ABSTRACT
The claim that the conception of political life that animates the thought of Michael Oakeshott, clearly one of the most original and profound British political philosophers since Hume and certainly this century's greatest conservative writer, is a liberal conception may seem unacceptably paradoxical or even willfully perverse. Oakeshott's conception of political life as a conversation may have a prophylactic role to play in respect of the barbarization of political discourse and practice that in our day is far gone. It may well be that it is precisely in its kinship with classical liberalism on the nature of the authority of the state that the Achilles heel of Oakeshott's political thought lies. If one had to express the spirit of Oakeshott's thought in a single phrase, one might say that it is a critique of purposefulness. It is a comment on the current state of academic philosophy that Oakeshott's contribution to it has gone almost unnoticed.
