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ECPR
WORKSHOP: THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL CONCEPTS
14TH
-19TH
APRIL 2000
COPENHAGEN
DENMARK
THE IDEA OF THE CIVIL CONDITION IN ENGLISH POLITICAL
THOUGHT: MICHAEL OAKESHOTT ON HISTORY AND THEORY
PETER LASSMAN
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
BIRMINGHAM B15 2TT
UNITED KINGDOM
0121-414-6224
2
The idea of the civil condition became a central concept in the later political
philosophy of the English theorist Michael Oakeshott. In elaborating this concept
Oakeshott illuminated a topic which is of central significance for a major component
of an English (or, perhaps, one ought to say British) tradition of political thought. At
the same time it is apparent that in terms of the intellectual sources of this idea
Oakeshott was showing that traditions of political discourse, although clearly
possessing distinct national characteristics, ought not to be thought of in isolation
from those of neighbouring traditions. On closer inspection Oakeshott’s concept of
the civil condition, which is often criticised for being excessively insular in character,
has a distinctly European dimension.
The significance of Oakeshott’s thought here is that he is one of the few modern
political theorists who has reflected deeply upon the meaning of the concept of
‘politics’. At the same time he has made it a central element in his account such that
consideration of this topic can be successful only if it encompasses a history of the
concept. In this way Oakeshott’s approach has many similarities to the
Begriffsgeschichte of Koselleck. This is not surprising in light of the fact that
Oakeshott has been influenced by the Idealist tradition in both its German and British
versions.
An essential aspect of Oakeshott’s style (not method) is to trace the history of the
usage of a concept in order to show both its inherent complexity and, often, its
internal tensions and contradictions. Of course, from a strict Skinnerian point of view
there is something suspect about an operation of this kind. But it can be argued that
even if one disagrees with the outcome of particular investigations carried out in the
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Oakeshottian style it does have the merit of not losing sight of the ‘perennial’
questions or, at the least, the ‘remarkable continuity of the vocabulary’ of politics.
Oakeshott, who was originally trained as a historian, is especially interesting because
throughout his work there is a concern with the nature and autonomy of what he refers
to as ‘modes of understanding’. There is no political mode of understanding as such.
The appropriate modes of understanding here are either historical or philosophical.
Oakeshott has been concerned to ask two kinds of questions from a political
philosophical standpoint. The first concerns the nature of political beliefs, concepts,
and political philosophy itself. The second is concerned with our understanding of the
character of the modern statei.
The Civil Condition
The central concept in Oakeshott’s later work is that of ‘the civil condition’. This is
also referred to as ‘societas’. Although this is not a specifically English concept it
does seem to have a particular resonance with much of what one might call the
English tradition of political discourse. Of course, one must not overlook the obvious
fact that Oakeshott himself is English and, more controversially perhaps, that one
could argue that he is, more to the point, a representative of a particularly English
style of Conservative political thoughtii. The question of the intrinsically political
character of writing about the history and philosophy of political concepts is a
question that will be discussed later.
The most detailed discussion of the concept of the civil condition appears in
Oakeshott’s major work ‘On Human Conduct’iii
. The format of this book is self-
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consciously modelled on that of Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’. As with Hobbes,
whose Leviathan begins with ‘Of Man’ before it discusses ‘Of Commonwealth’, the
first of the three sections into which ‘On Human Conduct’ is organised is concerned
with the ‘Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct’. This is followed by the
section ‘On the Civil Condition’ which, in turn, leads to the third and final section
‘On the Character of a Modern European State’.
Oakeshott defines the civil condition in a variety of ways. To begin with he makes it
clear that the civil condition or civil relationship is an idealisation. ‘It is a certain
mode of association, one among others. It necessarily excludes relationships
contradictory of itself (as friendship excludes enmity); but while it is distinct from
relationships contrary to itself, it does not exclude persons who enjoy those
relationships’. This, for Oakeshott, is ‘the relationship of civility’iv
. According to
Oakeshott this particular concept has many antecedents but there have been very few
satisfactory attempts to capture its essential properties. The temptation has always
been to allow considerations of contingent historical circumstances to detract from the
necessary theoretical task. Oakeshott refers to Aristotle, Hobbes, and Hegel as the
three most significant theorists who have been able to see most clearly what is
involved in reflection upon the nature of the civil condition.
