Accepting the World’s Imperfections: Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism

The Meaning of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism. Corey Abel, ed. Exeter, U.K.: Imprint Academic, 2010.

Michael Oakeshott has always been a bit outside the mainstream of the conservative movement. This is true despite the fact that his essay “On Being Conservative” often shows up in anthologies of conservative thought or collections on “ideals and ideologies.” Ironically, a major thrust of Oakeshott’s essay is its objection to all forms of ideology as corruptions of the complex and rich character of human experience. Ideologies, for Oakeshott, were a species of Rationalist thought. They aimed at artificially ordering the complexity of the world into a form that anxious human beings might find more palatable. Like Eric Voegelin, Oakeshott viewed ideologies as attempts to escape the tensions of existence. In a certain sense, then, to call Oakeshott’s thought “conservative” is to court danger; for it implies that some sort of common understanding of conservatism might apply rather straightforwardly to Oakeshott.  It does not.

The essays in this book, written by Oakeshott scholars–both senior and junior, cover a variety of topics ranging from Oakeshott’s religion to his particularly “English” character, to comparisons with other thinkers, and finally to his reception among American conservatives. A lucid introduction by editor Corey Abel sets up the collection nicely. The message of the book is succinctly summed up in its title: the “Meanings” of Michael Oakeshott’s conservatism. This emphasis is indeed crucial for Oakeshott’s conservatism is so unusual and so multifaceted that it defies a single definition or explanation.

It has a number of different “meanings,” depending on which aspect of his thought one begins with–modality, poetry, politics, and so on. A reader will look in vain for anything resembling Russell Kirk’s “Canons of Conservatism,” and will be puzzled by the sometimes radical character of certain aspects of Oakeshott’s thought. His comment, for instance, that “there is no such thing as human nature” appears deliberately provocative, especially to those conservatives for whom an identifiable, shared human nature would seem to be fundamental. It is thus for good reason that American conservatives, who tend to be more positively disposed toward dogma in both religion and politics, have always been suspicious of Oakeshott.

According to Ken McIntyre’s essay, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute debated his inclusion in their recent encyclopedia of conservatism.  Oakeshott was after all rather socially unconventional for his day. He married three times and was known for his “special affection” for women.  He was thus not the faithful husband and father that many conservatives would consider part of an integral personality. Furthermore, his views on religion were decidedly unorthodox, though never hostile. Several excellent essays at the beginning of the present book address this difficult aspect of Oakeshott’s thought, arguing that religion is crucial to understanding his view of politics.

What then were the essential components of Oakeshott’s conservatism? Several of the essays in this book highlight Oakeshott’s view that politics is, and ought to be, a limited activity: i.e., that all of life should not be conducted in the mode of “the political.” A tendency to politicize everything was prevalent in his day, but it appears to be even more so in ours. Politics has become for many of us the litmus test for friendship and association, it has infiltrated public and private university education, and it is preached in many churches. Oakeshott would have seen this emphasis on politics as a flattening of experience, a denial of what he called the “modes” of experience–which included poetry, art, history, and science, among others. His philosophy as a whole is, in Timothy Fuller’s words, a revelation of “the multidimensional character of human experience.” One major lesson to be drawn from Oakeshott’s work is that, like Hume before him, Oakeshott found meaning outside  the world of politics. Both Hume and Oakeshott were skeptics who believed that social life could not be perfected in this world, and that our “Rationalist” tendency to think it can was a dangerous mistake.

Second, although Oakeshott’s conservatism was skeptical, it was no harsh, ascetic skepticism. It was particularly English, as George Feaver’s essay in the collection so eloquently points out. It was expressly traditional and rooted in a particular culture. Feaver does not imply that Oakeshott’s idea of conservatism could have meaning only in an English context, but situating it geographically helps readers to understand what Oakeshott meant when he spoke (as he often did) of traditions and “practices.” English life possessed a continuity that many other societies did not.  Its character, writes Feaver, was marked by “a deeply ingrained patriotism and sense of place, a habitual preference for the practical over the theoretical, an inbred regard for context in advance of generalization, and an abiding love of the English language.” All of this is evident in Oakeshott’s thought, though it does not of course determine it.

The third point is related to the English character of his thought, and it is perhaps one of the most conventionally conservative aspects of his thinking. Oakeshott saw that authentic engagement in a tradition could only be cultivated over successive generations. It required an investment in the past and particularly in liberal education, so that one might know with some clarity what was worthy of enjoyment. Moreover, the activity of politics, a la Aristotle, was also something that ought to be conducted by those who had experience and education–not by the young, who were far too full of ideals and hopes to govern soberly and effectively.  Oakeshott would have seen President Obama as the quintessential Rationalist.

Although much of Oakeshott’s corpus focused on what is worthy of enjoyment–again, he emphasized the multiple modes of experience–he was also a discerning critic of much he saw around him in modern life. This critical stance would seem essential to being “healthily” conservative: to enjoy what is available to be enjoyed but also to maintain enough distance from the present to see and identify the corruptions within it. Especially toward the end of his life, he began to see that much in modern society tended toward, in a memorable phrase, “barbaric affluence,” a point highlighted in Ivo Mosley’s essay in this collection. Education, Oakeshott thought, increasingly leaned in the direction of socialization and utility, narrowing human possibilities into the channels of profit and conformity. Mosley’s exposition of Oakeshott’s views on this situation is short and well worth reading.

The heart of Oakeshott’s conservatism thus lay in both recognition and acceptance of the world’s imperfections. He hoped that we might see and appreciate the goods worthy of enjoyment, and that in addition we might know how to enjoy them. This was difficult, in his view, because it required that we put off or ignore our anxiety and aspirations for the future and engage fully in our present lives. At the same time, he thought there was much worth criticizing in modernity, and he did not fail to do so. The Meanings of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism brings out all of this complexity quite vividly.It deserves to be read carefully by all those who have an interest in Michael Oakeshott–and perhaps by all those who are interested in modern conservatism.

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