3
In 1652 he returned to England and took up his position, which he was never to leaveagain, in the Devonshire household, and set about the completion of his philosophical system. In1655 he published
De Corpore
, and in 1659
De Homine
. He still had 20 years to live. They wereyears of incessant literary activity and of philosophical, mathematical, theological and politicalcontroversy. At the Restoration he was received at Court, and he spent much of his time inLondon. In 1675 he sensed he must soon retire from the earth and retired to Chatsworth. He diedduring the winter of 1679 at the age of 91.II.
Leviathan
in Context
Leviathan
is the greatest, perhaps the sole, masterpiece of political philosophy written in theEnglish language. And the history of our civilization can provide only a few works of similarscope and achievement beside it. Consequently, it must be judged by none but the higheststandards and must be considered only in the widest context. The masterpiece supplies a standardand a context for the second-rate, which indeed is but a gloss; but the context of the masterpieceitself, the setting in which its meaning is revealed, can in the nature of things be nothingnarrower than the history of political philosophy.Reflection about political life may take place at a variety of levels. It may remain on the levelof the determination of means, or it may strike out for the consideration of ends. Its inspirationmay be directly practical, the modification of the arrangements of a political order in accordancewith the perception of an immediate benefit; or it may be practical, but less directly so, guided bygeneral ideas. Or again, springing from an experience of political life, it may seek ageneralization of that experience in a doctrine. And reflection is apt to flow from one level toanother in an unbroken movement, following the mood of the thinker. Political philosophy maybe understood to be what occurs when this movement of reflection takes a certain direction andachieves a certain level, its characteristic being the relation of political life, and the values andpurposes pertaining to it, to the entire conception of a world that belongs to a civilization. That isto say, at all other levels of political life we have before us the single world of political activity,and what we are interested in is the internal coherence of that world; but in political philosophywe have in our mind that world and another world, and our endeavor is to explore the coherenceof the two worlds together. The reflective intelligence is apt to find itself at this level without theconsciousness of any great conversion and without any sense of entering upon a new project, butmerely by submitting itself to the impetus of reflection, by spreading its sails to the argument.For, any man who holds in his mind the conceptions of the natural world, of God, of humanactivity and human destiny which belongs to his civilization, will scarcely be able to prevent anendeavor to assimilate these to the ideas that distinguish the political order in which he lives, andfailing to do so he will become a philosopher unawares.But, though we may stumble over the frontier of philosophy unwittingly and by doingnothing more demonstrative than refusing to draw rein, to achieve significant reflection, of course, requires more than inadvertence and more than the mere acceptance of the two worlds of
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Be warned, this document is not faithful to the published version of his introduction that is available here: http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=co... I would not recommend using this document for any form of research or quotation as it deviates from Oakeshott's text significantly.