Oakeshott's Claims of Politics
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00108 |
| Published date | 01 September 1997 |
| Author | Glenn Worthington |
| Date | 01 September 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Oakeshott's Claims of Politics
GLENN WORTHINGTON
Australian National University
Michael Oakeshott is most commonly thought of as a political philosopher. Thinking
of his work in these terms can distract attention from his main arguments in which he
outlines his conception of civil association. Civil association is a much broader idea
than Oakeshott's idea of politics. But in refocusing attention away from politics and
towards civil association it is important that we do not forget Oakeshott's positive
account of politics.
Politics, as Oakeshott understands it, is an activity which is indispensable to the
practice of civil association. Politics considers civil rules, neither as authoritative
conditions nor in the deliberative or injunctive idioms of adjudication or ruling, but
in the persuasive idiom of their desirability. This paper explores the character of
Oakeshott's conception of politics and the relation of this activity, both positive and
negative, to the practice of civil association.
Michael Oakeshott is a thinker whose thought has proved to be readily
malleable to the ulterior purposes of some of his readers. Since the publication
of Rationalism in Politics in 1962 he has provided a convenient target for so-
called `left-wing' attacks on inequality, elitism and nihilism. He has also become
an equally opportune coat peg for so-called `right-wing' champions of the free
market, the minimal state and the preservation of traditional values. Through-
out the 1960s and 70s Oakeshott was associated with political events as well as
political theory. Through the course of the later 1970s, 80s and into the 90s a
more attentive type of commentator has come to read Oakeshott's theory of
conduct as having little to do with politics.1 But rather than showing why
politics is not central to Oakeshott's theory, these commentators largely ignore
the issue.
This latter group includes Richard Flathman, John Liddington and Paul
Franco.2 Flathman rightly identi®es Oakeshott's main concern as the practice
I am indebted to David West and a referee who made many edifying suggestions to an earlier
version of this paper. A later account of the paper was presented at the Political Science Program,
Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. I would like to thank the
participants for their often challenging comments.
1 Despite the changing attitudes to Oakeshott's account of politics Patrick Riley could still note
the `inadequacy' of obituaries describing Oakeshott as a `right-wing guru', a high-Tory oracle in the
New York Times 20 December 1990 and the `articulator' of `the real philosophical foundations of
Mrs Thatcher's policies' in the London Times 22 December 1991. See `Michael Oakeshott, political
philosopher', Cambridge Review, 112 (October 1991), 110±113, p. 110.
2 J. Liddington, `Oakeshott: Freedom in the Modern European State', in J. N. Gray and
Z. Pelczynski (eds), Concepts of Liberty in Political Theory (London, Athlone, 1984), pp. 289±320,
R. E. Flathman, The Practice of Political Authority: Authority and the Authoritative (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1980) and P. Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott
(New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990).
# Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
728
Oakeshott's Claims of Politics
of authority, not politics. When he comes to discuss `Authority, the merits of
rules, and civil disobedience', however, what Oakeshott would understand as
political considerations, Oakeshott's views are not mentioned.3 Liddington
provides us with an account of Oakeshott's two conceptions of freedom but
speaks in a confusing way when he comes to consider Oakeshott's account of
what he calls `political freedom' in enterprise and civil association. As we shall
see Oakeshott remains adamant that political activity, as he understands it,
belongs exclusively to civil association. Franco provides extended accounts of
the development of Oakeshott's conception of politics.4 However, he limits his
eorts to exposition of Oakeshott's ideas about politics. He does not explicitly
explore Oakeshott's view of the consequences of mistaking the categorial
character of politics at any length. Oakeshott believed the limited character of
politics is often forgotten in contemporary political experience. I will take a
dierent tack to Franco and inquire after the consequences of this forgetfulness.
Oakeshott does have something of importance to say about politics and his
argument, once misrepresented and now largely ignored, rarely gains the kind of
attention it deserves. I shall explore the development of Oakeshott's thought on
the character of political experience with an eye to how this might qualify some
of the claims which are implicit and explicit in some current political debates.
This is a paper in the history of political thought and it also has something to
oer political theory. I explore the development of Oakeshott's thought on
politics in order to understand precisely what he meant by this term. And I
glance occasionally at the contribution his understanding of politics oers
contemporary debates; debates which often understand themselves as having
something to do with politics without ever explicitly stating the character of
their engagements.
Oakeshott's ®rst publication on politics is a brief essay which appeared in
1939 entitled `The Claims of Politics'. From a future professor of political
science, writing on the eve of World War II, we might expect a defence of liberal
democratic practices and institutions and, perhaps a lament at the decline of
politics on the European continent. On the contrary, Oakeshott turns upon the
activity of politics itself; vilifying it because it entails
a limitation of view, which appears so clear and practical, but which
amounts to little more than a mental fog . . . A mind ®xed and callous to all
subtle distinctions, emotional and intellectual habits become bogus from
repetition and lack of examination, unreal loyalties, delusive aims, false
signi®cances are what political action involves. And this is so, not because
the politically active are under the necessity of persuading the mentally
obtuse before their activity can succeed; the spiritual callousness of political
activity belongs to its character, and follows from the nature of what can be
achieved politically.5
Oakeshott understands politics as an activity which operates from a limited,
vulgar and callous view of the world. He is not, however, merely making the
hackneyed point that politics is a hard road. Rather, he is claiming that political
3 Flathman, The Practice of Political Authority, 109±25.
4 A brief but astute treatment of Oakeshott's politics is also given by J. L. Auspitz, `Individuality,
civility, and theory: the philosophical imagination of Michael Oakeshott', Political Theory, 4
(August 1976), 261±94.
5 M. J. Oakeshott, `The claims of politics', Scrutiny, 8 (1938±9), 146±51 p. 148.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
GLENN WORTHINGTON
729
experience does not aord a complete view of the experience which it
presupposes, nor is it even the most complete view of this experience. In the
dated terms of British Idealist philosophy, which exerted a great in¯uence upon
Oakeshott, politics is an abstract view of its world. This immediately begs the
question: what is this world of which politics is an abstraction? What is the
character of the experience which politics fails to comprehend and, if, in fact,
politics is an abstraction, why bother theorizing this activity at all? Indeed, one
of Oakeshott's critics from the sixties believed him to be arguing precisely this
point describing him as the `anarchical Tory [who] becomes the lonely nihilist.'6
Inquiring after the character of Oakeshott's conception of politics places two
tasks in front of us. The ®rst is to discover, in Oakeshott's view, how abstraction
manifests itself in political experience. To achieve this we must identify the
character of the experience of which politics is an abstraction. Secondly, we
must inquire whether Oakeshott's understanding of politics allows for any
positive relation between it and the experience of which it is an abstraction. Is
politics merely a distortion of some more concrete experience or does it enhance
and contribute to this experience in some way?
The Moral Practice of Civil Association
Our ®rst task, then, is to discover the...
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