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ECPR

WORKSHOP: THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL CONCEPTS

14TH

-19TH

APRIL 2000

COPENHAGEN

DENMARK

THE IDEA OF THE CIVIL CONDITION IN ENGLISH POLITICAL

THOUGHT: MICHAEL OAKESHOTT ON HISTORY AND THEORY

PETER LASSMAN

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

BIRMINGHAM B15 2TT

UNITED KINGDOM

P.LASSMAN@BSS1.BHAM.AC.UK

0121-414-6224

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The idea of the civil condition became a central concept in the later political

philosophy of the English theorist Michael Oakeshott. In elaborating this concept

Oakeshott illuminated a topic which is of central significance for a major component

of an English (or, perhaps, one ought to say British) tradition of political thought. At

the same time it is apparent that in terms of the intellectual sources of this idea

Oakeshott was showing that traditions of political discourse, although clearly

possessing distinct national characteristics, ought not to be thought of in isolation

from those of neighbouring traditions. On closer inspection Oakeshott’s concept of

the civil condition, which is often criticised for being excessively insular in character,

has a distinctly European dimension.

The significance of Oakeshott’s thought here is that he is one of the few modern

political theorists who has reflected deeply upon the meaning of the concept of

‘politics’. At the same time he has made it a central element in his account such that

consideration of this topic can be successful only if it encompasses a history of the

concept. In this way Oakeshott’s approach has many similarities to the

Begriffsgeschichte of Koselleck. This is not surprising in light of the fact that

Oakeshott has been influenced by the Idealist tradition in both its German and British

versions.

An essential aspect of Oakeshott’s style (not method) is to trace the history of the

usage of a concept in order to show both its inherent complexity and, often, its

internal tensions and contradictions. Of course, from a strict Skinnerian point of view

there is something suspect about an operation of this kind. But it can be argued that

even if one disagrees with the outcome of particular investigations carried out in the

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Oakeshottian style it does have the merit of not losing sight of the ‘perennial’

questions or, at the least, the ‘remarkable continuity of the vocabulary’ of politics.

Oakeshott, who was originally trained as a historian, is especially interesting because

throughout his work there is a concern with the nature and autonomy of what he refers

to as ‘modes of understanding’. There is no political mode of understanding as such.

The appropriate modes of understanding here are either historical or philosophical.

Oakeshott has been concerned to ask two kinds of questions from a political

philosophical standpoint. The first concerns the nature of political beliefs, concepts,

and political philosophy itself. The second is concerned with our understanding of the

character of the modern statei.

The Civil Condition

The central concept in Oakeshott’s later work is that of ‘the civil condition’. This is

also referred to as ‘societas’. Although this is not a specifically English concept it

does seem to have a particular resonance with much of what one might call the

English tradition of political discourse. Of course, one must not overlook the obvious

fact that Oakeshott himself is English and, more controversially perhaps, that one

could argue that he is, more to the point, a representative of a particularly English

style of Conservative political thoughtii. The question of the intrinsically political

character of writing about the history and philosophy of political concepts is a

question that will be discussed later.

The most detailed discussion of the concept of the civil condition appears in

Oakeshott’s major work ‘On Human Conduct’iii

. The format of this book is self-

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consciously modelled on that of Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’. As with Hobbes,

whose Leviathan begins with ‘Of Man’ before it discusses ‘Of Commonwealth’, the

first of the three sections into which ‘On Human Conduct’ is organised is concerned

with the ‘Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct’. This is followed by the

section ‘On the Civil Condition’ which, in turn, leads to the third and final section

‘On the Character of a Modern European State’.

Oakeshott defines the civil condition in a variety of ways. To begin with he makes it

clear that the civil condition or civil relationship is an idealisation. ‘It is a certain

mode of association, one among others. It necessarily excludes relationships

contradictory of itself (as friendship excludes enmity); but while it is distinct from

relationships contrary to itself, it does not exclude persons who enjoy those

relationships’. This, for Oakeshott, is ‘the relationship of civility’iv

. According to

Oakeshott this particular concept has many antecedents but there have been very few

satisfactory attempts to capture its essential properties. The temptation has always

been to allow considerations of contingent historical circumstances to detract from the

necessary theoretical task. Oakeshott refers to Aristotle, Hobbes, and Hegel as the

three most significant theorists who have been able to see most clearly what is

involved in reflection upon the nature of the civil condition.

