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Michael Oakeshott as Liberal Theorist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Wendell John Coats JR.
Wendell John Coats JR.
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Abstract

This article cautions against facilely casting Oakeshott's thought in the mold of either Kantian liberalism for its account of civil association as purely formal association to which rational individuals could consent, or Burkean liberalism for its emphasis on the continuity of general practices and traditions in diurnal politics. Oakeshott's work is then thematically summarized with an eye to showing its artfulness and originality as a synthesis of modern European individualism, providing a theoretical account of civil association which combines, without logical contradiction, the Aristotelian idea of politics as the activity of attending to the arrangements of the whole, and the liberal (and Christian) idea of the individuality of value, mediated (and made logically possible) by the Roman idea of civil obligation to the form of authority.

Résumé

Cet article veut tout d'abord nous mettre en garde contre une certaine facilité qu'on pourrait avoir à jeter la pensée d'Oakeshott soit dans le moule du libéralisme kantien en envisageant l'association civile comme une association purement formaliste à laquelle des individus rationnels pourraient consentir, soit dans celui du libéralisme burkéen en mettant l'accent sur la continuité des traditions et de la pratique courante dans la vie politique. Aprés cette mise en garde, un résumé thématique de l'oeuvre d'Oakeshott a soin de mettre en valeur la finesse et l'originalité de son oeuvre vue comme une synthèse de l'individualisme de léEurope moderne; on y découvre une théorie de l'association civile, alliant sans contradiction logique la pensée aristotélicienne de la Politique en tant qu'activité s'occupant d'ordonner le tout, à l'idée libérale—et chrétienne—de l'individualité de la valeur, médiatisée—et ainsi rendue logiquement possible—par l'idée romaine de l'obligation civile envers l'Autorité.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 773 - 787
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1985

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References

1 Oakeshott, Michael J. “On the Character of a Modern European State,” in On Human Conduct (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1975), 245Google Scholar, note 2, and “The Rule of Law,” in On History (Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1983), 162.Google Scholar Oakeshott implies that this development has flowed in part from Locke's having made the executive rather than the judicial the power responsible for the execution of the laws, a blurring of the medieval distinction between the realms of jurisdictio and gubernaculum, of rights and policy. Over time, the welfare of citizens was affirmed as a proper object of policy.

2 In the sense that all experience is had in modality, and there is nothing outside of experience (Oakeshott, Michael J.Experience and Its Modes [Cambridge University Press, 1933], 17–18).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The practical effect of the separation of practice as the realm of good and bad, from philosophy as the investigation of conditions of intelligibility, is similar to the effect of Kant's separation of the noumenal and phenomenal realms—the most fundamental ethical questions become ultimately inaccessible to theoretical reason. See Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, 1.Google Scholar

4 Oakeshott, Michael J. “Rational Conduct,” in Rationalism in Politics (London:Methuen, 1962), 95–96.Google Scholar

5 Oakeshott, Michael J. “On the Civil Condition,” in On Human Conduct, 110.Google Scholar

6 Ibid.., 112.

7 Ibid..,163.

8 Ibid..,164.

9 Consider the concern in the works of Leo Strauss and his students for the dangers of “abstraction from the body” in politics. This insight is an important corrective for some of the Utopian projects of our time (and even disarms somewhat the charges of radical feminism about the abstraction of masculine thought). But by apparently taking its bearings almost exclusively from the most obvious abuse of authority in recent history, this school of thought risks not bringing to attention in its pedagogy the importance for civil and political order of one particular abstraction—assent to the authoritative procedures by which law is made.

10 Oakeshott, “On the Civil Condition.” in On Human Conduct. 114–17.Google Scholar

11 Ibid..,147.

12 Oakeshott, Michael J. “On the Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct.” in On Human Conduct, 104–07.Google Scholar

13 That is, the second and third essays, respectively, of On Human Conduct—“On the Civil Condition” and “On the Character of a Modern European State”.

14 Oakeshott, “On the Character of a Modern European State,” 272–74.Google Scholar

15 Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, 311.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.., chap. 5.

17 Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics.” 1.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.., 8. See also Coats, Wendell J. Jr. “Michael Oakeshott and the Character of Experience” (unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Michigan Microfilms. 1978), 245.Google Scholar

19 Oakeshott, Michael J. “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind,” in Rationalism in Politics, 246.Google Scholar See also Experience and Its Modes, 297Google Scholar, for Oakeshott's early view that art and poetry occurred within practical experience; and the “Preface” to Rationalism in Politics.

20 Oakeshott, “The Voice of Poetry,” 202.Google Scholar

21 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chap. 3.

22 Aristotle, De Anima, Book III.

23 Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 16–18.Google Scholar

24 Oakeshott, “On the Civil Condition,” 110.Google Scholar But compare with Aristotle, Politics, Book III, chap. 9, on the ties among citizens.

25 Aristotle, De Anima, Book III.

26 Oakeshott, Michael J. “Introduction” to Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. by Oakeshott, Michael J. (Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1946), xii.Google Scholar

27 Aristotle, Politics, Book III, chap. 3.

28 The point is that most of Thucydides' analysis of the war is in terms of psychological balance and balance of power.

29 See, in this connection, Oakeshott, “On the Rule of Law,” 164;Google Scholar and SirPollock, Henry and Maitland, FrederickThe History of English Law (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1898), Book 1, chaps. 3–5.Google Scholar