A Companion to Michael Oakeshott

Chapter 11: The Fate of Rationalism in Oakeshott’s Thought

11 the fate of rationalism in oakeshott’s thought Kenneth Minogue i Michael Oakeshott is perhaps best known as the foe of a political vice called “rationalism,” and it is a vice because, in believing that all knowledge is technical , it fails to recognize the crucial role of what Oakeshott calls “practical knowledge.” The famous distinction between technical and practical knowledge , however, obscures the sheer complexity of Oakeshott’s understanding of political activity. We can, indeed, find a simple theme running through much of Oakeshott’s criticism at this period: namely, that the contingencies of the human world cannot be reduced to a simple, abstract (and manageable ) plot. Rationalism does this, and Oakeshott detects it also in Whig history as analyzed by Herbert Butterfield: “What is, in fact, a resultant, or even a byproduct, of conflicting purposes and interests is made to appear as the consummation of a single homogeneous stream of activity triumphing over opposition and obstruction” (WIH, 221). But this general theme becomes recessive as he developed his political philosophy in the years after the famous inaugural. He seeks a more complex understanding. Recognition of complexity always recalls Oakeshott to his philosophical vocation after his holiday excursions into condemnation. Rationalism itself therefore demanded a broader treatment. Indeed, the more Oakeshott developed his thought, the more he became a kind of rhapsodist of complexity, and this can be observed no more strikingly than in The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism, the manuscript he wrote after his inaugural and had probably finished in 1952.1 It remained unpublished until after his death. What happened to the idea of rationalism in this new context? In approaching political rhetoric, we learn in a typical passage, “it is not only the habits and institutions of modern European government which are the fate of rationalism in oakeshott’s thought 233 alloys composed of diverse elements; the language, the political vocabulary in which we speak of the activity of government and make it intelligible to ourselves , is also hybrid. It is a modern language, and like all modern languages it is an amalgam of words and expressions (derived from diverse sources), each of which is in turn a complex world of diverse meanings. There are no simple expressions in our political vocabulary” (PFPS, 9). Alloys, amalgams, diversities, hybrids—we are almost into self-parody here. Western political talk is understood throughout this manuscript as exhibiting ambivalence toward two “extremes” or “polarities,” between which political practice oscillates without ever touching either. Such discourse is a “predicament” issuing from the complexities of our practice of government. The sheer delicacy with which Oakeshott conveys these complexities is likely to generate both admiration and irritation. Yet, like a writer of detective puzzles, having led us into confusion, he leads us (with appropriate cautions) toward his clarifying distinction: that between the politics of faith and that of skepticism. Oakeshott was passionate about ideas, and in casual conversation he did not stint on expressing his disdain for folly, but his philosophical instincts were always to discover some element of rationality in what he most detested. Living in a generation of philosophers, some of whom were so enthusiastic about criticism that they adopted it as a self-identifying slogan, Oakeshott always regarded criticism as merely a preliminary to further understanding —not, of course, in the sense of tout comprendre, c’est tout pardoner, but as a vision of the world in which everything is a necessary evil. In the essay “Rationalism in Politics,” “rationalism” has few if any redeeming features. The interesting question is how he rethinks its character as he goes along. Rationalism featured in the original essay as a vice of practical life, parasitic on history, science, and poetry—indeed, particularly on philosophy itself. The busy rationalist is unmistakably the most crashing bore in the conversation of humankind. Rationalism confuses part and whole. It corrupts the mind because it is both false and debasing (RP, 37). It offers a false dream of competence to the ignorant and cuts them off from whatever tradition is relevant to their enterprises, making them fancy that a doctrine is more flexible and responsive to reality than the inventive tradition that it merely abridges. Rationalism is idolatrous. In its political appearance it becomes a device for mechanically imposing some limited dream on an entire population . Individuals are corralled into abstract categories that suppress variety and aspire to uniformity. Rationalist projects inevitably fail, but in a rationalist atmosphere, an ignorant population can conceive...