In defining the idea of the civil condition Oakeshott points to its most general

features. To begin with it is a relationship between human beings. This might sound

obvious. The point here is that the concept of a human being requires some theoretical

elaboration. For Oakeshott human beings are to be understood in terms of certain

‘postulates’. Human beings are free, intelligent agents ‘disclosing and enacting

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themselves by responding to their understood contingent situations’. Furthermore, it is

important to recognise that a human relationship ‘is not a “process” made up of

functionally or causally related components; it is intelligent relationship enjoyed only

in virtue of having been learned and understood or misunderstood’v.

‘Civitas’, Oakeshott’s term for the ideal of the civil condition’ is, therefore, to be

understood as ‘an engagement of human conduct’. This means that cives are ‘not

neurophysiological organisms, genetic characters, psychological egos or components

of a “social process”, but “free” agents whose responses to one another’s actions and

utterances is one of understanding; and civil association is not organic, evolutionary,

teleological, functional, or syndromic relationship but an understood relationship of

intelligent agents’vi

.

Oakeshott’s thought is especially interesting for the way in which it is concerned to

show how an elucidation of the nature of politics and the character of the modern

European state is inseparable from an understanding of the history of political

thought.

Human Conduct and The Concept of a Practice

The argument concerning the nature of the civil condition rests upon the argument

that is set out most clearly in Oakeshott’s work in the first section of ‘On Human

Conduct’. Here the key concept is that of a practice. For Oakeshott human activity

cannot be understood apart from the recognition of individual freedom. In effect

Oakeshott is working with the categorial distinction between the theoretical

engagements of the interpretive understanding of what he calls human ‘goings-on’

and the causal explanation of ‘processes’. In away that is similar to the Anglo-

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American tradition of Wittgensteinian philosophy Oakeshott sees so-called sciences

of human conduct such as sociology and psychology to be bound up in the conceptual

confusion brought about by attempting to combine both modes of inquiry.

In order to understand the reasoning behind this concept of civil association and the

linked idea of politics it is important to see that the starting point for Oakeshott’s

theorising is the postulate of individual human freedom. Human action cannot be

recognised as being human without the recognition of its intrinsic freedom. The

central component of human freedom here is ‘the attribution and the recognition of

reflective consciousness’vii

.

Conduct between human beings is to be understood in terms of the concept of a

‘practice’.

The Concept of Politics.

The point of this conceptual elaboration is to prepare the way for an argument

concerning the way in which politics ought properly to be understood. Politics,

according to Oakeshott’s account, is an activity or set of activities that are best

understood as belonging uniquely to the civil condition. The proper use of the concept

of politics is only in terms of the public affairs (respublica) of civil association.

More importantly and also more controversially ‘politics is categorically

distinguished from ruling’viii

. The reasoning here is that although both politics and

ruling are to be understood as activities politics is an activity that is concerned

primarily with argument and persuasion. Nor is political activity to be identified with

particular persons, places, or occasions. Politics is a ‘focus of attention and a subject

of discourse’.

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The attempt to delimit the concept of politics is clearly bound up with the

interpretation of the civil condition. In fact, the argument is much stronger: the

activity of politics is to be understood as belonging uniquely to the civil condition. As

a defining characteristic of the civil condition is the absence of any common purpose

in terms of which individuals could be regarded as members of a joint enterprise then

it is not permissible for them to make managerial decisions concerning the satisfaction

of common wants. Given this account it follows that use of the word ‘politics’ to refer

to the activity of deliberation or negotiation among agents who are associated in the

pursuit of a common purpose is misleading. Furthermore, where there is a contingent

engagement which could be referred to as ‘politics’ within such forms of association

it is to be regarded as being a derivative usage.

