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“... eternal or universal standpoint. Third, there is a question about legitimacy, derived from Max Weber, but which has also bulked large in Skinner’s analyses of historical texts. What forms of legitimation are available to political actors? Because such actors have to address themselves, on the whole, to the beliefs current among other actors, these forms ...”

“... threats to human autonomy in capitalist rationalisation and bureaucratisation. ‘Each man,’ Weber warned, ‘becomes a little cog in the machine,’ pathetically obsessed with becoming ‘a bigger cog’. Karel Čapek invented the word ‘robot’, deriving it from the Czech word for forced labour, to evoke the growing superfluity of man in the regime ...”

“... of it – a large pail of the mental world of end-of-the-century Western politics. It is alongside Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and Friedrich von Hayek that Michael Oakeshott is most appropriately seen. The relations between these four figures await documentation from future biographers. But whatever the circumstantial contacts or conflicts – some more visible ...”

“... point is that so did Freud). Thus she can devote eight pages to the story of wealthy Carl Liebman (relying somewhat on Borch-Jacobsen’s Les Patients de Freud), the schizophrenic fetishist who was treated by Freud over the course of five years and ended his days claiming to be his father’s penis, whereas ‘Dora’ gets just a few garbled ...”

“... came to power, Putin lacked any trace of it. But possession of the presidency has altered him. For Weber, who had the Hebrew prophets in mind, charisma was by definition extra-institutional – it was a kind of magic that could only be personal. He could not foresee postmodern conditions, in which the spectacle is a higher power, capable of dissolving the ...”