In defining the idea of the civil condition Oakeshott points to its most general
features. To begin with it is a relationship between human beings. This might sound
obvious. The point here is that the concept of a human being requires some theoretical
elaboration. For Oakeshott human beings are to be understood in terms of certain
‘postulates’. Human beings are free, intelligent agents ‘disclosing and enacting
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themselves by responding to their understood contingent situations’. Furthermore, it is
important to recognise that a human relationship ‘is not a “process” made up of
functionally or causally related components; it is intelligent relationship enjoyed only
in virtue of having been learned and understood or misunderstood’v.
‘Civitas’, Oakeshott’s term for the ideal of the civil condition’ is, therefore, to be
understood as ‘an engagement of human conduct’. This means that cives are ‘not
neurophysiological organisms, genetic characters, psychological egos or components
of a “social process”, but “free” agents whose responses to one another’s actions and
utterances is one of understanding; and civil association is not organic, evolutionary,
teleological, functional, or syndromic relationship but an understood relationship of
intelligent agents’vi
.
Oakeshott’s thought is especially interesting for the way in which it is concerned to
show how an elucidation of the nature of politics and the character of the modern
European state is inseparable from an understanding of the history of political
thought.
Human Conduct and The Concept of a Practice
The argument concerning the nature of the civil condition rests upon the argument
that is set out most clearly in Oakeshott’s work in the first section of ‘On Human
Conduct’. Here the key concept is that of a practice. For Oakeshott human activity
cannot be understood apart from the recognition of individual freedom. In effect
Oakeshott is working with the categorial distinction between the theoretical
engagements of the interpretive understanding of what he calls human ‘goings-on’
and the causal explanation of ‘processes’. In away that is similar to the Anglo-
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American tradition of Wittgensteinian philosophy Oakeshott sees so-called sciences
of human conduct such as sociology and psychology to be bound up in the conceptual
confusion brought about by attempting to combine both modes of inquiry.
In order to understand the reasoning behind this concept of civil association and the
linked idea of politics it is important to see that the starting point for Oakeshott’s
theorising is the postulate of individual human freedom. Human action cannot be
recognised as being human without the recognition of its intrinsic freedom. The
central component of human freedom here is ‘the attribution and the recognition of
reflective consciousness’vii
.
Conduct between human beings is to be understood in terms of the concept of a
‘practice’.
The Concept of Politics.
The point of this conceptual elaboration is to prepare the way for an argument
concerning the way in which politics ought properly to be understood. Politics,
according to Oakeshott’s account, is an activity or set of activities that are best
understood as belonging uniquely to the civil condition. The proper use of the concept
of politics is only in terms of the public affairs (respublica) of civil association.
More importantly and also more controversially ‘politics is categorically
distinguished from ruling’viii
. The reasoning here is that although both politics and
ruling are to be understood as activities politics is an activity that is concerned
primarily with argument and persuasion. Nor is political activity to be identified with
particular persons, places, or occasions. Politics is a ‘focus of attention and a subject
of discourse’.
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The attempt to delimit the concept of politics is clearly bound up with the
interpretation of the civil condition. In fact, the argument is much stronger: the
activity of politics is to be understood as belonging uniquely to the civil condition. As
a defining characteristic of the civil condition is the absence of any common purpose
in terms of which individuals could be regarded as members of a joint enterprise then
it is not permissible for them to make managerial decisions concerning the satisfaction
of common wants. Given this account it follows that use of the word ‘politics’ to refer
to the activity of deliberation or negotiation among agents who are associated in the
pursuit of a common purpose is misleading. Furthermore, where there is a contingent
engagement which could be referred to as ‘politics’ within such forms of association
it is to be regarded as being a derivative usage.