Politics is seen as possessing a public character in a sense that it is unique. Political

engagement is ‘explicitly and exclusively concerned with respublica’ix

. When looked

at in these terms politics is to be firmly distinguished from ruling. Oakeshott argues

that although we may find deliberation and argument in the practice of ruling these

activities do not play the same role as they do in the practice of politics. Deliberation

within the practice of ruling is concerned with the contingent interpretation of law and

not with the desirability of its prescriptions. Furthermore, Oakeshott maintains that

one cannot qualify the concept of ‘rule’ with the adjective ‘political’. It does not, he

argues, ‘identify a particular kind or manner of ruling, nor does it distinguish a certain

sort of constitution of a ruling authority or a certain procedure for constituting or

recognizing the validity of an office of authority’x. Which is not to say that rulers may

not participate in politics. But, when they do so, it is not as rulers but as participants in

civil association.

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Interestingly, Oakeshott sees the widespread confusion between politics and ruling to

be derived to a large extent from the inheritance of the Aristotelian vocabulary. Here

there is no clear distinction made between the two concepts; in fact there is no clear

cut distinction between the ‘political’ and the ‘civil’. According to Oakeshott, the

concept of politike refers here to the art of caring for and bettering the public concern

of the polis. The distinction between this activity of caring for the polis and the

practice of ruling is reflected in the ambiguous concept of the politikos that seems to

refer to both. The concept of politeia is deeply ambiguous too. It refers to both the

ways in which citizens are related to each other, the mode human association, as well

as the specific nature of the rule of a politikos that is, for example, to be distinguished

from the rule of a master over his slaves. It also refers to a particular form of

constitution of the polis. This is, for Oakeshott, a basic source of the conceptual

confusion involved in our use of the concept of ‘politics’. An interesting example of

this confusion is to be found in Sir John Fortescue’s ‘On the Governance of

England’xi

. Fortescue was the most important English political thinker of the fifteenth

century. Fortescue saw the English state as a ‘dominion political and royal’

(dominium politicum et regale). The key to Fortescue’s idea of politics lies in his

argument that there ‘are two kinds of kingdoms, one of which is a lordship called in

Latin dominium regale, and the other is called dominium politicum et regale. And

they differ in that the first king may rule his people by such laws as he makes himself

and therefore he may set upon them taxes and other impositions, such as he wills

himself, without their assent. The second king may not rule his people by other laws

than such as they assent to and therefore he may set upon them no impositions

without their assent’xii

. The second preferred form is one in which the king rules but

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he does so assisted by ‘the wisdom and counsel of many’. The significance of this

usage, for Oakeshott, is that it lead to a further conceptual confusion whereby the term

‘political’ is used both to vaguely specify a form of ruling and, at the same time, to

commend or denigrate. The confusion is even worse, it is argued, when we qualify

‘politics’ with a term taken from the vocabulary of ruling. ‘Democratic politics’

would be such a confused usage.

It follows that the concept of ‘politics’ is not be confused with the vocabulary of

authority. The adjective ‘political’ cannot ‘meaningfully qualify the expressions

which specify the constitutional shape of an office of authority, the quality of that

authority or the more general beliefs in terms of which such an office may be alleged

or acknowledged to have authority’. If the term ‘civil’ or ‘corporate’ were substituted

for that of ‘political’ the meaning of such expressions as ‘political democracy’ or

‘political institutions’ would be much clearerxiii

. Furthermore, it is in keeping with this

distinction between the activities of ruling and of politics that the language of politics

is also not to be confused with the vocabulary of power.

According to Oakeshott’s account when we use the terms ‘politics’ and ‘political’ in

connection to the modern European state we ought not, primarily, to be referring to

the languages of either power or authority. The most appropriate location for these

concepts is in discourse concerning the ‘engagements of governments’. Political

discourse is understood here to be concerned with that which is to be authoritatively

prescribed. The actual substantive content or character of such discourse itself derives

from that mode of association that is attributed to a state. If a state is understood as a

civil association or societas then office holders are understood as guardians of the

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rules or laws that constitute the terms of that association. According to this

interpretation ‘politics’ is to be understood as deliberation about the desirability of

these laws and rules, including possible changes, in terms of current ideas of ‘civility’.

Although those who occupy offices of rule will be expected to participate in

deliberation this is in no way a necessary precondition for political engagement. The

significance of this account of ‘politics’ becomes clearer when it is connected to the

idea of the inherent duality in our conception of the modern European State.

