Michael Oakeshott Philosopher of Skepticism: Conservative or Liberal?

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Agostino Carrino
Keyword(s):  
Michael Oakeshott

Appropriating Hobbes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
The World ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

The aim of this book is not to trace the changing fortunes of the interpretation of one of the most sophisticated and famous political philosophers who ever lived, but to glimpse here and there his place in different contexts, and how his interpreters see their own images reflected in him, or how they define themselves in contrast to him. The main claim is that there is no Hobbes independent of the interpretations that arise from his appropriation in these various contexts and which serve to present him to the world. There is no one perfect context that enables us to get at what Hobbes ‘really meant’, despite the numerous claims to the contrary. He is almost indistinguishable from the context in which he is read. This contention is justified with reference to hermeneutics, and particularly the theories of Gadamer, Koselleck, and Ricoeur, contending that through a process of ‘distanciation’ Hobbes’s writings have been appropriated and commandeered to do service in divergent contexts such as philosophical idealism; debates over the philosophical versus historical understanding of texts; and in ideological disputations, and emblematic characterizations of him by various disciplines such as law, politics, and international relations. The book illustrates the capacity of a text to take on the colouration of its surroundings by exploring and explicating the importance of contexts in reading and understanding how and why particular interpretations of Hobbes have emerged, such as those of Carl Schmitt and Michael Oakeshott, or the international jurists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

A Conservative Critique of Blacksburg

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 725-747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip W. Gray ◽  
Sara Mattingly-Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Servants ◽  
Discretionary Power ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Administrative Theory

This article presents a conservative rejoinder to the Blacksburg perspective inviting a more discursive elaboration on the overlaps between key conservative thinkers, such as those from Michael Oakeshott, and portions of the Blacksburg view, specifically from the works of John Rohr and Charles T. Goodsell. We posit a conservative perspective that would contest three points in the Refounding texts. The article concludes by elaborating on the generative role that a discussion between the Refounders and key conservatives plays in positing new avenues for administrative theory and addressing challenges to the discretionary power of civil servants in a constitutional democracy.

Historical Explanation and the Study of Politics

1969 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Birch
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Sociological Explanation

MY STARTING POINT IS THE RATHER PLATITUDINOUS PROPOSITION that political science is a branch of scholarship which can be defined in terms of the activity studied but not in terms of the method adopted, which is to say that it is not a discipline like history or physics. To say that these subjects are disciplines is to indicate that historians and physicists are committed both to a certain method of acquiring data and to a certain mode of explanation. Because political scientists are not so committed they are inevitably involved in controversies about method and explanation, and the view I propose to discuss here is the view that, although several modes of explanation are open to students of politics, only the historical mode, and on a different level the philosophical mode, are appropriate. Those who hold this view lean heavily on the writings of Professor Michael Oakeshott and I shall begin with a very brief reference to Oakeshott's account of the main modes of experience and explanation. Subsequent sections will discuss the relevance of this account to students of politics, the nature of historical explanation, and the possibility of alternatives such as sociological explanation.

scholarly journals The Ethical Dilemma of Lifestyle Change: Designing for sustainable schools and sustainable citizenship

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-155
Author(s):  
Andrea Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Learning Technologies ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Innovative Learning ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Sustainable Schools

This paper explores how participation and sustainability are being addressed by architects within the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in the UK. The intentions promoted by the programme are certainly ambitious, but the ways to fulfil these aims are ill-explored. Simply focusing on providing innovative learning technologies, or indeed teaching young people about physical sustainability features in buildings, will not necessarily teach them the skills they will need to respond to the environmental and social challenges of a rapidly changing world. However, anticipating those skills is one of the most problematic issues of the programme. The involvement of young people in the design of schools is used to suggest empowerment, place-making and to promote social cohesion but this is set against government design literature which advocates for exemplars, standard layouts and best practice, all leading to forms of standardisation. The potentials for tokenistic student involvement and conflict with policy aims are evident. This paper explores two issues: how to foster in young people an ethic towards future generations, and the role of co-design practices in this process. Michael Oakeshott calls teaching the conversation of mankind. In this paper, I look at the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray to argue that investigating the ethical dilemmas of the programme through critical dialogue with students offers an approach to meeting government objectives, building sustainable schools, and fostering sustainable citizenship.

The Shadow of the Gunman: Irish Historians and the IRA

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 686-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian McBride
Keyword(s):  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Good Friday Agreement ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Professional Research ◽  
Close Quarter

This article explores the ways in which Irish historiography has been shaped by paramilitary violence, counter-insurgency and the intimate, close-quarter killings that characterized the Troubles. Irish historiography, as a professional or academic enterprise, had long been committed to ideals of impartiality influenced by Herbert Butterfield and Michael Oakeshott. It was also acutely conscious of its proximity to violent political upheaval, and during the 1970s would display a heightened sense of the urgency of dispassionate historical inquiry. Prominent scholars believed that professional research would dispel the ‘myths’ that sustained the gunmen of the Provisional IRA. In the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement, however, historians face the challenge of explaining the militant republicanism which they had previously sought to defuse. This article considers several recent analyses of the Provisional movement. It reveals the extent to which the most vociferous criticism of the Provisionals descends from the far Left of republicanism itself — from those who belonged to the Official IRA or its successor organization the Workers’ Party, or from the ‘dissident’ republicans of the 1990s.

Michael Oakeshott, ou comment repenser le conservatisme ?

Cités ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Col
Keyword(s):  
Michael Oakeshott

: Visions of Freedom

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noël O’Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Method ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Genuine Knowledge ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter considers four of the most influential visions that characterized the response to totalitarianism, and in particular the various concepts of limit they provide, since those are the basis of the opposition which each vision sought to oppose to the totalitarian ideal. The first vision is the positivist one of Karl Popper, for whom the logic of scientific method offers the only genuine knowledge of man and society. The second great vision is that of Berlin, who abandons positivism and instead presents the human condition in tragic terms, on the grounds that it is intrinsically characterized by a plurality of incommensurable and conflicting values. A third vision situates positivism in a naturalistic portrait of the human condition. Finally, there is the ‘civil’ vision of Michael Oakeshott, which is ultimately grounded in a radical, anti-reductionist conception of human freedom.

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