The Poetic Character of Human Activity: Collected Essays on the Thought of Michael Oakshott is a collection of nine essays by two Oakeshott scholars, most of which explore the meaning of Oakeshott's pregnant phrase, "the poetic character of human activity" by comparing and contrasting this central idea with similar and opposing ones, in particular those of the Chinese thinkers, Zhuangzi and Confucius, but also of Western thinkers such as Plato, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. Common themes addressed include the poetic or non-instrumental aspects of philosophizing, teaching and learning, morality and governance.

Wendell John Coats Jr. is Professor of Government at Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut.
 
Chor-yung Cheung is the Dean of Students of City University of Hong Kong, and specializes in political theory and Hong Kong politics.

Chapter 1: Michael Oakeshott and the Poetic Character of Human Activity
Chapter 2: Practical Implications of Oakeshott's Poetic Conception of Human Activity
Chapter 3: Skepticism, Poetic Imagination, and the Art of Non-Instrumentality: Oakeshott and Zhuangzi
Chapter 4: Some Correspondences between Michael Oakeshott's Critique of Rationalism and A.C. Graham's account of Spontaneity vs. Reason
Chapter 5: Conversation and Learning: Oakeshott and Confucius
Chapter 6: Michael Oakeshott and Contemporary Political Philosophy: an interpretation
Chapter 7: "Theory and Practice" in Oakeshott, Strauss, and Vogelin
Chapter 8: Three Views of Leviathan - Oakeshott, Strauss, and Vogelin
Chapter 9: The Cave, The Tower of Babel, and Civil Conversation: Methaphors and the Philosophical and Political Thought of Oakeshott