If we accept Oakeshott’s account the conceptual confusion concerning our concept of

‘politics’ and the ‘political’ runs quite deep. The argument here is that we must

separate conceptually an office of authority, an apparatus of power, and a mode of

association and recognise that each possesses its own appropriate vocabulary.

In making these distinctions between the separate activities of politics and ruling

Oakeshott is making a similar point to that made by Gallie in his remarks upon ‘the

essential duality of politics’xiv

. In his important thesis concerning ‘essentially

contested concepts’ Gallie argued that there are concepts that refer to ‘ a number of

organised or semi-organised human activities’. The ‘basic fact about them’ is that ‘we

soon see that there is no one use of any of them which can be set up as its generally

accepted and therefore correct or standard use’xv

. It follows that the concept of

‘politics’ is one such concept. The ‘essential contestability’ or ‘essential duality’ of

the concepts of ‘politics’ and of ‘the political’ resides in the fact that, according to

Gallie, our concept of ‘politics’ is ‘irreducibly two-sided or Janus-faced’. The basic

problem with the classical tradition of political theory is that it has tended to assume

that our concept of ‘politics’ is unified and that, as a consequence, there is no

fundamental barrier to the creation of a unified theory.xvi

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Unfortunately for those who advocate such a view the unavoidable ambiguity

embedded in our conceptual vocabulary prevents this. The ambiguity that is being

referred to here is the following: we use the words ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ to refer

to at least two sets of distinct activities, relations, and problems. These are the

relations and problems that occur between rulers and ruled, on the one hand, and on

the other we refer to a series of activities which, while they may be associated with

ruling are also applicable to forms of association that take place beyond that

relationship. The concept of ‘politics’ refers to both that kind of ruling that is

generally exercised by states and to what Gallie calls 'politicking'. The latter term

encompasses such activities as competitive claims of criticism and complaint,

bargaining, debating, converting, squaring, and fixing. Of course, the two instances of

these different senses of the concept might coincide but, and this is the important

point, they can be, and often are, radically opposed to each other. The significant

contrast here is with a state understood as a universitas or enterprise association. Here

‘politics’ takes the form of deliberation about managerial decisions to deploy

resources in pursuit of a common purpose. It is at this point that it becomes clear that

the full significance of this account of 'politics’ and ‘the political’ can only be

appreciated in the additional context of an interpretation of the nature of the modern

European State.

This interpretation of the concepts of ‘politics’ and of ‘the political’ has also been

expressed in terms of another distinction. This is the distinction that Oakeshott had

made in an earlier essay between ‘the politics of faith’ and the ‘politics of scepticism’.

It is in making the distinction between the two modes of association in this manner

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that the proposed affinity between the idea of ‘civil association’ as societas and a

specifically English style of political thought and practice is maintained.

Political scepticism from the late sixteenth century onwards is characterised by the

belief that human projects, especially when the product of large-scale design, were

unlikely to be successful. Although there are many European contributors to the

mainstream of modern sceptical thought it is Oakeshott’s contention that English

political thought and practice added an essential ingredient. This ingredient had its

origin in the medieval style of government. What this style offered was an idea of

governing that was framed in terms of the practice of courts of law. Government was

understood as a judicial activity. The consequence was that ‘on any reading of its

office and competence, a court of law is not the kind of institution which is

appropriate to take the initiative in organising the perfection of mankind; where

governing is understood as the judicial provision of remedies for wrongs suffered, a

sceptical style of politics obtrudes’ xvii

. This style of government is shown most

clearly in the history and character of the English Parliament. The Parliament of the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was understood as a court of law and was itself

modelled upon the courts of law that already existed. As the sceptical style was able

to develop upon this foundation it appears that ‘England has been peculiarly the home

of this understanding of government’. This style of politics is marked by its ‘rejection

of the belief that governing is the imposition of a comprehensive pattern of activity

upon a community and a consequent suspicion of government invested with

overwhelming power, and a recognition of the contingency of every political

arrangement and the unavoidable arbitrariness of most’xviii

.