Politics is seen as possessing a public character in a sense that it is unique. Political
engagement is ‘explicitly and exclusively concerned with respublica’ix
. When looked
at in these terms politics is to be firmly distinguished from ruling. Oakeshott argues
that although we may find deliberation and argument in the practice of ruling these
activities do not play the same role as they do in the practice of politics. Deliberation
within the practice of ruling is concerned with the contingent interpretation of law and
not with the desirability of its prescriptions. Furthermore, Oakeshott maintains that
one cannot qualify the concept of ‘rule’ with the adjective ‘political’. It does not, he
argues, ‘identify a particular kind or manner of ruling, nor does it distinguish a certain
sort of constitution of a ruling authority or a certain procedure for constituting or
recognizing the validity of an office of authority’x. Which is not to say that rulers may
not participate in politics. But, when they do so, it is not as rulers but as participants in
civil association.
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Interestingly, Oakeshott sees the widespread confusion between politics and ruling to
be derived to a large extent from the inheritance of the Aristotelian vocabulary. Here
there is no clear distinction made between the two concepts; in fact there is no clear
cut distinction between the ‘political’ and the ‘civil’. According to Oakeshott, the
concept of politike refers here to the art of caring for and bettering the public concern
of the polis. The distinction between this activity of caring for the polis and the
practice of ruling is reflected in the ambiguous concept of the politikos that seems to
refer to both. The concept of politeia is deeply ambiguous too. It refers to both the
ways in which citizens are related to each other, the mode human association, as well
as the specific nature of the rule of a politikos that is, for example, to be distinguished
from the rule of a master over his slaves. It also refers to a particular form of
constitution of the polis. This is, for Oakeshott, a basic source of the conceptual
confusion involved in our use of the concept of ‘politics’. An interesting example of
this confusion is to be found in Sir John Fortescue’s ‘On the Governance of
England’xi
. Fortescue was the most important English political thinker of the fifteenth
century. Fortescue saw the English state as a ‘dominion political and royal’
(dominium politicum et regale). The key to Fortescue’s idea of politics lies in his
argument that there ‘are two kinds of kingdoms, one of which is a lordship called in
Latin dominium regale, and the other is called dominium politicum et regale. And
they differ in that the first king may rule his people by such laws as he makes himself
and therefore he may set upon them taxes and other impositions, such as he wills
himself, without their assent. The second king may not rule his people by other laws
than such as they assent to and therefore he may set upon them no impositions
without their assent’xii
. The second preferred form is one in which the king rules but
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he does so assisted by ‘the wisdom and counsel of many’. The significance of this
usage, for Oakeshott, is that it lead to a further conceptual confusion whereby the term
‘political’ is used both to vaguely specify a form of ruling and, at the same time, to
commend or denigrate. The confusion is even worse, it is argued, when we qualify
‘politics’ with a term taken from the vocabulary of ruling. ‘Democratic politics’
would be such a confused usage.
It follows that the concept of ‘politics’ is not be confused with the vocabulary of
authority. The adjective ‘political’ cannot ‘meaningfully qualify the expressions
which specify the constitutional shape of an office of authority, the quality of that
authority or the more general beliefs in terms of which such an office may be alleged
or acknowledged to have authority’. If the term ‘civil’ or ‘corporate’ were substituted
for that of ‘political’ the meaning of such expressions as ‘political democracy’ or
‘political institutions’ would be much clearerxiii
. Furthermore, it is in keeping with this
distinction between the activities of ruling and of politics that the language of politics
is also not to be confused with the vocabulary of power.
According to Oakeshott’s account when we use the terms ‘politics’ and ‘political’ in
connection to the modern European state we ought not, primarily, to be referring to
the languages of either power or authority. The most appropriate location for these
concepts is in discourse concerning the ‘engagements of governments’. Political
discourse is understood here to be concerned with that which is to be authoritatively
prescribed. The actual substantive content or character of such discourse itself derives
from that mode of association that is attributed to a state. If a state is understood as a
civil association or societas then office holders are understood as guardians of the
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rules or laws that constitute the terms of that association. According to this
interpretation ‘politics’ is to be understood as deliberation about the desirability of
these laws and rules, including possible changes, in terms of current ideas of ‘civility’.
Although those who occupy offices of rule will be expected to participate in
deliberation this is in no way a necessary precondition for political engagement. The
significance of this account of ‘politics’ becomes clearer when it is connected to the
idea of the inherent duality in our conception of the modern European State.
