The boundaries of conversation: A response to Dallmayr

This essay dissents from the argument that Fred Dallmayr makes in his artic le in the current issue. While accepting the centrality of the topics which he raises and accepting also that Oakeshott's work provides an important s timulus to our rethinking of such topics, the essay takes issue with three areas of Dallmayr's discussion. The first challenges his interpretation of Oakeshott's metaphor of conversation; while the second challenges the subst antive points developed from that interpretation. The third explores the im plications of Dallmayr's argument, which, it might be said, is in Oakeshott 's terms a rather 'practical' argument, that might potentially become probl ematic given Dallmayr's wish to adopt the notion of conversation.