This book traces the rise and fall of political philosophies since the 17th century. The second part of the book shows how the general technique of cumulative learning from experience applies to social legislation and social services, party politics to defence strategy and to the trends that follow the modern explosion of knowledge and capital. The main argument is that social control is at its best a deliberate joint creation of and learning from social experience; and in this sense political discipline although not the same as logical or scientific discipline is like them a submission to form, not force. The book gives a definite meaning to the idea of human progress and finds reason for a restoration of political hope and faith.

A collection of 6 volumes of Oakeshott's work: Notebooks, 1922-86, Early Political Writings 1925-30, The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence, Vocabulary of a Modern European State, Lectures in the History of Political Thought, and What is History?

The Vocabulary of a Modern European State is the companion volume to The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence and completes the enterprise of gathering together Oakeshott's previously scattered essays and reviews. As with all the other volumes in the series it contains an entirely new editorial introduction explaining how the writings it contains find their place in his work as a whole. It covers the years 1952 to 1988, the period during which Oakeshott wrote his definitive work, On Human Conduct. The essay from which the volume takes its title was intended as a companion piece to the third part of the latter work, and is just one of over sixty pieces that it includes. The volume draws together critical responses to works by major philosophers, historians, and political theorists of his own generation such as Bertrand de Jouvenel, Herbert Marcuse, and Michael Polanyi as well as to some major figures of current scholarship such as Quentin Skinner and Roger Scruton.

This book seeks to break new ground by providing an original framework within which to understand conservative politics and to compare what has always been thought to be opposite ideal types -- a British conservatism characterized by traditionalism and an American conservatism defined by its optimistic individualism.

A study of leading English politicians from the Tudor period to the time of original publication in 1969. In his introductory chapter Mr Grainger discusses the general nature of the politician's work, the importance of imagination, common-sense and verbal felicity and attempts to pin down what the 'greatness' of 'great' politicians involved. In the main part of this book he presents a series of brilliant interpretative essays on individual politicians. Mr Grainger makes the distinction between 'character' and 'style' as touchstones to identify and evaluate the qualities of those dissident politicians who spoke for country against court in the seventeenth century and those who took a stand in the eighteenth century but were assimilated into the political order. This is followed by a discussion of Victorian political heroes, and of notable leaders, Liberal, Labour and Conservative, of the twentieth century.

This book, first published in 1965, discusses the nature of the grammar school, its curriculum and teaching methods, comparisons with sixth form education, and the change in its organisation and attitudes during a time of rapid social change in 1960s Britain. This title will be of interest to students of history, sociology and education.

First published in 2006. This book tells a number of plain tales of those who tried to save the English behind their collective backs under the term of Utopian Experiments in England between 1560 and 1960. It looks at the influences of the church to community experiments and groups, the ideas of Robert Owen, William Allen, George Mudie, Abraham Combe and more.