Sartre's Radicalism and Oakeshott's Conservatism The Duplicity of Freedom [Hardcover]

If man has no nature - if our intellect and understanding are products of our own activities - do we possess a key to self-modification? Are we free to re-make mankind? Sartre champions the romantic idea that we can - by sheer determination - begin afresh. Oakeshott is struck by the vandalism of such a project - he seeks to defend political culture from degradation by meddling academics. The Radical and Conservative understanding of social order and the human self are compared in this in-depth analysis of two contrasting philosophies.INTRODUCTION: Freedom and Its Antitheses Causality The Past SARTRE The Condition of Consciousness The Playful Project The Sources of Fragmentation OAKESHOTT Understanding Experience The Vigour of Inheritance The Achievement of Legal Order The Agent and the Concrete Person CONCLUSION: Freedom Lost and Freedom Made Notes IndexANTHONY FARR is a part-time Teacher/Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Westminster. He previously taught politics at the London School of Economics and at London Guildhall University.