On History and Other Essays

Oakeshott argues that historical inquiry is an autonomous, distinctive, and irreplaceable form of thinking about the past, governed by its own internal criteria rather than by practical utility or scientific method. The historian's concern is with the past itself—a 'past which has not survived'—not with lessons for the present or general laws of social development. This autonomy claim constitutes a direct rejection of the view that history is merely a branch of natural science or a handmaiden to practical decision-making. The three essays on history in this volume provide his most complete statement of this position.

Oakeshott distinguishes between the practical past—which includes remembered experience, consulted records, and survivals that carry 'messages in a bottle' for present conduct—and the historical past, which is reconstructed through inference from survivals but exists solely for understanding, not use. The practical past is an 'indispensable ingredient of an articulate civilized life,' but it is not history. The historian proper has no interest in the practical utility of what he studies; his engagement is with the past for its own sake, a stance that distinguishes him from all who examine the past for guidance about present concerns.

On History represents a reworking and extension of themes first explored in Experience and Its Modes (1933), where history was analyzed as one of several 'modes' of experience. The earlier work established the framework of modal autonomy; the later book provides a fuller account of the specific conditions presupposed by historical thought. John Gray notes the 'extraordinary continuity' in Oakeshott's philosophy across fifty years, with the same concern to mark the boundaries between history and other forms of understanding. The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott identifies this book and the 1933 work as the two most important sources for his philosophy of history.

The volume's structure—three essays on history followed by 'The Rule of Law' and 'The Tower of Babel'—reflects Oakeshott's characteristic practice of exploring apparently distinct topics that share underlying philosophical commitments. The essay on the rule of law examines the character of non-instrumental authority in civil association, while 'The Tower of Babel' is a meditation on the human condition and the quest for power. A reviewer in the European History Quarterly described the book as revealing a 'new and quite unexpected turn' in Oakeshott's thought, with the abstract distinctions of the history essays representing a departure from his earlier, more playful treatment of tradition.

Reception was mixed but generally respectful. J.G.A. Pocock, whose own early work was indebted to Oakeshott, claimed in his Times Literary Supplement review that 'a historian will have no difficulty in recognizing and accepting this characterization of his activity,' though he criticized what he saw as problematic implications of Oakeshott's conception of the historical past. Robert Nicholas Berard wrote in The International History Review that 'professional historians may find that a philosopher has explained their work and unique contribution to human knowledge better than they themselves have done'. The criticism from Peter Munz was sharper: he argued that Oakeshott, in defending his view, was forced into 'un-Oakeshottian intellectual strategies' of abstract conceptual analysis.