If we accept Oakeshott’s account the conceptual confusion concerning our concept of
‘politics’ and the ‘political’ runs quite deep. The argument here is that we must
separate conceptually an office of authority, an apparatus of power, and a mode of
association and recognise that each possesses its own appropriate vocabulary.
In making these distinctions between the separate activities of politics and ruling
Oakeshott is making a similar point to that made by Gallie in his remarks upon ‘the
essential duality of politics’xiv
. In his important thesis concerning ‘essentially
contested concepts’ Gallie argued that there are concepts that refer to ‘ a number of
organised or semi-organised human activities’. The ‘basic fact about them’ is that ‘we
soon see that there is no one use of any of them which can be set up as its generally
accepted and therefore correct or standard use’xv
. It follows that the concept of
‘politics’ is one such concept. The ‘essential contestability’ or ‘essential duality’ of
the concepts of ‘politics’ and of ‘the political’ resides in the fact that, according to
Gallie, our concept of ‘politics’ is ‘irreducibly two-sided or Janus-faced’. The basic
problem with the classical tradition of political theory is that it has tended to assume
that our concept of ‘politics’ is unified and that, as a consequence, there is no
fundamental barrier to the creation of a unified theory.xvi
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Unfortunately for those who advocate such a view the unavoidable ambiguity
embedded in our conceptual vocabulary prevents this. The ambiguity that is being
referred to here is the following: we use the words ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ to refer
to at least two sets of distinct activities, relations, and problems. These are the
relations and problems that occur between rulers and ruled, on the one hand, and on
the other we refer to a series of activities which, while they may be associated with
ruling are also applicable to forms of association that take place beyond that
relationship. The concept of ‘politics’ refers to both that kind of ruling that is
generally exercised by states and to what Gallie calls 'politicking'. The latter term
encompasses such activities as competitive claims of criticism and complaint,
bargaining, debating, converting, squaring, and fixing. Of course, the two instances of
these different senses of the concept might coincide but, and this is the important
point, they can be, and often are, radically opposed to each other. The significant
contrast here is with a state understood as a universitas or enterprise association. Here
‘politics’ takes the form of deliberation about managerial decisions to deploy
resources in pursuit of a common purpose. It is at this point that it becomes clear that
the full significance of this account of 'politics’ and ‘the political’ can only be
appreciated in the additional context of an interpretation of the nature of the modern
European State.
This interpretation of the concepts of ‘politics’ and of ‘the political’ has also been
expressed in terms of another distinction. This is the distinction that Oakeshott had
made in an earlier essay between ‘the politics of faith’ and the ‘politics of scepticism’.
It is in making the distinction between the two modes of association in this manner
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that the proposed affinity between the idea of ‘civil association’ as societas and a
specifically English style of political thought and practice is maintained.
Political scepticism from the late sixteenth century onwards is characterised by the
belief that human projects, especially when the product of large-scale design, were
unlikely to be successful. Although there are many European contributors to the
mainstream of modern sceptical thought it is Oakeshott’s contention that English
political thought and practice added an essential ingredient. This ingredient had its
origin in the medieval style of government. What this style offered was an idea of
governing that was framed in terms of the practice of courts of law. Government was
understood as a judicial activity. The consequence was that ‘on any reading of its
office and competence, a court of law is not the kind of institution which is
appropriate to take the initiative in organising the perfection of mankind; where
governing is understood as the judicial provision of remedies for wrongs suffered, a
sceptical style of politics obtrudes’ xvii
. This style of government is shown most
clearly in the history and character of the English Parliament. The Parliament of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was understood as a court of law and was itself
modelled upon the courts of law that already existed. As the sceptical style was able
to develop upon this foundation it appears that ‘England has been peculiarly the home
of this understanding of government’. This style of politics is marked by its ‘rejection
of the belief that governing is the imposition of a comprehensive pattern of activity
upon a community and a consequent suspicion of government invested with
overwhelming power, and a recognition of the contingency of every political
arrangement and the unavoidable arbitrariness of most’xviii
.
