The image of freedom outlined in Experience and its Modes largely conforms with common opinion — freedom is held to be self-possession; the capacity to direct one's own life. In that work Oakeshott's primary ambition had been to distinguish the interests and segregate the achievements of different intellectual disciplines and, most importantly, restrain them from encroachment into the realm of the conduct of life. Having designated these regions of competence Oakeshott, in his post-war essays collected under the title of Rationalism in Politics,¹ moves his attention to the actual substance of thinking — how we come to know what we know.