A Skeptical Conservative

Other contemners of political science present their wares as political philosophy. After agonized hesitation about whether politics and philosophy could ever mix, Oakeshott agreed they could, and did in his own work, but only on condition that it was understood that political philosophy was useless, "has no injunctive force", and could never yield anything of interest or relevance to actual politics. It could not, for example, give guidance for action, suggest policies, rules, principles or programs. Of course, we expect philosophers to eschew propaganda and party politics, but Oakeshott was looking for something more remote, abstract and bloodless, something as far removed as possible from that mainstream of twentieth-century philosophy for which (in R.G. Collingwood's words) "all thought exists for the sake of action." The upshot was that his university teaching came down to lectures on the history of political thought, especially that of Hobbes. So it is the sign of a paroxysm of skepticism when a colleag ue at LSE, Kenneth Minogue, reveals, "The older he got, the more Oakeshott tended to regard the very enterprise of a history of political thought as an impossible one."

After this litany of skepticism about the practice and theory of politics, the title of Gerencser's book, The Skeptic's Qakeshott, should not surprise. Oakeshott called himself a skeptic, and his critics have mostly agreed. Gertrude Himmelfarb said, "Oakeshott's animus against Rationalism issues in a radical skepticism, in a refusal to embrace any idea, principle, or belief lest that imply a commitment to some absolute truth." [1] What Gerencser claims to detect is that, while maintaining his skepticism about politics, science and the rest, Oakeshott extended it to philosophy itself, thereby arriving at the position "that no voice--including that of philosophy--expresses an absolute certainty; rather truth is always dependent on certain conditions." This would have carried him toward the universal relativism of the postmodernists.

Whatever interest these arcane matters may have for metaphysicians, I think they can be laid quite aside when we consider what Oakeshott had to say about politics. For the extraordinary thing is that he did have something to say on that subject. After repeatedly telling us what we could not say or know or do in politics, he managed to advance a characteristic political doctrine; it is slender, repetitive and elegantly expressed.

It has been said that the world is made up of two sorts of people: those who believe that the world is made up of two sorts of people; and those who do not. Oakeshott belonged firmly in the former category. He thought there were two sorts of people, two ways of cohabiting in society, two kinds of politics, two sorts of state, and so on through a list of a dozen or so pairs. Predictably, these pairs of opposites correspond one to the other. The basic one is the contrast of two ways of cooperating in society: in a civil association or an enterprise association. (The distinction between the two is laid out in the essay "The Rule of Law", which is included in Liberty Fund's re-issued On History and Other Essays.) In an enterprise association there is a common purpose, a joint policy, and hence an obligation of members to behave in accordance with it or get out. Examples would include a business venture or a religious sect. In a civil association there is no common purpose, only an agreement (or a habit or tradit ion) to abide by certain general rules while pursuing various purposes. All that members have in common is this recognition of the authority of general rules. So their commonality is purely formal; they do not join together for certain transactions since their association is noninstrumental." The chief example is the modern XVestern state.