With the Lectures on the History of Political Thought, Tupos Publications introduces to the Greek audience Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990), professor of political science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Oakeshott is well-known in the English-speaking world, and his work generates great interest. A testament to the interest in his thought is the publication of the five-volume series of his Selected Works in English.

The second volume of this series includes the Lectures on the History of Political Thought at hand, which were first published in 2006. But why would someone read Michael Oakeshott's Lectures on the History of Political Thought today? What do they have to offer half a century after their writing?

Despite their age and peculiarities (or rather thanks to them), Oakeshott's Lectures do not resemble similar compositions, introductions, or manuals. Their uniqueness is due to many individual merits, but primarily to the simple, understandable, and persuasive way in which Oakeshott perceives both political thought and its history.

Free from obscure theoretical schemes and complicated terminology, Oakeshott's Lectures make the political ideas of other times comprehensible while describing the historical conditions that shaped them. They examine the inquiries into the legitimacy of power that occupied political thought (a) of the ancient Greeks, (b) of the Romans, (c) of the Europeans of the Medieval Times, and (d) of the Europeans of Modern Times.

The Lectures, expressed in a smooth and clear language, constitute an engaging and thoughtful text, with vivid intellectual analogies, unexpected reversals of accepted notions, and penetrating historical interpretations.