ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the concept of conversation that is a fundamental of the philosophy of Michael Oakeshott. Michael Oakeshott's intellectual career and academic output established him as a philosopher of history rather than as an historian per se, and his teaching responsibilities at Cambridge, Oxford, and finally at the London School of Economics were, conveniently enough, in the history of political thought. Oakeshott was interested also in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, another German neo-Kantian philosopher and historian, known for his contribution to the development of hermeneutics or the theory and method of textual and general interpretation. A fundamental of Oakeshott's political philosophy is that human experience is lived, understood, and reflected upon in the form of a conversation with fellow human beings. Oakeshott considered conversation as an open dialogue, one comprised of different voices and modes, through which understanding of humanity's role and condition is exchanged and developed.