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An essential component of the early distinction between the politics of faith and the
politics of scepticism was the recognition of the distinction between politics and
religion. The work of Hume and Burke, in particular, as well as that of Tom Paine
was concerned to remove religious ‘enthusiasm’ from politics. However, it has to be
recognised that the problem of the relationship between politics and religion is one
that can never be solved. There is a constant tension between the politics of faith and
the politics of scepticism. What is it that the politics of scepticism seeks to defend?
The answer that Oakeshott sees embedded in English political thought and practice is
the defence of the value of peace and civil order or civil association. It was in
eighteenth century England that a recognisably modern form of political scepticism
first emerged. One important aspect of the general acceptance, at the time, of a
sceptical style was the recognition that foreign policy could not be carried on in te
manner of a religious crusade.
The Modern European State
Oakeshott is concerned to emphasise the remarkable novelty of the modern European
state. He argues that this form of association that we now recognise as the states of
modern Europe was ‘the outcome of human choices, but none the product of a
design’xix
. The history of modern Europe can be looked at as ‘the story of the
emergence of a novel mode of association, of the exploration of the ambiguities of its
character and of the reflective engagement to understand it’xx
. It is this ‘reflective
engagement’ to understand the puzzling character of the modern state that is at the
centre of Oakeshott’s enquiry. Furthermore, in Oakeshott’s view we are able to
recognise the existence of a continuous story of attempts to develop a truly theoretical
understanding of the experience of living in a modern state.
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The central part of Oakeshott’s argument rests upon the idea that two concepts have
emerged from the fifteenth century onwards, in terms of which the state has been
understood. These are the concepts of societas and universitas. These two concepts
were in use in the late Middle Ages and were put to work in order to make sense of
the new emerging reality of the state. The problem, however, from Oakeshott’s point
of view, is that the precision in the initial contrast drawn by these two concepts has
been lost. The addition of the concept of ‘society’ into modern political discourse has
only added to the confusion.
Oakeshott, however, wants to deploy these two concepts in order to construct an
argument about the tensions involved in our contemporary understanding of the
nature of the state. The modern state ‘may perhaps be understood as an unresolved
tension between the two irreconcilable dispositions represented by the words societas
and universitas’xxi
. In fact, Oakeshott argues, this tension was recognised with the
emergence of the state when it was often confusingly identified as a societas cum
universitate.
In early modern Europe the two concepts of societas and universitas presented
themselves as aids for reflection upon the emerging reality of the European state. The
difficulty here is that they point in two different directions.
What does Oakeshott mean by these terms? He identifies a societas as body of ‘agents
who, by choice or circumstance, are related to one another so as to compose an
identifiable association of a certain sort. The tie which joins them, and in respect of
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which each recognizes himself to be socius, is not that of an engagement in an
enterprise to pursue a common substantive purpose or to promote a common interest,
but that of loyalty to one another, the conditions of which may achieve the formality
denoted by the kindred word “legality”’xxii
. The essential point here is that a societas
is understood in terms of a body of formal rules rather than in terms of a substantive
relationship with a common programme of action. Speakers of a common language
constitute a societas as they share a body of rules but the language itself has no
purpose nor does it direct speakers in what to say. Although the activity of ruling is
not essential for the constitution of a societas this concept does, Oakeshott argues,
offer a way of understanding the modern European state. However, this understanding
is most appropriate when the state is governed by the rule of law. The conditions of
association within a societas are best specified by a system of law.
In contrast to the idea of an association understood as a societas Oakeshott argues that
it is possible to see another way of interpreting the nature of the European state. As
with the notion of societas the origin of this idea is to be found in the work of the
Roman jurists. Their idea of universitas is presented as the contrasting concept to that
of societas. A universitas is understood initially in terms of a partnership of persons
which is itself understood in terms of the analogy of a natural person. The basic point
here that Oakeshott wants to make is that the mode of association understood in terms
of universitas is an association of persons organised with an identifiable purpose in
mind. An association of persons organised as a universitas exists in virtue of its
pursuit of a substantive purpose or end. It also means that as such an association was
constituted in terms of a common purpose those who joined were making a deliberate
choice to pursue this purpose.
