This is a profound and concise essay on the basic structure of contemporary politics, written throughout in a voice that is sceptical, engaged, and clear.

On Human Conduct is composed of three connected essays. Each has its own concern: the first with theoretical understanding, and with human conduct in general; the second with an ideal mode of human relationship which the author has called civil association; and the third with that ambiguous, historic association commonly called a modern European state. Running through the work is Professor Oakshott's belief in philosophical reflection as an adventure: the adventure of one who seeks to understand in other terms what (...) he already understands, and where the understanding is sought is a disclosure of the conditions of the understanding enjoyed and not a substitute for it. Its most appropriate expression is an essay, which, he writes, 'does not dissemble the conditionality of the conclusions it throws up and although it may enlighten it does not instruct.'. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

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