Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990)
Autor de Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays
Sobre El Autor
Créditos de la imagen: By Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science - Professor Michael Oakeshott, c1960sUploaded by calliopejen1, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15987493
Obras de Michael Oakeshott
Lectures in the History of Political Thought (Michael Oakeshott: Selected Writings) (2006) 28 copias
Obras relacionadas
Did You Ever See a Dream Walking? American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century (1970) — Contribuidor — 82 copias
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Nombre legal
- Oakeshott, Michael Joseph
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1901-12-11
- Fecha de fallecimiento
- 1990-12-19
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- UK
- Ocupaciones
- political philosopher
- Organizaciones
- London School of Economics
Miembros
Reseñas
Premios
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 28
- También por
- 5
- Miembros
- 1,013
- Popularidad
- #25,448
- Valoración
- 3.6
- Reseñas
- 15
- ISBNs
- 76
- Idiomas
- 5
- Favorito
- 3
Oakeshott does not present the doctrine of traditional Tory conservativism: He is silent on social hierarchy, traditional morality and the divine right of kings. Oakeshott is indifferent to monarchy and vaguely critical of Christian morality. He sees religious idealism as too abstract. Moral life has come to be dominated by ideals that are ruinous to “a settled habit of behavior.” Oakeshott’s skepticism concerning ideals echoes David Hume, another conservative skeptic with a great respect for a settled habit of behavior. (English Whiggery descends from Hume and Gibbon even more than Burke.)
Oakeshott is suspicious of Hayek, a Whiggish liberal, because of his rationalism: a plan to resist planning is still rationalist. Nor is Oakeshott’s thinking compatible with modern welfare state liberalism. American admirers can’t be too happy with Oakeshott’s treatment of the Declaration of Independence as a prime source of rationalist fallacy, representing the politics of the felt need. American conservatives may agree with this assessment but they can hardly say so. For Oakeshott, the English Revolution is good, the American Revolution is bad. Jefferson was inspired by Locke. The Americans and the French drew radical conclusions from natural law which for Oakeshott were bad because they were subversive of the existing order, but then Burke also relied on natural law to draw conservative deductions, which were good because they supported the existing order (and which were also appealing to slaveowners threatened by the emancipation of their human property). In this regard, Oakeshott argues that there are limits to the rights of ownership: for example, slavery is proscribed “because the right to own another man could never be a right enjoyed equally by every member of the society.” Of course, slavery was pretty much universal in antiquity given the tacit understanding (part of the ‘traditional manner of behavior’ that only free citizens counted as members of society.
Oakeshott’s elegant essays published in 1963 are not enough to stop the shift of the pendulum back to the left. [At the time, the reviewer was hopeful that the pendulum would shift to a middle ground that borrows from both left and right, in particular a non-totalitarian socialism. He cites the example of the nineteenth century compromise of Jacobinism and non-Jacobinism in liberal thought.] However, the intellectual expression of a shift to the left will be affected by the need to take account of these well-written pieces. No reaction is ever completely lost, any more than a revolution can be erased. We can only hope that with the next turn of the screw the direction of politics will be upwards conserving the lessons of the past. Oakeshott’s work should force radicals to examine their own beliefs and where necessary restate them. These essays serve the essential function of seeing to it that the unending dialectic of left and right stays as close as possible to the political facts. (1963)… (más)