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An essential component of the early distinction between the politics of faith and the

politics of scepticism was the recognition of the distinction between politics and

religion. The work of Hume and Burke, in particular, as well as that of Tom Paine

was concerned to remove religious ‘enthusiasm’ from politics. However, it has to be

recognised that the problem of the relationship between politics and religion is one

that can never be solved. There is a constant tension between the politics of faith and

the politics of scepticism. What is it that the politics of scepticism seeks to defend?

The answer that Oakeshott sees embedded in English political thought and practice is

the defence of the value of peace and civil order or civil association. It was in

eighteenth century England that a recognisably modern form of political scepticism

first emerged. One important aspect of the general acceptance, at the time, of a

sceptical style was the recognition that foreign policy could not be carried on in te

manner of a religious crusade.

The Modern European State

Oakeshott is concerned to emphasise the remarkable novelty of the modern European

state. He argues that this form of association that we now recognise as the states of

modern Europe was ‘the outcome of human choices, but none the product of a

design’xix

. The history of modern Europe can be looked at as ‘the story of the

emergence of a novel mode of association, of the exploration of the ambiguities of its

character and of the reflective engagement to understand it’xx

. It is this ‘reflective

engagement’ to understand the puzzling character of the modern state that is at the

centre of Oakeshott’s enquiry. Furthermore, in Oakeshott’s view we are able to

recognise the existence of a continuous story of attempts to develop a truly theoretical

understanding of the experience of living in a modern state.

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The central part of Oakeshott’s argument rests upon the idea that two concepts have

emerged from the fifteenth century onwards, in terms of which the state has been

understood. These are the concepts of societas and universitas. These two concepts

were in use in the late Middle Ages and were put to work in order to make sense of

the new emerging reality of the state. The problem, however, from Oakeshott’s point

of view, is that the precision in the initial contrast drawn by these two concepts has

been lost. The addition of the concept of ‘society’ into modern political discourse has

only added to the confusion.

Oakeshott, however, wants to deploy these two concepts in order to construct an

argument about the tensions involved in our contemporary understanding of the

nature of the state. The modern state ‘may perhaps be understood as an unresolved

tension between the two irreconcilable dispositions represented by the words societas

and universitas’xxi

. In fact, Oakeshott argues, this tension was recognised with the

emergence of the state when it was often confusingly identified as a societas cum

universitate.

In early modern Europe the two concepts of societas and universitas presented

themselves as aids for reflection upon the emerging reality of the European state. The

difficulty here is that they point in two different directions.

What does Oakeshott mean by these terms? He identifies a societas as body of ‘agents

who, by choice or circumstance, are related to one another so as to compose an

identifiable association of a certain sort. The tie which joins them, and in respect of

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which each recognizes himself to be socius, is not that of an engagement in an

enterprise to pursue a common substantive purpose or to promote a common interest,

but that of loyalty to one another, the conditions of which may achieve the formality

denoted by the kindred word “legality”’xxii

. The essential point here is that a societas

is understood in terms of a body of formal rules rather than in terms of a substantive

relationship with a common programme of action. Speakers of a common language

constitute a societas as they share a body of rules but the language itself has no

purpose nor does it direct speakers in what to say. Although the activity of ruling is

not essential for the constitution of a societas this concept does, Oakeshott argues,

offer a way of understanding the modern European state. However, this understanding

is most appropriate when the state is governed by the rule of law. The conditions of

association within a societas are best specified by a system of law.

In contrast to the idea of an association understood as a societas Oakeshott argues that

it is possible to see another way of interpreting the nature of the European state. As

with the notion of societas the origin of this idea is to be found in the work of the

Roman jurists. Their idea of universitas is presented as the contrasting concept to that

of societas. A universitas is understood initially in terms of a partnership of persons

which is itself understood in terms of the analogy of a natural person. The basic point

here that Oakeshott wants to make is that the mode of association understood in terms

of universitas is an association of persons organised with an identifiable purpose in

mind. An association of persons organised as a universitas exists in virtue of its

pursuit of a substantive purpose or end. It also means that as such an association was

constituted in terms of a common purpose those who joined were making a deliberate

choice to pursue this purpose.

