Michael Oakeshott

Political Conservative · Europe · 1901 to 1990

British thinker who held that politics is carried on within a tradition, and that plans built from abstract theory are a mistake.

What it is

Michael Oakeshott (1901 to 1990) was a British political thinker and philosopher. He is best known for arguing against rationalism in politics, the habit of treating public life as a problem to be solved by abstract theory, and he is often called a conservative thinker.

He studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and became a fellow there in 1925. He was a fellow at Cambridge, spent a short time at Nuffield College, Oxford, and in 1951 became Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics.

The main ideas

Against rationalism. He argued that politics and other human practices cannot be run from a model made out of reason alone. A rationalist who rejects every authority except reason loses sight of the knowledge that lives inside the practice itself.
Two kinds of knowledge. Some knowledge is a set of facts or rules that is easily learned and applied, even by someone with no experience. Other knowledge is gained through experience, by taking part in an activity. He argued that the rationalist, by trusting reason or science alone, overlooks the second kind.
Modes of experience. In his first book he described experience as made up of different modes, such as the practical, the scientific and the historical, each with its own way of understanding things.
Civil association. In his late work he wrote about human conduct, about civil association and about the modern European state.
Hobbes. His first publication after the war was an edition of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, which carried an introduction of his own.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine someone asked to reorganise a village school according to a new theory of learning. A rationalist would draw up the plan and apply it. In the spirit of Oakeshott, a person would first spend time with the teachers, because much of what makes the school work is skill that no handbook states. This is an illustration of the idea, not an example from his writing.

Books and moments

Experience and Its Modes (1933) is his first major book. It sets out the different modes of understanding.
Rationalism in Politics is the title of a collection of essays on the limits of reason in political life. It shaped his reputation as a conservative thinker.
His edition of Leviathan was published after the Second World War, with an introduction of his own.
On Human Conduct (1975) appeared late in his career and is regarded by many as his greatest work.
The London School of Economics was his base from 1951, when he became Professor of Political Science.

Questions and criticism

Is conservative the right label? He is often called a conservative thinker, and his essays on the limits of reason helped to earn him that name. Readers can ask whether a label from party politics fits a writer who wrote about practice and tradition.
Do his limits on reason have limits? Experience and judgment can be wrong too. Critics and admirers alike can ask where tradition should be questioned.
Where does practice end and theory begin? If knowledge lives in practice, a thinker who writes about it is doing theory. Readers can ask how he squares the two.

Close neighbours

The page on Edmund Burke covers another thinker often called conservative, and the page on Friedrich Hayek covers another twentieth-century writer on politics and freedom. The page on Thomas Hobbes covers the thinker he edited and wrote about.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

Edmund Burke · He took up Burke's view that politics grows out of inherited ways of life, not out of plans. (scholars disagree about this link)
Thomas Hobbes · He wrote closely on Hobbes and shared his view of the state as a framework of law.

Other Political Conservative thinkers

Edmund Burke · 1729 to 1797

Sources we used

Michael Oakeshott · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 29 October 2026
Michael Oakeshott · Encyclopaedia Britannica, read on 29 October 2026