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The significance of the legal fiction of regarding such an association of persons
organised in terms of the pursuit of a common purpose as a persona ficta is that it
offered a means for the understanding of the emergence of the state in early modern
Europe. A state understood as a universitas is ‘an association of intelligent agents who
recognize themselves to be engaged upon the joint enterprise of seeking the
satisfaction of some common substantive want; a many become one on account of
their common engagement and jointly seized of complete control over the manner in
which it is pursued’xxiii
.
It is important to note that the interpretation of the development of reflection upon the
development of the European State in terms of the contrast between these two
concepts is not a straightforward affair. The texts of political writers do not line up,
for the most part, either for or against one of these two concepts, in a clear-cut
manner. Furthermore, there is no clear connection between positions taken on this
question and positions taken on other related issues. Here, for example, the idea of the
derivation of civil authority in terms of a contract or covenant can be used equally in
support of an interpretation of the state as a either a societas or a universitas. Thomas
Hobbes, according to Oakeshott’s interpretation, used this idea in order to
demonstrate that the civil association ought to be seen as a societas. It is there to
create and maintain a sovereign civil authority but not to unite its subjects in pursuit
of a common substantive enterprise. However, this notion of the social contract could
equally be used to argue for a vision of the state as a body of persons united upon a
common enterprise.
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What is the History of Political Thought a History of?
Oakeshott’s account of the character of the modern European state is itself an essay in
the history of political ideas. However, in terms of his own idea of historiography this
essay is ‘a backward-looking search for origins, a developmentalist narrative whose
purpose, stated at the outset, is to derive the moral relationships that ground the civil
constitution of modern European states’xxiv
. It is an interpretation that has implications
for our understanding of the nature of the history of political thought
In the interpretation of politics and the political advanced here an understanding of the
work of Hobbes plays a central role. For Oakeshott Hobbes’s Leviathan ‘is the
greatest, perhaps the sole, masterpiece of political philosophy written in the English
language’xxv
. In considering the history of political theory or political thought
Oakeshott makes an important but often overlooked point. It might seem obvious but
when we consider the history of thinking about politics we ought to recognise that we
are dealing with several different and distinct styles of thought. Reflection about
politics can take place on three main levels. Political reflection ‘may remain on the
level of the determination of means, or it may strike out for the consideration of ends.
Its inspiration may be directly practical, te modifications of the arrangements of a
political order in accordance with the perception of an immediate benefit; or it may be
practical, but less directly so, guided by general ideas. Or again, springing from an
experience of political life, it may seek a generalisation of that experience in a
doctrine. And reflection is apt to flow from one level to another in an unbroken
movement, following the mood of the thinker. Political philosophy may be
understood to be what occurs when this movement of reflection takes a certain
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direction and achieves a certain level, its characteristic being the relation of political
life, and te values and purposes pertaining to it, to the entire conception of the world
that belongs to a civilization’xxvi
.
Thus there is reflection that takes place among those who are directly engaged in
political activity or in governing. This is ‘political thought in the service of political
action’. Such reflection takes place within an existing framework of methods and
institutions. It is the kind of political thought that we might find, for example, in
political speeches and in state papers.
However, there is a more reflective style of political thought. Here we try to discern
principles and general ideas that might explain or justify political activity. This is a
level of thinking in which such terms as Liberalism, Socialism, and Democracy are
used. Most of the political thought that the historian of political ideas deals with is of
this kind. This is the style of thinking that Oakeshott refers to as an ‘abridgement’ of
political conduct into general principles. He is, of course, sceptical about how much
such ‘abridgements’ can offer in the way of enlightenment.
The third and much rarer form of political thinking is that represented by what is
normally referred to as ‘political philosophy’. Hence, the significance of Hobbes’
Leviathan which is a perfect representative of this form of theorising. Of course, the
three levels of political thinking are not always separable from each other but they are
concerned with different kinds of questions and they offer different kinds of answers.
The point is that as different levels of thinking they ought not to be confused with
each other. Clearly, for Oakeshott, the third kind of theorising is the most interesting
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and important. The reason for this is that it is only at this level that we are concerned
to reflect upon the place of political activity within the general map of human activity
in generalxxvii
. Our political ideas, therefore, do not exist in a separate compartment
from the rest of our ideas. The meaning of those ideas always lies in the way in which
the unity of text and context is resolved from their separate existence. This form of
reflection has a continual history within European civilization. The proper context for
understanding and appreciating a work such as Hobbes’ Leviathan is, therefore, the
history of political philosophy conceived in this manner.
