Reason, action, and rationalism in politics (w. r. t.

Michael Oakeshotts Rationalism in Politics)

Leopea Elena Cristina FILS, 1212E

Michael Joseph Oakeshott (19011990) was an English philosopher commonly regarded as a prominent conservative thinker of his century. He studied history at Gonville and Caius College but his early works suggest that he soon became more interested in philosophy, especially the philosophy of history and other history-related philosophical areas, than in history itself. Perhaps the most productive period of his life was the one he spent as professor of political science at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from 1950 until 1969. His reputation as a conservative mostly stems from that time when he focussed on the political orientation of the United Kingdom. His sceptic view on ideologies (particularly socialism) and rationalism as well as his praise of tradition played an important part in gaining the conservative image. Oakeshotts best works are widely seen to be Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962) and On Human Conduct (1975). Michael Oakeshott followed in the footsteps of a long line of English skeptics, the greatest of whom was probably David Hume. In Rationalism in Politics, as the title suggests, Oakeshott turned the full glare of his skepticism upon the notion that Man, through the application of pure reason, could comprehend and reorder the world so as to achieve desired ends. It may well have been the most cherished project of the Age of Reason to use the tool of rationality to free Man from the "bondage" of ancient culture, religion and morality, to replace faith and tradition, the hoary wisdom of our ancestors, with a new "science" of society, arrived at by rethinking things anew in light of reason alone. What Mr. Oakeshott did here was to demonstrate why such a project must be so dangerous. Many philosophers have aproached the theme of rationalism in their works during the time. For example, Rene Descartes(15961650) thought that only knowledge of eternal truths including the truths of mathematics, and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences could be attained by reason alone; other knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to attain truths according to which nothing that cannot be recognised by the intellect (or reason) can be classified as knowledge. These truths are gained "without any sensory experience", according to Descartes. Truths that are attained

by reason are broken down into elements that intuition can grasp, which, through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality. Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, is a conclusion reached a priori i.e. not through an inference from experience. This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited a metaphysical dualism, distinguishing between the substances of the human body ("res extensa") and the mind or soul ("res cogitans"). This crucial distinction would be left unresolved and lead to what is known as the mind-body problem, since the two substances in the Cartesian system are independent of each other and irreducible. Immanuel Kant (17241804) started as a traditional rationalist, having studied the rationalists Leibniz and Wolff, but after studying David Hume's works, which "awoke [him] from [his] dogmatic slumbers", he developed a distinctive and very influential rationalism of his own, which attempted to synthesise the traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions. Kant named his branch of epistemology Transcendental Idealism, and he first laid out these views in his famous work The Critique of Pure Reason. In it he argued that there were fundamental problems with both rationalist and empiricist dogma. To the rationalists he argued, broadly, that pure reason is flawed when it goes beyond its limits and claims to know those things that are necessarily beyond the realm of all possible experience: the existence of God, free will, and the immortality of the human soul. Kant referred to these objects as "The Thing in Itself" and goes on to argue that their status as objects beyond all possible experience by definition means we cannot know them. To the empiricist he argued that while it is correct that experience is fundamentally necessary for human knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that experience into coherent thought. He therefore concludes that both reason and experience are necessary for human knowledge. Despite that modus operandi being no more workable in political activity than it is in cooking, Oakeshott contends that rationalism has had its greatest influence in the arena of politics:But what, at first sight, is remarkable, is that politics should have been earlier and more fully engulfed by the tidal wave [of rationalism] than any other human activity.The hold

of Rationalism upon most departments of life has varied in its firmness during the last four centuries but in politics it has steadily increased and is stronger now than at any earlier time. The preeminence that Oakeshott assigns to rationalist influence in modern political life may appear to be at odds with his assertion that the rationalist can never actually realize his program, but will always, in fact, wind up acting more or less along lines indicated by some existing practice. However, Oakeshotts contention that the rationalist never really can proceed according to her avowed principles does not mean that her attempt to adhere to them will be inconsequential, but only that it will not succeed. Oakeshotts view of the rationalist project as fundamentally misguided does not imply that all traditional practices are sacrosanct or even that they all are laudable. There is plenty of room in any healthy tradition for innovations and reforms, so long as those alterations spring from an appreciation of the life of that tradition, rather than representing an attempt to wipe it out and replace it with an abstract scheme. Traditions are like living organisms, in that both ught to and usually do grow and adapt in response to their external circumstances and internal tensions, or, failing to do so, soon cease to exist. But those adaptations, if they are to successfully meet the challenges presented by novel situations, must not promote the deterioration of the very organic order they purport to be serving. The political theorist can serve to diagnose and treat ills in his polity much like a physician does in his patients. But, as Oakeshott notes in his Lectures in the History of Political Thought, To cure is not to transform, it is not to turn the patient into a different sort of being; it is to restore to him such health as he is naturally capable of enjoying. Because the rationalist physician attempts to transform rather than merely heal his charge, his treatments are likely to do far more harm than good. Oakeshott believed that conversation in a civil association was a plausible description of human intercourse because it recognized the qualities and diversities of human utterances. He believed that the ability to participate in conversation (and not the ability to reason) is what makes us civilized human beings. Maybe his greatest contribution to political philosophy is that although the idea of civil association is somewhat a utopian project suffering from lack of substance he managed to show that political discourse should be more similar to conversation than to scientific technique as suggested by some rationalist thought. It is certainly an original idea that the concept of civil association is a necessary supplement to enterprise association. It is a thought that aims at establishing liberalism not by grounding it in a set of values that are to be promoted, but as a system that provides a framework for peaceful coexistence.

Oakeshotts purposeless approach aiming only at peace stands isolated in political theory. He presented some persuasive arguments for the claim that a non-instrumental association based on formal structure as a bond between people should have a place in politics beside the political association based on pursuit of particular common goals. Unfortunately, he failed to recognize the limitations of this concept and its dependence on the other kind of association.