to him in person. I warned him about misogyny. He never replied. Labour has betrayed women with a raft of policies designed to appease trans-identified men. I don't suppose Starmer cares, but I've resigned my membership today."

"The book review lined up to appear in next weekend's Sunday Times seemed to be, in all respects, suitable stuff for the pages of a quality paper. The reviewer: Nigella Lawson, whose copy had been ordered and delivered. The book: an interesting polemical work (Faber & Faber, £9.99), due out on Monday. The author: Joan Smith, a former Sunday Times journalist and, now, coming writer and novelist. So far, so good. Enter Andrew Neil, the editor, whose principled line on the suppression of information and the duty of a free press to publish first, argue afterwards has been ringing around the High Court recently. His foot came down no less firmly at the mid-week editorial conference. That woman’s book was not, repeat not, going to see the light of day in his newspaper. Quail, quail. An interesting example, you might think, of male power exercised over women and their works. By the way, what is Ms Smith's book called? Misogynies, as it happens."

"The last week has been a lesson in the difference between theory and practice. For several years now some feminists have tried to point out the risks posed by unquestioningly accepting claims about gender identity. When we pointed out that self-identification is unverifiable, and open to exploitation by sexual predators, we were shouted down and accused of transphobia. When we argued that vulnerable women prisoners should not have to share intimate spaces with men convicted of sex offences, we were told to think of the feelings of trans prisoners."

"The slogan "trans women are women" admits no ifs or buts. If a man identifies as a woman, even if he has taken no steps towards transitioning, we are supposed to accept that his "gender identity" trumps biological sex. But if Bryson is genuinely trans, rather than a sexual predator gaming the system, this strikes down the claim that trans women never pose a threat to women and can be safely placed in the female prison estate."

"Some confidence there must be between merchant and manufacturer. In matters exclusively within the province of the manufacturer the merchant relies on the manufacturer's skill, and he does so all the more readily when he has had the benefit of that skill before."

"If history teaches us anything, it is that treating unstable psychopaths as if they are normal, reasonable people doesn’t work. [...] Europe didn’t pick this fight, but we should be in no doubt that Russia under Putin is an unpredictable rogue state."

"Shocking though the Savile revelations are, they have to be seen in a wider context. His behaviour was enabled by a revolution in sexual behaviour that was supposed to liberate both sexes, but actually offered endless opportunities to unscrupulous men. Its effects were far-reaching, creating poisonous attitudes towards victims of sexual abuse that are still being recycled in rape trials today. But it has also prompted a feminist critique that is vital if we’re ever going to understand the context that men like Savile operate in, and stop them at an early stage in their criminal careers."

"This has been a good week to be a republican. Strike that: it's been a fantastic week, as news organisations wake up to the fact that sentimental attitudes to the Royal Family are not universally shared. I've lost count of the times I've been asked to provide "a republican voice" by broadcasters, which is a very welcome change. But editors should have been warned by a YouGov poll earlier this month, which showed that more people in India than the UK were interested in the royal birth. Far from a nation panting for news, just over half of British adults (53 per cent) were uninterested, compared to 46 per cent who were "very" or "fairly" interested. In this context, any headline beginning "the country" or "the world" is bound to be wrong; I'm sure there were swathes of the Democratic Republic of Congo where the arrival of Prince George went entirely unremarked, but degrees of indifference were visible in London as well. When I arrived on Monday evening to do a TV interview outside Buckingham Palace, where an eager crowd had supposedly gathered to wait for news, I found what looked like the usual complement of tourists. There were dozens of film crews, but that's a different matter."

"It's time his double standards were spelled out: Assange has used his hacking skills to turn himself into a worldwide phenomenon, and now he demands for himself exactly the same impunity he excoriates in politicians."

"We live in circumstances which not only restrict our freedom but physically threaten us if we step out of line: in this culture, the penalty for being a woman is sometimes death. Yet it is extraordinarily unacknowledged. I think sometimes you have to define a problem before you start to find a solution and for years and years I've felt as though I live in occupied territory. My interest is in finding a way of constructing a path out of that territory."

"[On Julian Assange] The super-hacker appears to be relaxed about links with authoritarian regimes, presenting a chat show for Russia Today, a state-funded TV network, and seeking asylum in a Latin American country with a not exactly admirable record on freedom of expression."

"The murder of Jo Cox rightly caused an outpouring of emotion, from shocked disbelief to calls for more civility in public discourse. But memories are short, especially in the feverish atmosphere of a Labour leadership contest. I could hardly believe my ears when Owen Smith, in a campaign speech about equality, said he was upset that Labour did not have the power to "smash" Theresa May "back on her heels"."