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The significance of the legal fiction of regarding such an association of persons

organised in terms of the pursuit of a common purpose as a persona ficta is that it

offered a means for the understanding of the emergence of the state in early modern

Europe. A state understood as a universitas is ‘an association of intelligent agents who

recognize themselves to be engaged upon the joint enterprise of seeking the

satisfaction of some common substantive want; a many become one on account of

their common engagement and jointly seized of complete control over the manner in

which it is pursued’xxiii

.

It is important to note that the interpretation of the development of reflection upon the

development of the European State in terms of the contrast between these two

concepts is not a straightforward affair. The texts of political writers do not line up,

for the most part, either for or against one of these two concepts, in a clear-cut

manner. Furthermore, there is no clear connection between positions taken on this

question and positions taken on other related issues. Here, for example, the idea of the

derivation of civil authority in terms of a contract or covenant can be used equally in

support of an interpretation of the state as a either a societas or a universitas. Thomas

Hobbes, according to Oakeshott’s interpretation, used this idea in order to

demonstrate that the civil association ought to be seen as a societas. It is there to

create and maintain a sovereign civil authority but not to unite its subjects in pursuit

of a common substantive enterprise. However, this notion of the social contract could

equally be used to argue for a vision of the state as a body of persons united upon a

common enterprise.

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What is the History of Political Thought a History of?

Oakeshott’s account of the character of the modern European state is itself an essay in

the history of political ideas. However, in terms of his own idea of historiography this

essay is ‘a backward-looking search for origins, a developmentalist narrative whose

purpose, stated at the outset, is to derive the moral relationships that ground the civil

constitution of modern European states’xxiv

. It is an interpretation that has implications

for our understanding of the nature of the history of political thought

In the interpretation of politics and the political advanced here an understanding of the

work of Hobbes plays a central role. For Oakeshott Hobbes’s Leviathan ‘is the

greatest, perhaps the sole, masterpiece of political philosophy written in the English

language’xxv

. In considering the history of political theory or political thought

Oakeshott makes an important but often overlooked point. It might seem obvious but

when we consider the history of thinking about politics we ought to recognise that we

are dealing with several different and distinct styles of thought. Reflection about

politics can take place on three main levels. Political reflection ‘may remain on the

level of the determination of means, or it may strike out for the consideration of ends.

Its inspiration may be directly practical, te modifications of the arrangements of a

political order in accordance with the perception of an immediate benefit; or it may be

practical, but less directly so, guided by general ideas. Or again, springing from an

experience of political life, it may seek a generalisation of that experience in a

doctrine. And reflection is apt to flow from one level to another in an unbroken

movement, following the mood of the thinker. Political philosophy may be

understood to be what occurs when this movement of reflection takes a certain

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direction and achieves a certain level, its characteristic being the relation of political

life, and te values and purposes pertaining to it, to the entire conception of the world

that belongs to a civilization’xxvi

.

Thus there is reflection that takes place among those who are directly engaged in

political activity or in governing. This is ‘political thought in the service of political

action’. Such reflection takes place within an existing framework of methods and

institutions. It is the kind of political thought that we might find, for example, in

political speeches and in state papers.

However, there is a more reflective style of political thought. Here we try to discern

principles and general ideas that might explain or justify political activity. This is a

level of thinking in which such terms as Liberalism, Socialism, and Democracy are

used. Most of the political thought that the historian of political ideas deals with is of

this kind. This is the style of thinking that Oakeshott refers to as an ‘abridgement’ of

political conduct into general principles. He is, of course, sceptical about how much

such ‘abridgements’ can offer in the way of enlightenment.

The third and much rarer form of political thinking is that represented by what is

normally referred to as ‘political philosophy’. Hence, the significance of Hobbes’

Leviathan which is a perfect representative of this form of theorising. Of course, the

three levels of political thinking are not always separable from each other but they are

concerned with different kinds of questions and they offer different kinds of answers.

The point is that as different levels of thinking they ought not to be confused with

each other. Clearly, for Oakeshott, the third kind of theorising is the most interesting

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and important. The reason for this is that it is only at this level that we are concerned

to reflect upon the place of political activity within the general map of human activity

in generalxxvii

. Our political ideas, therefore, do not exist in a separate compartment

from the rest of our ideas. The meaning of those ideas always lies in the way in which

the unity of text and context is resolved from their separate existence. This form of

reflection has a continual history within European civilization. The proper context for

understanding and appreciating a work such as Hobbes’ Leviathan is, therefore, the

history of political philosophy conceived in this manner.

