A recent review of a companion to Oakeshott concludes with the following lines:
In closing I must -- reluctantly -- say something about Robert Grant's contribution. It has no place in this volume. It is about Oakeshott's sex life. There is no discussion in it of Oakeshott's work. It consists in peddling often malicious hearsay from largely uncheckable sources. Oakeshott was very careful to separate his private life from his work. This should be respected, but Grant tramples on it. The editors have made a serious misjudgment in including this essay.
The very idea of a "Companion" changes its meaning with such a chapter.
Let's grant that reporting hearsay is not very praiseworthy, and let's assume that the reviewer is right in claiming that Grant's contribution is "malicious" (oddly enough no argument or evidence is given for this claim). By mentioning, even condemning Grant's chapter and the volume's editors, the reviewer generates an interest in it that would otherwise not exist (comparable to stamping 'top secret' on a report on the garbage disposal maintenance system). So, in doing so the reviewer calls attention to a topic that apparently "Oakeshott was very careful" to keep quiet and achieves the opposite of Oakeshott's (and perhaps the reviewers') intentions.
Now, if we and Oakeshott respect a private/public distinction then surely discretion is the name of the game here. Now, I have not gone back to Oakeshott, but I thought he was fairly skeptical about such a distinction. Regardless, the lives of the philosophers were once a legitimate subject of interest among the Ancients and Early Moderns. In so far as we allow the life lived and the written record float free from each other we treat our subject as in some sense disembodied. It's not to be denied this can be useful, but it is not obvious that is progress.
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