Experience and its Modes

This classic work is here published for the first time in paperback in recognition of its enduring importance. Its theme is Modality: human experience recognized as a variety of independent, self-consistent worlds of discourse, each the invention of human intelligence, but each also to be understood as abstract and an arrest in human experience. The theme is pursued in a consideration of the practical, the historical and the scientific modes of understanding.

1. Introduction; 2. Experience and its modes; 3. Historical experience; 4. Scientific experience; 5. Practical experience; 6. Conclusion.

‘Mr. Oakeshott’s thesis … is so original, so important and so profound that criticism must be silent until his meaning has been long pondered … the chapter on history is the most penetrating analysis of historical thought that has ever been written … the whole book shows Mr Oakeshott to possess philosophical gifts of a very high order, coupled with an admirable command of language; his writing is as clear as his thought is profound, and all students of philosophy should be grateful to him for his brilliant contribution to philosophical literature.’

– R. G. Collingwood, The Cambridge Review