Characteristically, Oakeshott argues that political philosophers ‘take a sombre view of

the human situation: they deal in darkness. Human life in their writings appears,

generally, not as a feast or even as a journey, but as a predicament; and the link

between politics and eternity is the contribution the political order is conceived as

making to the deliverance of mankind. Even those whose thought is most remote from

the violent contrast of dark and light (Aristotle, for example) do not altogether avoid

this disposition of mind. And some political philosophers may even be suspected of

spreading darkness in order to make their light more acceptable.xxviii

’

The unity of the history of political philosophy reveals an internal variety that divides

into three traditions. The reason for this is that political reflection at this level is itself

following what Oakeshott discerns as the three main patterns of philosophical

reflection in European intellectual history. The first of these traditions so of thought is

organised around the concepts of Reason and Nature. The second is that in which the

central concepts are Will and Artifice. The third tradition ids that of the Rational Will.

The context of works of political philosophy is, to be more specific, one of these three

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intellectual master traditions. Oakeshott does not provide much detail about the

content of these traditions. However, the suggestion that Plato’s Republic is a clear

example of the first kind; that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is the best example of the

third; and that Hobbes’ Leviathan of the second.

Reviewing Skinner’s ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’ Oakeshott

observes that this work contains two distinct exercises of the historical imagination.

The first is to give an account of late medieval and early modern writings on

‘politics’. The other is, contrary to what one might have been lead to expect from

Skinner’s earlier methodological writings, ‘a design to use these writing “to illuminate

a more general historical theme”. This theme is the emergence of ‘the main elements

of a recognizably modern concept of the State’xxix

. The first account is concerned with

texts that are regarded as responses to claims made with ‘respect of the office of ruler,

of its authority and of its occupation by a person or persons of a certain kind, which

occasionally spilt over into claims in respect of the character of the association

ruledxxx

’ . These texts are generally composed of claims and justifications expressed

in moral, legal, or theological terms. These are the kinds of texts that Skinner calls

‘ideological’. However, the problem here is that such texts, important as they are, do

not constitute the whole of political thought. It leaves out both that kind of reflection

concerned with administration as well as what we can properly call philosophical

reflection. This kind of reflection upon politics is not concerned, or at least, not

primarily concerned with, justifications or criticisms of the ‘circumstantial claims of

rulers’. Thus it appears that when we encounter political thinkers such as Bodin or

Marsiglio who achieve the level of philosophical reflection in their work Skinner’s

21

strategy is to ignore this aspect of their work. In short Oakeshott questions the method

according to which we read the relevant texts as always being no more than attempts

to solve an immediate and pressing problem. Such attempts are made, according to

this account, within the terms offered by the prevailing vocabularies and their

attached stock of ideas. A major objection here is that the authors under consideration

often understood one another, not in historical, but in philosophical terms.

The second theme in Skinner’s ‘Foundations’ is more ambitious. Here the aim is to

infer ‘an overall direction in the intellectual adventures of these writers’. He wants to

show that within the period covered there was a substantial development in political

thought so that by the end of the sixteenth century a concept of the state had emerged

that we would recognise as modern. Skinner’s claim is that there was a definite

movement from an idea of ‘a ruler maintaining his state’ to that of ‘a form of political

power separate from both the ruler and the ruled and constituting the supreme

political power within a defined territory’. Oakeshott is highly suspicious of this

central claim. It seems to both a highly controversial interpretation of the available

evidence and, at the same time, to be doing more than one would expect on the basis

of the arguments set out earlier in Skinner’s own methodological essays. Is Skinner,

for example, arguing the political thinkers of the thirteenth century set out to create

this new understanding of the state? Oakeshott offers an alternative historical sketch.

