MEMOIRS OF FOX-HUNTING MEN:

Modern philosopher of tradition: a review of Michael Oakeshott by Paul Franco (Noel Malcolm, 29/08/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Asked to name the most important British political philosopher of the 20th century, most people with an interest in the field would probably hesitate for a while, and then come up with the name of Isaiah Berlin. Only a minority, I suspect, would nominate Michael Oakeshott; and yet, as time goes by, his claim to that title is arguably emerging as the stronger of the two. [...]

[F]ranco has produced a short but masterly introduction to the whole range of Oakeshott's writings, not only placing his thought in the context of earlier British philosophy, but also making illuminating comparisons with contemporary or later thinkers such as John Rawls, Richard Rorty and (inevitably) Isaiah Berlin.

The discussion of the earlier context of British "Idealism" (those followers of Hegel) is especially helpful. Many of the things that now seem so modern about Oakeshott - his insistence that all our knowledge and experience is by its very nature interpretative; his claim that an individual person is constituted by his social world almost in the same way that the meaning of an English word is constituted by the English language - can be seen to derive from that earlier philosophical approach.

Similarly, Oakeshott's famous defence of "tradition" as a basis for political life is shown to be not a piece of reactionary obscurantism (as his critics on the Left always claimed) but a subtle extension of his theory of man's social nature, exploring the ways in which social values can develop and change over time. Franco also explains how and why Oakeshott's later thinking moved away from this emphasis on tradition, towards a more formal analysis of the nature of freedom under the rule of law.

What's most interesting, and a sad commentary on the decline of philosophy in the modern era, is that the two are remembered for just one essay apiece, not even for at least one book apiece, as novelists might be. In fairness though, you could be recalled for worse than Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (1951) and Oakeshott's Rationalism in Politics (1962) and it is certainly significant that both are brilliant statements of conservative positions.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 25, 2004 5:34 PM