Characteristically, Oakeshott argues that political philosophers ‘take a sombre view of
the human situation: they deal in darkness. Human life in their writings appears,
generally, not as a feast or even as a journey, but as a predicament; and the link
between politics and eternity is the contribution the political order is conceived as
making to the deliverance of mankind. Even those whose thought is most remote from
the violent contrast of dark and light (Aristotle, for example) do not altogether avoid
this disposition of mind. And some political philosophers may even be suspected of
spreading darkness in order to make their light more acceptable.xxviii
’
The unity of the history of political philosophy reveals an internal variety that divides
into three traditions. The reason for this is that political reflection at this level is itself
following what Oakeshott discerns as the three main patterns of philosophical
reflection in European intellectual history. The first of these traditions so of thought is
organised around the concepts of Reason and Nature. The second is that in which the
central concepts are Will and Artifice. The third tradition ids that of the Rational Will.
The context of works of political philosophy is, to be more specific, one of these three
20
intellectual master traditions. Oakeshott does not provide much detail about the
content of these traditions. However, the suggestion that Plato’s Republic is a clear
example of the first kind; that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is the best example of the
third; and that Hobbes’ Leviathan of the second.
Reviewing Skinner’s ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’ Oakeshott
observes that this work contains two distinct exercises of the historical imagination.
The first is to give an account of late medieval and early modern writings on
‘politics’. The other is, contrary to what one might have been lead to expect from
Skinner’s earlier methodological writings, ‘a design to use these writing “to illuminate
a more general historical theme”. This theme is the emergence of ‘the main elements
of a recognizably modern concept of the State’xxix
. The first account is concerned with
texts that are regarded as responses to claims made with ‘respect of the office of ruler,
of its authority and of its occupation by a person or persons of a certain kind, which
occasionally spilt over into claims in respect of the character of the association
ruledxxx
’ . These texts are generally composed of claims and justifications expressed
in moral, legal, or theological terms. These are the kinds of texts that Skinner calls
‘ideological’. However, the problem here is that such texts, important as they are, do
not constitute the whole of political thought. It leaves out both that kind of reflection
concerned with administration as well as what we can properly call philosophical
reflection. This kind of reflection upon politics is not concerned, or at least, not
primarily concerned with, justifications or criticisms of the ‘circumstantial claims of
rulers’. Thus it appears that when we encounter political thinkers such as Bodin or
Marsiglio who achieve the level of philosophical reflection in their work Skinner’s
21
strategy is to ignore this aspect of their work. In short Oakeshott questions the method
according to which we read the relevant texts as always being no more than attempts
to solve an immediate and pressing problem. Such attempts are made, according to
this account, within the terms offered by the prevailing vocabularies and their
attached stock of ideas. A major objection here is that the authors under consideration
often understood one another, not in historical, but in philosophical terms.
The second theme in Skinner’s ‘Foundations’ is more ambitious. Here the aim is to
infer ‘an overall direction in the intellectual adventures of these writers’. He wants to
show that within the period covered there was a substantial development in political
thought so that by the end of the sixteenth century a concept of the state had emerged
that we would recognise as modern. Skinner’s claim is that there was a definite
movement from an idea of ‘a ruler maintaining his state’ to that of ‘a form of political
power separate from both the ruler and the ruled and constituting the supreme
political power within a defined territory’. Oakeshott is highly suspicious of this
central claim. It seems to both a highly controversial interpretation of the available
evidence and, at the same time, to be doing more than one would expect on the basis
of the arguments set out earlier in Skinner’s own methodological essays. Is Skinner,
for example, arguing the political thinkers of the thirteenth century set out to create
this new understanding of the state? Oakeshott offers an alternative historical sketch.
