Timothy Fuller. “In Memoriam: Michael Oakeshott, 1901-1990: The Work of Michael Oakeshott,” Political Theory 19, no. 3 (1991): 326-333.

Excerpt:

Oakeshott surveyed the world without feeling compelled to roam it. Seeking to understand himself, he welcomed travelers whose conversation would complement his own and check his observations. His preferred genre was the essay which in his case, as Emerson said of Montaigne’s essays, meant the transfer of episodes in conversation to the written page. What he wrote he saw as invitations to his readers to respond conversationally, not as arguments seeking to end all argument. His essays carry on a tradition in English letters that we associate with the names of Bacon, Hume, Macaulay, and John Stuart Mill.

He was a shrewd judge of character, and yet he had a romantic streak. His judgments seldom turned judgmental, and he regularly preferred to serve those who might reasonably have been expected to serve him. He did not look for reasons to be negative.

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