Kenneth Minogue, RIP

[Valin]

Power Line:

Steven Hayward

6/29/13

 

Yesterday brought the sad news of the passing of Kenneth Minogue, long time professor of politics at the London School of Economics and one of the giants of modern conservative intellectual life. At an early point I contemplated attending the LSE for graduate school to study with Minogue (and Oakeshott); fortunately I was lucky enough to meet and converse with him on two memorable occasions, once in my early 20s, and just a couple of years ago when he came through Washington. Scott wrote of him here way back in 2003; I did more recently here.

 

His best book, in my mind, is his The Liberal Mind, first published back in the 1960s. It holds up extremely well today (and thanks to Liberty Fund for bringing it back into print a few years ago). His matchless description of liberalism is worth repeating again:

 

The story of liberalism, as liberals tell it, is rather like the legend of St. George and the dragon. After many centuries of hopelessness and superstition, St. George, in the guise of Rationality, appeared in the world somewhere about the sixteenth century. The first dragons upon whom he turned his lance were those of despotic kingship and religious intolerance. These battles won, he rested for a time, until such questions as slavery, or prison conditions, or the state of the poor, began to command his attention. During the nineteenth century, his lance was never still, prodding this way and that against the inert scaliness of privilege, vested interest, or patrician insolence. But, unlike St. George, he did not know when to retire. The more he succeeded, the more he became bewitched with the thought of a world free of dragons, and the less capable he became of ever returning to private life. He needed his dragons. He could only live by fighting for causesthe people, the poor, the exploited, the colonially oppressed, the underprivileged and the underdeveloped. As an ageing warrior, he grew breathless in his pursuit of smaller and smaller dragonsfor the big dragons were now harder to come by.

(Snip)

 

And finally, heres 10 minutes of Minogue on Firing Line with Bill Buckley (though there are many good YouTube clips of Minogue in action):

[Valin]

A Good Friend and to Liberty Too

John O'Sullivan

June 30, 2013

 

Kenneth Minogue who was one of the most brilliant yet also most approachable philosophers of liberty, died suddenly on Friday when returning from a conference of the Mont Pelerin Society, whose retiring president he was, on the Galapagos Islands. This is not a formal obituary and so it will not list Kens academic achievements and honors. All one need say for the moment is that he was at the center of an extraordinary group of political philosophers, economists, and journalists other members included Michael Oakeshott, Bill and Shirley Letwin, F.A. Hayek, Roger Scruton, Perry Worsthorne, Noel Malcolm, Colin Welch, Frank Johnson who between them instilled intellectual rigor, political imagination, a deep appreciation of liberty, and a sharp (occasionally derisive) wit into the all-too-inert body of English conservatism.

 

(Snip)

 

Two substantial tributes to Ken have already been published on the internet: one by Roger Kimball on the depth of Kens truth-seeking on Pyjamas; another by Steve Hayward on Power Line on the breadth of Kens appeal. The warm and admiring responses from their readers confirm Steves both the breadth and depth of Kens influence.

 

(snip)

 

Ken was a great believer in the virtue of friendship. He was a loyal friend himself and he attracted the friendship of others. So he leaves many people behind who will always think of him gratefully as someone who, as well as being a serious philosopher of liberty, was a reliable guarantee against boredom and dullness whether at a seminar or a dinner-party.

 

As Clarissa Pryce-Jones writes:

 

 

He always gave me such a grin and would wink across a crowded room conspiratorially at many a London gathering of the so-called Great and Good. I will miss him more than very much.

So will we all.