Oakeshott, Michael

Early years

Michael Oakeshott was born in the English city of Chestfield in the family of an official and was the middle son. His father, Joseph Francis Oakshott, a representative of the educated middle class of England, belonged to the Fabian Society, along with family friend Bernard Shaw . In 1912, Oakeshott was sent to St. George Harpenden Elementary School, where he met his first wife, Joyce Fricker. In 1920, Oakeshott entered Gonville and Keyes College, where he studied history and philosophy ^[5] . During training at Cambridge, Oakeshott was influenced by British idealist philosophers such as J.M. McTaggart and John Grot. Subsequently, he received a master's degree and became a teacher of modern history. Extremist political movements that swept Europe in the 1930s greatly alarmed Oakeshott, and his scholarly works and lectures of that time denounced his hostility to National Socialism and Marxism . At the same time, Oakeshott began work on his first major literary work, Experience and Its Modes, published in 1933. In 1940, Oakeshott was called up to the front, although in his 1939 Politics Claims, the philosopher defended the right of individuals not to participate in military operations.

Post-war years

After demobilization in 1945, Oakeshott returned to Cambridge, and two years later he moved to Oxford. There he became a professor of political science at the London School of Economics and Political Science . During this period, Oakeshott's second major work, Rationalism in Politics, was published. This and other Oakeshott articles appeared in the Cambridge Journal, of which he became editor-in-chief in 1949. Disagreement with student protests of the late 60s, which, in his opinion, impeded the educational process, forced Oakeshott to leave the university in 1969.

Oakshott spent the rest of his life in a quiet village in southern England with his third wife, abstract artist Christelle Schneider. During these years, Oakeshott writes two new books: "On human behavior" (Eng. "On human conduct") and "About history" (Eng. "On history"). He tried to stay away from politics and refused the peer title proposed by the government of Margaret Thatcher ^[6] . Despite the fact that Oakeshott became known during his lifetime, having lived 89 years, he gained real recognition after his death.

Early writings

In his first book, Experience and Its Types, Oakeshott expresses the idea that all human activities have their own kind of rationality, which has unique value. In the same work, he thinks about alternative ways of understanding politics. He concludes that political philosophy is not a genuine philosophy and that it has no place in philosophical work. Clearly expressing his subjective position, in his early years Oakeshott gravitates in his works to the style of British philosophical idealism.

Oakeshott supplemented his further understanding of the nature of politics with the ontology “Social and Political Doctrines of Modern Europe” (1939), describing representative democracy, communism , Catholicism , fascism, and national socialism . The article “Claims of politics”, published in the same year, contains one of Oakeshott’s main political theses: the activities of politicians do not have independent value, but fulfill only the protective function of the public organism, ensuring the functioning of a system of legal norms. Oakshott's ideas about the nature of the state and politics were prompted by the ideas of Thomas Hobbes , to whose Leviathan he wrote a well-known preface.

Human Behavior and Political Theory

Oakeshott's contribution to philosophy is not limited to politics. The philosopher paid great attention to the study of personality and individual freedom of man. So, speaking of human nature, Oushcott gave a well-known definition of a conservative character: “To be a conservative ... means to prefer the unknown to the unknown, the experienced untested, the mysteries given to the possible, limited unlimited, close to distant, sufficient excess, suitable ideal, real utopian laughter happiness. "

Oakeshott’s political theory, put forward in his work On Human Behavior, rejects all forms of political party . According to his theory, human activity manifests itself in such intelligent activities as desire and choice. He also discusses how ideas about the human community changed the politics and political thought of Europe in the post-Renaissance era.

Oakeshott talks about two basic ways of social organization. In the first, which Oakeshott calls the "enterprise association," the state pursues universal goals, such as profit, progress, or racial domination. The "civil association" (civil association), on the contrary, is built primarily on legal relations, where laws prescribe mandatory conditions for action, but do not imply a preference for one action over another.

In the book “Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism”, published after the death of the philosopher, Oakeshott reflects on various types of human communities. A corporate community based on a belief in universal good, Oakeshott calls the Politics of faith. The author considers power, especially technical power, to be a necessary prerequisite for a policy of faith, since it instills in people faith in the achievement of the common good and allows the implementation of the policy necessary for this purpose. Contrasted with this theory, the politics of skepticism (Politics of Skepticism) narrows the role of the state to the care of preventing bad events. Society, according to Oakeshott, can do with the minimum rules of law. That is why Oakeshott is often referred to as critics of state planning .

Rationality and Rationalism

Oakeshott's critique of rationalism was preceded by reflections on the relationship between theory and practice. He considered unacceptable rationalism of a technical type, where activity is seen as an application of knowledge to the subject. By such rationalism, Oakeshott understood the illusion of the existence of “right” answers to practical questions, when practical activity is based on moral and casual laws, whose truth can be demonstrated ^[7] . The mistake of rationalism, according to Oakeshott, lies in the conviction that a technical application of the rules and calculation of the consequences are enough to make a decision. In contrast to this paradigm, Oakeshott highlights the tradition where a new world of experience appears in the dialectics of subject and knowledge ^[8] .

Oakeshott transfers these thoughts to the political field in the essay "Rationalism in Politics." In politics, according to Oakeshott, there is also no single true mode of action. Political arguments cannot be refuted or proven; they can only be presented in a more convincing way. The political discourse, the author concludes, deals with unforeseen circumstances and assumptions, and not with certain truths and not depending on the context.

For the popular essay, “Being a Conservative,” Oakeshott was considered a conservative thinker, so criticism of his philosophy came primarily from critics of conservatism and neoconservatism . He was credited with both ideological stubbornness and indifference to ideology and politics. According to Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul , Oakeshott was a "rational ideologist" who also believed that "politics should remain in the hands of people from traditional political families." Others argued that Oakeshot was, after all, not a conservative, but a liberal political thinker.

In general, Oakeshott hardly attracted the attention of philosophers, and his work was read mainly by political scientists. But those who read often misinterpreted Oakeshott's ideas, because they looked at him not as a philosopher, but as a moralist. For Oakeshott, morality and philosophy are on different planes, and practical guidance is not the subject of philosophical analysis ^[9] .

• “Experience and its types” (1933)
• "The Social and Political Doctrines of Modern Europe" (1939)
• The Claims of Politics (1939)
• “Be a Conservative” (1956)

• “Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays” (1962)
• “On Human Behavior” (1975)

• Michael oakeshott
• Michael Oakeshott. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Michael Oakeshott: Stages of a career and an overview of the main works. Part 1

• Michael Oakeshot. Rationalism in politics and other articles
• Michael Oakeshott