According to this interpretation the idea of the state that Skinner sees as emerging

throughout Europe during the period under consideration was far from being such an

innovation but was regarded more as an eccentricity. Certainly, such a view of the

state has never found a comfortable home in English political thought. The

controversial nature of Skinner’s claim is evident insofar as he argues that the

22

political writers with whom he is dealing can be seen to be ‘laying the ideological

foundations’ of new concept of the state. The point here that Oakeshott wants to make

is that it cannot be doubted that such a concept of the state did emerge. But, as he puts

it ‘floated around modern Europe’, it is more than a little anachronistic to think of it in

terms of the metaphor of a construction erected upon a foundation. It is more accurate,

in Oakeshott’s terms, to see these political thinkers as ‘casuistical moralists and

lawyers fumbling for circumstantial arguments to support their clients against claims

old and new, which stood in the way or threatened their independence’. There is a

clear distinction that ought to be made here between ‘the analytical components of a

concept and the devious and often logically irrelevant historical circumstances which

mediated its emergencexxxi

’. In contrast to Skinner’s account Oakeshott,

mischievously, offers what one would expect in terms of a more historically nuanced

interpretation. Rather than ‘foundations being laid’ what we see is ‘not the emergence

of a single “recognisably modern concept of the state’ but a variety of disparate

conceptions, continuously resuscitated and formulated in later times’xxxii

. In keeping

with the philosophical interpretation put forward in ‘On Human Conduct’ Oakeshott’s

version is one in which the states of modern Europe display a much more various and

‘ramshackle’ structure.

The basic point that needs to be made here is that Oakeshott is both presenting an

interpretation of an English tradition of political thought from a position that is within

that tradition. This complicates matters because it raises the question that is at the

heart of his whole approach. Put simply the question is whether it is possible to

achieve an understanding of political concepts and ideas that is not itself political.

Oakeshott himself is clearly animated by the desire to escape from the

23

i Bhiku Parekh, ‘Oakeshott’s Theory of Civil Association’, Ethics, vol. 106 , 1995, 158-186

ii For example, Anthony Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection. The Religious and secular Traditions

off Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott. (London: Faber and Faber, 1978) iii

Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1991) iv Oakeshott, p 108

v Oakeshott, p 112

vi Oakeshott, p 112

vii Oakeshott, p 32

viii Oakeshott, p 166

ix Oakeshott, p 163

x Oakeshott, p 167

xi Sir John Fortescue, The Governance of England (1471). A translation into modern English can be

found in Sir John Fortescue, On te Laws and Governance of England (ed.) Shelley Lockwood,

Cambridge University Press, 1997 xii

Fortescue, 83 xiii

Oakeshott, ‘The Vocabulary of a Modern European State’, Political Studies, Vol. 23,4, 1975, p 412 xiv

W.B.Gallie, ‘An Ambiguity in the Idea of Politics and its Practical Implications’, Political Studies,

vol. 24, 4, 1973 pp 442-452 xv

W.B.Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, Chatto and Windus, London, 1964, p

157.The original essay upon which this chapter is based is in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

vol. 66, 1956. xvi

There is an extended debate concerning Gallie’s claim of ‘essential contestability. One of the few

examples where the idea has been explicitly used with reference to ‘politics’ is W.E. Connolly, The

Terms of Political Discourse, D.C.Heath, Lexington, 1974 pp 9-44 xvii

Oakeshott, ‘The Fortunes of Scepticism’, The Times Literary Supplement, March 15th

1996, p 14 xviii

Oakeshott, ‘The Fortunes of Scepticism’, p 14 xix

Oakeshott, 185 xx

Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Vocabulary of a Modern European State’, Political Studies, 23,1975, p 319 xxi

Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 201 xxii

Oakeshott, 201 xxiii

Oakeshott, 205 xxiv

T.W.Smith, ‘Michael Oakeshott on History, Practice and Political Theory’, History of Political

Thought, 27, 4, 1996, p 611 xxv

Oakeshott, ‘Introduction’ to Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’ (1651), 1946, p viii xxvi

Oakeshott, Introduction to Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’, pp viii-1x xxvii

Oakeshott, Morality and Politics in Modern Europe. The Harvard Lectures. Yale, 1993, p 14 xxviii

Oakeshott, ‘Introduction’ to Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’ , p x xxix

Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, The Historical Journal, vol. 23, no 2 ,

1980, p 449 xxx

Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, p 449 xxxi

Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, p 452 xxxii

Oakeshott, ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’, p 453