Eric S. Kos is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Social Sciences at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan and former President of the Michael Oakeshott Association.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Under the Law of Ruin: Practice, Aesthetics, and the Civil Association.- 3. Michael Oakeshott Philosopher of Skepticism: Conservative or Liberal?.- 4. Out of Rationalist Politics’ Crises: Popper and Oakeshott.- 5. A Conservative Landscape: From A Guide to the Classics to the “Claims of Politics”.- 6. The Art of the Scholar: Oakeshott’s Conservative Account of Liberal Learning.- 7. The Understanding of Rationalism in C.S. Lewis and Michael Oakeshott: Tradition, Experience, and the Reading of Old Books.- 8. Oakeshott, Strauss and the Romans.- 9.  Authority: Fragments of the Good Regime.- 10. ‘That spirit of quiet’: Oakeshott, Keats and Sontag Towards a Philosophy of Silence.- 11. Oakeshott’s Theory of Poetry: A Corrective from Seamus Heaney.- 12. The Problem of a Pure Theory of Poetry.- 13. What can Contemporary Realists Learn from Montaigne? On the Significance of the Author of the Essais for Michael Oakeshott and Raymond Geuss.

“The book will be a valuable resource for those who are conducting research on the thought of Michael Oakeshott, and it has brought a variety of new voices into the conversation about his wide-ranging and humane work.” (Elizabeth Corey, History of European Ideas, March 22, 2024)