"In Poland it [the fall of Communism] took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!"

"Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns."

"[During the 1981 trial of Peter Sutcliffe, commonly known as the Yorkshire Ripper.] I remember having terrible nightmares during the trial, feeling that the police were misunderstanding things badly because they insisted that Sutcliffe had a moral stand. To me it was clear his crimes expressed a simple, virulent loathing of the female which did not need fancy explanations like those arrived at by the police. The thing is that most people in the book are not what ordinary people would describe as outcasts; they are ordinary men. That was why it was important to end up with the Ripper. Because what is important about him is that he is not different; it's only a question of degree. I don't go along with the idea that all men are rapists or that they are the product of Original Sin, rather that we have a culture which supports and encourages misogyny and what we have to face is that a sizeable number of men hold very strange and perverted views about women."

"The harsh fact is there are not sufficient safeguards in place to identify and discipline police officers who abuse women, yet we are expected to trust the very same men to investigate crimes against the most vulnerable female victims. If women in this country are ever to feel safe – and it is something that should be ours by right – we urgently need a public inquiry into institutional misogyny within the police."

"That was putting the case in a nutshell. But it is one thing to put a case like Shelley's in a nutshell and another thing to keep it there."

"The horizon is there for us to determine"

"If the confusion, fear and discontent of our times seem to be reaching towards an extreme, despite a technological development bringing a wealth and a luxury unparalleled in history, why is an exactly coincident decay of religion scarcely ever suggested as a causal factor?"

"Anyone who clings to religion is clinging, not to an arbitrary framework of man's devising, but to the only framework that can serve as a starting-point for the realization of an inward freedom that is independent of terrestrial contingencies."

"People, even poor people, were in general more contented before the 1914-18 war than they are now, although not nearly so well provided with comforts and luxuries. Incidentally they were also more often people of strong individuality, "characters" or "personalities" as we might say; not of course always either virtuous or agreeable, but qualitatively distinctive, not mere drops in an ocean of mediocrity. And they were more content with their lot than we are. What then is the true criterion of contentment? Can it be anything but the acceptance of one's lot, whatever it may be? Or in other words, knowing one's place and fulfilling faithfully whatever function may be associated with it, with a pride in the quality of the product as the principal incentive rather than any tangible reward; knowing, perhaps, that not to want is better than to have; and above all being intelligent enough not to place one's best hopes in nothing but the satisfactions which a short sojourn in this world can bring. All these things are criteria of contentment, and at the same time they are universal ethical constituents of every religion and tradition."

"The idea has grown up that the scientific approach can alone properly be said to be intellectual, whereas the approach of religion cannot, and that therefore the tendency of religion is to impede intellectuality. This is not to be wondered at in people for whom the word "intellectuality" implies no more than conformity to the scientific approach; but if the goal of intellectuality is not a better understanding of the origin, nature and end of man and of the universe, what is it? It is just such an understanding that religion claims to offer, and in so far as that claim is justified, religion, very far from impeding intellectuality, is an essential part of it."

"Science offers no alternative framework. The best it can offer is wealth in a wide sense of the term, that is to say, the satisfaction of a wide variety of desires. It cannot conceive of any means of achieving that escape from desires we call "contentment" otherwise than through the satisfaction of those desires; it has not yet learnt that there is no limit to the multiplication of desires, nor that, since different people's desires are often mutually incompatible, an indefinite multiplication of desires increases conflict as well as discontent."

"The distance in form, intention, mood and expression between Schubert's songs for voice and piano and those of, say, Adele is remarkably small."

"[[w:Opticks|[T]he Theory]] I have endeavour'd to explain in the Appendix, from Sir Isaac Newton, may be of very great use to Learners."

"[H]e should be instructed in the Theory of the Colours; that he should learn... their particular Properties... Relations, and... Effects that are produced by their Mixture; and that he should be made well acquainted with the Nature of the several material Colours... used in Painting."

"There may be regular Methods also invented for teaching the Doctrine of Light and Shadow; and other Particulars relating to the Practical Part of Painting, may be improved and digested into proper Methods... But I only hint at these... recommending them to the Masters of the Art to reflect and improve upon."

"[T]he Method which ought to be follow'd in instructing a Scholar in the Executive Part of Painting; ...first have him learn the most common Effections of Practical Geometry, and the first Elements of Plain Geometry, and common Arithmetic."

"When he is sufficiently perfect in these, I would have him learn Perspective. And when he has made some progress in this, so as to have prepared his Judgment with the right Notions of the Alterations that Figures must undergo, when they come to be drawn on a Flat, he may then be put to Drawing by View, and be exercised in this along with Perspective, till he comes to be sufficiently perfect in both."