. Although the concept of Rule of Law has been revived and developed vigorously by mid-twentieth century conservative political theorists, contemporary legal positivists have not been impressed. The author reviews this confrontation, outlines the logic for a strong theory of Rule of Law, and surveys the leading attempts to provide compelling grounds for such a theory.

Grounding the Rule of Law

https://summit.sfu.ca/system/files/iritems1/12511/etd7499_CGibson.pdf

Freedom, play and judgement: Michael Oakeshott on education

This paper discusses “normalization” as a problem for the liberal order through a detailed examination of the liberal political theory of Michael Oakeshott. Oakeshott links the poststructuralist normalizing problematic with the “existential” dilemma of human finitude. In liberalism, he argues, selves become disciplined and normalized when they respond to finitude with an overemphasis on instrumentality. They understand freedom as an instrumental good, a means to external ends. Oakeshott reformulates liberalism based on another response when selves appreciate experience as a self-sufficient or intrinsic good. They understand freedom as a first-order good valuable for itself and this lessens the normalizing pressure. I argue that F. A. Hayek's theory of liberalism confirms Oakeshott's warning about an overemphasis on instrumentality. I show the importance of Oakeshott's work in that he restates the distinction between the public and the private and demonstrates the limits of contemporary liberal theories insofar as they neglect the problem of normalization.

Freedom and Normalization: Poststructuralism and the Liberalism of Michael Oakeshott

The purpose of this thesis is to interpret Michael Oakeshott as a critic of Enlightenment positions. In so doing, the author's ambition is to go some way to fulfilling the lacuna in Oakeshott studies by concentrating on his notion of philosophy. Having introduced my project of study in the opening chapter, I begin chapter two with an examination of philosophical modernism in order to allude to the Enlightenment positions concerned: foundationalism in philosophy, formalism in ethics and naturalism in history. In the following chapters I turn to cope with Oakeshott's reflection upon philosophical modernity, liberal ethics and positivist historiography respectively. It is my view that Oakeshott's critique of philosophisme and Rationalism expresses a sense of the crisis of philosophical modernity and throughout his intellectual career he has never altered his analysis of these two themes: philosophy as the persistent re-establishment of completeness by transcending abstractness, and the modes of experience as self-consistent worlds of discourse. To apply this philosophy, in his moral and political writings Oakeshott has re-established a balance against the Enlightenment ethical position: "the sovereignty of technique", "demonstrative moral truth", "the politics of faith", or "enterprise association", by revitalising the importance of "traditional knowledge", "conversationally traditional intimation", "the politics of scepticism" or "civil association". Oakeshott is not a doctrinal liberal any more than a dogmatic conservative, but a sceptical philosopher who is the victim of thought. Moreover, Oakeshott's contribution to history not only lies in his effort to transcend the Enlightenment historiographical position by separating the historical from the naturalised conception of History on which the so-called "scientific history" rests, but also in his idealistic solution for the "temporal dilemma in history" and the "epistemic tension in history" that have long bothered philosophers.

Sceptical politics and idealistic historiography : Michael Oakeshott as a critic of Enlightenment positions

Rationalism is ‘the stylistic criterion of all respectable politics’. So lamented political philosopher Michael Oakeshott in a series of essays published in the 1940s and 1950s. Rationalism, for Oakeshott, is shorthand for a propensity to prioritise the universal over the local, the uniform over the particular and, ultimately, principle over practice. It culminates in the triumph of abstract principles over practical knowledge in a manner that erodes our ability to engage in political activity. Although Oakeshott’s critique was made with the practice and study of politics in mind, it has a wider relevance. For rationalism, as we see it, has become the dominant style in public law. We draw upon Oakeshott’s critique to elucidate the risks associated with rationalism in public law and call for a renewed engagement with practical knowledge in the study of the constitution.

/pdf/rationalism-in-public-law-1akxllm352.pdf

Rationalism in Public Law

This article cautions against facilely casting Oakeshott's thought in the mold of either Kantian liberalism for its account of civil association as purely formal association to which rational individuals could consent, or Burkean liberalism for its emphasis on the continuity of general practices and traditions in diurnal politics. Oakeshott's work is then thematically summarized with an eye to showing its artfulness and originality as a synthesis of modern European individualism, providing a theoretical account of civil association which combines, without logical contradiction, the Aristotelian idea of politics as the activity of attending to the arrangements of the whole, and the liberal (and Christian) idea of the individuality of value, mediated (and made logically possible) by the Roman idea of civil obligation to the form of authority.

Wendell John Coats

Papers

Michael Oakeshott as Liberal Theorist