ABSTRACT
Michael Oakeshott was born in 1901 and died in 1992. He was for many years professor of Politics at the London School of Economics, and it is as a political thinker of a conservative temperament that Oakeshott is best known. Modern governments are not interested in education; they are concerned only to impose 'socialization' of one kind or another upon the surviving fragments of a once considerable educational engagement. Reality is mediated only in a number of distinct human practices, such as history, morality, politics, science, philosophy and poetry. No particular approach to life or experience should be allowed to assume precedence over the rest. Oakeshott recognizes that not all learning is formal or deliberate. But in view of the nature of many of mankind's conversations, formal instruction becomes vital. It has been said that Oakeshott's educated person is one who possesses a Keatsian negative capability.
