Mark Garnett

Oakeshott on History, by Luke O’Sullivan; In Defence of Modernity, by Efraim Podoksik; Michael Oakeshott on Hobbes, by Ian Tregenza; The Sceptical Idealist, by Roy Tseng.

The intellectual reputation of Michael Oakeshott (1901-90) has been a source of pride to Conservatives – and of irritation to the Left – since he succeeded Harold Laski as Professor of Political Science at the LSE in 1951. His appointment to that Fabian foundation seemed to mark a dramatic shift in the intellectual climate, to accompany the decline and fall of the Attlee Government. Laski had never concealed his passionate commitment to socialism. Oakeshott could not have provided a starker contrast, in his writings and his teaching. To critics who could read between the lines, it was obvious that he despised everything that Labour stood for. But instead of engaging directly with Laski’s legacy, Oakeshott presented his own views in a style which seemed both elegant and evasive.

Despite his disdain for polemical encounters, Oakeshott was identified as something of a court philosopher during the Thatcher years, with an assured status even if he refused to dance attendance. For Thatcherites his reputation was sufficient to rebut any allegation that they belonged to ‘the stupid party’. Since his death – in the month following Thatcher’s removal from office – that reputation has grown further, on both sides of the Atlantic. One commentator has gone so far as to acclaim him as ‘the greatest political philosopher in the Anglo-Saxon tradition since John Stuart Mill – or even Burke’. There is now a burgeoning Oakeshott industry, which includes a commemorative association and a website. The four books under review are the first products of a special Oakeshott series, issued by the publisher Imprint Academic which is building an impressive list of studies in the work of major British philosophers.

But is all this fuss justified? These books certainly confirm that Oakeshott’s philosophical writings are difficult enough to require elucidation for a wider audience, and sufficiently important to make the effort worthwhile. Although he was too wise to construct a system, the various authors succeed in presenting his work as a broadly coherent attempt to fathom some aspects of the mystery of experience. Yet in one respect the precise nature of his reputation remains a puzzle. Oakeshott clearly regarded the Conservative Party as Britain’s most promising bulwark against socialism: but it is equally evident that he was not himself a conservative. Three of the present authors shed new light on  his liberalism. The exception – Roy Tseng – only succeeds in emphasising Oakeshott’s clear divergence from the traditions of Locke, Kant and Bentham. But this by no means exhausts the varieties of liberal ideology, and Efraim Podoksik is much more persuasive in linking Oakeshott to other (half-forgotten) European liberal thinkers, notably von Humbolt who also influenced Mill.

From this perspective, the title of Oakeshott’s most celebrated essay, ‘On being Conservative’ (from the 1962 volume, Rationalism in Politics) could be regarded as a red herring in the ideological battles of the last half-century. It reads like a deliberate piece of mischief, typical of this puckish philosopher in his off-duty moments. Bernard Crick was scarcely guilty of caricature when he summarised Oakeshott’s formula as: ‘whenever so-and-so sensible is preferred to such-and-such silly, that is what I mean by being conservative’. Yet the popularity of the essay among post-war Conservatives does help us understand ideological change within their party. The Oakeshottian ‘Conservative’ might admire traditional practices, but he is an individualist, secure within his own skin and perfectly equipped for autonomous existence in the modern world - if only the state would leave him alone. This is a distinctively liberal vision, but it amounts to something like an ideal self-image for many contemporary Conservatives.

Oakeshott’s writings on history also illustrate the liberal character of his thought. In his volume on this subject, Luke O’Sullivan traces Oakeshott’s developing ideas with commendable clarity, drawing on unpublished manuscripts and enlivening his account with biographical snippets. Oakeshott originally trained as an historian, and he included valuable reflections on the subject in Experience and its Modes (1933). But in On Human Conduct (1975) he expounded a view of the past which fell short of the exacting standards which he had set for historical writing. He presented a highly schematic story about the development of European individualism, in order to characterise rival understandings of the state: one, as a ‘civil association’, in which individuals pursue their own goals under a general framework of rules, and the other as a compulsory ‘enterprise association’, where the population is directed towards common goals. There could be no doubt as to Oakeshott’s personal preference, and as a finishing touch he skewed his ‘evidence’ to imply that the idea of ‘civil assocation’ was older as well as better than the alternative.

If Oakeshott’s view of the past begs more questions than it answers, it also encouraged students to re-examine some of the classics of political theory. The most notable beneficiary of Oakeshott’s revisionism was the unlikely figure of Thomas Hobbes. Ian Tregenza’s meticulous study shows how Oakeshott deployed selective readings of Hobbes to support his own developing ideas. Far from being an apologist for over-mighty rulers, in Oakeshott’s hands Hobbes turns out to have been a champion of ‘civil association’; his Leviathan might be strong where strength is needed, but there is no question of the state imposing priorities on the populace. In part, this sympathetic view of Hobbes seems to have been inspired by Oakeshott’s feeling that Hobbes was a kindred spirit. This encouraged him to overlook awkward features of Leviathan – for example, it would be difficult to square Hobbes’ picture of acquisitive human nature with Oakeshott’s ‘Conservative’ disposition – but, as Tregenza shows, his work has inspired other scholars to present a more nuanced understanding of the Sage of Malmesbury.

The most debatable aspect of Oakeshott’s interpretation is his attempt to deny the orthodox view that Hobbes was a pioneer of the Enlightenment. Unlike most liberals who venerate the Enlightenment, Oakeshott believed that it introduced a ‘rationalist’ approach which (among other things) infected politics and promoted the idea of the state as an ‘enterprise association’. His antipathy to the ‘Enlightenment Project’ has encouraged recent commentators to classify Oakeshott as a precursor of postmodernism. Among the present authors, Roy Tseng comes closest to this position. Yet Efraim Podoksik is a better guide to understanding Oakeshott’s work in the appropriate context. In a wide-ranging and perceptive account, Podoksik presents Oakeshott as a defender of modernity, despite his acute awareness of its various dilemmas.

The debate about Oakeshott and postmodernism is reflected in the tension in his work, where optimism and nostalgia always seem to be wrestling for supremacy. The explanation seems to lie in Oakeshott’s encounter with the modern world, which was as partial as Hobbes’ contact with Restoration England. As an academic who was well rewarded for conducting civilised conversations with intelligent young people, he could consider himself to be fortunate. But he came to feel increasingly isolated in holding the view that education was an activity which should be prized for its own sake. From this perspective, the increasing emphasis on ‘vocational’ study after 1979 was part of the same ‘rationalist’ enterprise which Oakeshott had been attacking since the 1940s. By that time Oakeshott himself was living in retirement in Dorset, and never made public his intellectual distance from the Thatcherites who praised him.

The contents of these books overlap and their interpretations are different; but taken together they make a thought-provoking read. Although no student of Oakeshott’s work can ignore the question of ideological allegiance, the collective effort of the authors suggests that his political writings are less important than his earlier reflections on the nature of knowledge. Oakeshott began his career when the main hazard for philosophers was negotiating a way between the backwash of Hegelianism and the spring-tide of logical positivism. His highly distinctive response to this dilemma justifies a high ranking among twentieth-century British philosophers, even if a place alongside Mill seems too lofty. Hopefully Oakeshott’s true status will be consolidated soon by an authoritative biography, based on full access to private papers.