Michael Oakeshott

Morality and politics in modern Europe : the Harvard lectures

When Michael Oakeshott died in 1990, he left much unpublished material, including fully elaborated essays and complete full-length manuscripts. This volume contains selected items from these works based on a series of eight lectures delivered in 1958.

The Masses in Representative Democracy

The course of modern European history has thrown up a character whom we are accustomed to call the ‘mass man’. His appearance is spoken of as the most significant and far-reaching of all the revolutions of modern times. He is credited with having transformed our way of living, our standards of conduct and our manners of political activity. He is, sometimes regretfully, acknowledged to have become the arbiter of taste, the dictator of policy, the uncrowned king of the modern world. He excites fear in some, admiration in others, wonder in all. His numbers have made him a giant; he proliferates everywhere; he is recognized either as a locust who is making a desert of what was once a fertile garden, or as the bearer of a new and more glorious civilization.

THE VOCABULARY OF A MODERN EUROPEAN STATE (CONCLUDED)

A P R E V I O U S article under the same title (Political Studies, July 1975) considered some of the words and expressions used to identify and explore the character of a modern European state. It is appropriate to end with a brief consideration of the expressions ‘politics’ and ‘political’. These words indisputably refer to human utterances and they purport to distinguish, to identify and to qualify utterances of a certain sort. That both in common parlance and in more considered discourse they have become progressively more imprecise is regrettable ; their different uses have ceased to have even familial resemblances. Where this is the outcome of mere carelessness it may be deplored ; but where these differences represent genuine doctrinal divergences they must be accepted. The cogency of the doctrine, not the eccentricity of the vocabulary, calls for attention. Beyond this, anyone concerned to make himself understood in this connexion will, of course, hesitate to impose a new meaning upon these expressions, and if he can find in current usage a family of meanings for which we have no other expressions and one which does not conceal categorial confusion within itself, he should be content. At the outset, no doubt, he will encounter a potential source of confusion. Like the word ‘psychology’, which is employed to identify both the scientific investigation of mental or neurophysiological processes and also the beliefs, emotions etc. of an assignable agent,’ the word ‘politics’ has acquired a dual meaning. For long enough it has been used to identify two categorially distinct engagements: that of Aristotle and that of Cleon, Peter Wentworth or Labouchke. But this is not a difficult distinction to recognize, and since we have other words for what Aristotle may be discerned to be doing (‘philosophy’ or, perhaps, ‘history’), we may perhaps reserve ‘politics’ for the engagement of Cleon and his like. Formally, the word ‘political’ identifies utterances in the active voice, the subjunctive mood, the present tense and (usually) in the first or second person plural (‘Let u s . . .’, or ‘Do you. . .’) which may be responded to in a conditional or an unconditional ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, or with a request for elucidation, ‘For what reasons do you urge me/us to agree to do this?’ Substantively, they are utterances of one who acknowledges himself to be associated with others in terms of understood conditions which are eligible to be changed or added to in some recognized procedure and are thus capable of being considered not only in terms of their authority (that is, as authentic rules of conduct) but in terms of the desirability or cogency of what they prescribe. They are utterances about some large or small part of the acknowledged conditions of association in respect of their desirability or

On Human Conduct.

On the theoretical understanding of human conduct On the civil condition On the character of a modern European state

Reviews : Shlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, London, Cambridge University Press, 1973. xii + 252 pp. £3.40

This book is a careful and comprehensive consideration of all that has come down to us of what Hegel, from time to time, said and wrote about human association and in particular about that difficult and ambiguous form of association which emerged in modern Europe and which we are accustomed to call a ’State’. Its plan is chronological and it is concerned to trace the course (I think somewhat unfortunately called the ’development’) of Hegel’s thoughts on the many different topics and problems which fall within this subject of reflection. While scholars have often sought to read the Philosophy of Right (1821) in relation to what is called Hegel’s philosophical ’system’, Professor Avineri (recognizing it as Hegel’s last and most complete treatment of the theme of human association) presents it to us as it emerges from writings concerned with the history of human associations and with Hegel’s responses to his current social and political circumstances. Thus, we hear less about the Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia and more about t Die Verfassung Deutschlaiids, the French revolution, German ’nationalism’ and Hegel’s reflections on the ’problem of the poor’ in an industrial society. This is a difficult enterprise: the materials are miscellaneous, fragmentary and often obscure. It has been pioneered by the collectors and editors of Hegel’s Schriften (notably J. Hoffmeister), in this country by T. M. Knox and Z. A. Pelczynski and in America by W. Kaufman; indeed, it may be said to be our generation’s particular adventure in the study of Hegel. Professor Avineri’s contribution is to have put it all together for us in a continuous critical narrative

An Introduction to Philosophy of History.

In the English-speaking world, philosophy of history has always been regarded with suspicion. Neither logical positivism nor ordinary language philosophy has any place for grand synthetic Views about history and its significance. In this work Walsh, drawing heavily on Collingwood, first seeks to draw the attention of his fellow philosophers to the metaphysical and epistemological questions raised by the study of History: historical explanation, the nature of historical facts, and the possibility of objectivity in history.