According to this interpretation the idea of the state that Skinner sees as emerging
throughout Europe during the period under consideration was far from being such an
innovation but was regarded more as an eccentricity. Certainly, such a view of the
state has never found a comfortable home in English political thought. The
controversial nature of Skinner’s claim is evident insofar as he argues that the
22
political writers with whom he is dealing can be seen to be ‘laying the ideological
foundations’ of new concept of the state. The point here that Oakeshott wants to make
is that it cannot be doubted that such a concept of the state did emerge. But, as he puts
it ‘floated around modern Europe’, it is more than a little anachronistic to think of it in
terms of the metaphor of a construction erected upon a foundation. It is more accurate,
in Oakeshott’s terms, to see these political thinkers as ‘casuistical moralists and
lawyers fumbling for circumstantial arguments to support their clients against claims
old and new, which stood in the way or threatened their independence’. There is a
clear distinction that ought to be made here between ‘the analytical components of a
concept and the devious and often logically irrelevant historical circumstances which
mediated its emergencexxxi
’. In contrast to Skinner’s account Oakeshott,
mischievously, offers what one would expect in terms of a more historically nuanced
interpretation. Rather than ‘foundations being laid’ what we see is ‘not the emergence
of a single “recognisably modern concept of the state’ but a variety of disparate
conceptions, continuously resuscitated and formulated in later times’xxxii
. In keeping
with the philosophical interpretation put forward in ‘On Human Conduct’ Oakeshott’s
version is one in which the states of modern Europe display a much more various and
‘ramshackle’ structure.
The basic point that needs to be made here is that Oakeshott is both presenting an
interpretation of an English tradition of political thought from a position that is within
that tradition. This complicates matters because it raises the question that is at the
heart of his whole approach. Put simply the question is whether it is possible to
achieve an understanding of political concepts and ideas that is not itself political.
Oakeshott himself is clearly animated by the desire to escape from the
23
i Bhiku Parekh, ‘Oakeshott’s Theory of Civil Association’, Ethics, vol. 106 , 1995, 158-186
ii For example, Anthony Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection. The Religious and secular Traditions
off Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott. (London: Faber and Faber, 1978) iii
Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1991) iv Oakeshott, p 108
v Oakeshott, p 112
vi Oakeshott, p 112
vii Oakeshott, p 32
viii Oakeshott, p 166
ix Oakeshott, p 163
x Oakeshott, p 167
xi Sir John Fortescue, The Governance of England (1471). A translation into modern English can be
found in Sir John Fortescue, On te Laws and Governance of England (ed.) Shelley Lockwood,
Cambridge University Press, 1997 xii
Fortescue, 83 xiii
Oakeshott, ‘The Vocabulary of a Modern European State’, Political Studies, Vol. 23,4, 1975, p 412 xiv
W.B.Gallie, ‘An Ambiguity in the Idea of Politics and its Practical Implications’, Political Studies,
vol. 24, 4, 1973 pp 442-452 xv
W.B.Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, Chatto and Windus, London, 1964, p
157.The original essay upon which this chapter is based is in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
vol. 66, 1956. xvi
There is an extended debate concerning Gallie’s claim of ‘essential contestability. One of the few
examples where the idea has been explicitly used with reference to ‘politics’ is W.E. Connolly, The
Terms of Political Discourse, D.C.Heath, Lexington, 1974 pp 9-44 xvii
Oakeshott, ‘The Fortunes of Scepticism’, The Times Literary Supplement, March 15th
1996, p 14 xviii
Oakeshott, ‘The Fortunes of Scepticism’, p 14 xix
Oakeshott, 185 xx
Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Vocabulary of a Modern European State’, Political Studies, 23,1975, p 319 xxi
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 201 xxii
Oakeshott, 201 xxiii
Oakeshott, 205 xxiv
T.W.Smith, ‘Michael Oakeshott on History, Practice and Political Theory’, History of Political
Thought, 27, 4, 1996, p 611 xxv
Oakeshott, ‘Introduction’ to Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’ (1651), 1946, p viii xxvi
Oakeshott, Introduction to Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’, pp viii-1x xxvii
Oakeshott, Morality and Politics in Modern Europe. The Harvard Lectures. Yale, 1993, p 14 xxviii
Oakeshott, ‘Introduction’ to Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’ , p x xxix
Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, The Historical Journal, vol. 23, no 2 ,
1980, p 449 xxx
Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, p 449 xxxi
Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, p 452 xxxii
Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, p 453
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