APART FROM HIS WORK AS AN INTERPRETER of Hobbes, Oakeshott's significance as a political philosopher prior to the publication of On Human Conduct1 may fairly be said to be encompassed in, and derive from, his essay “Political Education.”2 To be sure, he has written a good deal before and after that essay, but the bulk of those writings—not least the papers collected in his Rationalism in Politics-are in one way or another glosses on the central theme articulated in that inaugural lecture. That theme has both a philosophical and a doctrinal importance. At the philosophical level, it offers a serious challenge to conventional conceptions of political theory. At the doctrinal level, it sets forth an alternative to conventional conservatism—but not, as some American conservatives like to think, a compatible or complementary alternative.
