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Aryeh Botwinick is professor of political science at Temple University. He is the author of Skepticism, Belief, and the Modern; Postmodernism and Democratic Theory; and Skepticism and Political Participation.
The literature on Oakeshott tends to emphasize the independence of his thought and the problem of how to classify him, a problem that Aryeh Botwinick neatly sidesteps by taking an entirely different line. Oakeshott turns out to be in agreement or dialogue with a range of other thinkers, including Nietzsche and Arendt. This is a fresh and rewarding approach that provides a new perspective on Oakeshott's thought and its significance. --Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky During a time when the fragility of things is so palpable, Aryeh Botwinick's re-engagement with the work of Michael Oakeshott is invaluable. He shows us how Oakeshott's skepticism turns sharply back upon itself, how he draws us toward a tacit dimension that is itself both real and fragile, and how, once human anger against the complexity of skepticism is overcome, this stance can provide a live medium from which a generous ethic emerges. Botwinick reads Oakeshott in relation to Hobbes, Wittgenstein, Levinas, and Heidegger, as he also periodically reads Oakeshott against himself. A timely and illuminating study. --William E. Connolly, author of A World of Becoming
