Journal of Political Ideologies

ISSN: 1356-9317 (Print) 1469-9613 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjpi20

Oakeshott's concept of ideology

David D. Corey
To cite this article: David D. Corey (2014) Oakeshott's concept of ideology, Journal of Political
Ideologies, 19:3, 261-282, DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2014.951145
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2014.951145

Published online: 19 Nov 2014.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 392

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjpi20
Download by: [72.196.146.120]

Date: 10 November 2016, At: 19:23

Journal of Political Ideologies, 2014

Vol. 19, No. 3, 261282, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2014.951145

Oakeshotts concept of ideology

DAVID D. COREY
Department of Political Science, Baylor University, Waco, TX, 76798-7276, USA

ABSTRACT Michael Oakeshotts critique of political rationalism is often

regarded as a unique contribution to the study of 20th-century ideologies. But, in
fact, Oakeshott understood rationalism and ideology as distinct phenomena. This
article exposes the essence of each in Oakeshotts writings, analyses their complex
relationship and shows how far back in human history they reached. Neither was,
for Oakeshott, distinctly modern. In fact, he traced ideology and rationalism alike
to the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece, even while he acknowledged
important differences in their ancient and modern manifestations. Oakeshotts
outlook with respect to these phenomena was significantly more pessimistic than
that of other 20th-century analysts. He did not think our problems were easily
curable. He did, however, harbour some hope (albeit dreamy) that in the domain
of politics in particular, the metaphor of conversation might somehow loosen the
grip of ideological thought and action.

Though the word ideology has many meanings, some of them mutually exclusive,
it continues to be an indispensable analytical concept in contemporary political
theory. Far from disappearing from the scene as was once expected, ideologies of
all sorts appear to be thriving todaysome grand, some modest; some negative,
some positive; some new, some old.1 The endeavour to understand ideologies
(including the various ways the word itself can be used) is therefore an important
aspect of our effort to understand politics in general.2 Michael Oakeshotts use of
the term, which forms the subject of the present study, proves especially
illuminating in this regard. Oakeshotts concept of ideology was more original
than has been hitherto recognized because commentators have tended to conflate
his critique of it with his broader and more familiar critique of modern
rationalism.3 But ideology and rationalism were for him distinct. Oakeshott
understood modern rationalism in the standard way as an intellectual temperament
that emerged from the exuberances of the Renaissance and the upheavals of the
Reformation. Though his concept of rationalism was not unique, his spirited
critique of it certainly was, at least in its breadth and sophistication.4 However,
Oakeshott in fact never described rationalism as an ideology, despite his view that
ideology and rationalism were closely linked.
q 2014 Taylor & Francis

david d. corey
Thus, we need to wrestle with the following questions: what exactly did
Oakeshott mean by ideology? What is the precise relationship between ideology
and rationalism? And finally, what is the philosophical significance of Oakeshotts
work in this area? As I argue later, Oakeshotts concept of ideology was critical,
but not as critical as his view of rationalism, and yet, insofar as ideologies were
problematic for Oakeshott, they were vexingly so because they seemed to him to
spring not from some ephemeral defect of modernity but rather from certain
propensities of human experience itself. This helps to explain why ideologies (as
Oakeshott used the term) constitute a permanent feature of political life.
Rationalism
Rationalism is, methodologically speaking, an ideal type designed to identify a
certain cast of mind.5 Like all ideal types, it consists of a collection of diverse
elements grouped together to form a coherent whole. These elements can be
matter-of-factly enumerated. However, to do so would be to miss something of the
power of Oakeshotts presentation, which combines the appearance of valueneutrality with an invitation for readers to see beyond this conceit and to quietly
chuckle at the manifest excesses of the rationalist temperament. The Rationalist,
as Oakeshott styles him, is overly confident in his unassisted powers of reason to
solve every human problem. He sees life as little more than a series of problems to
be rationally overcome. He does not see the tangle and variety of human
experience, but is apt to oversimplify, to offer barebones rules, formulae and
theories that pretend to completeness. The Rationalist is also, necessarily, an
enemy of custom, because its fruits seem so messy and unintended. He dislikes all
authority save the authority of reason. And he attributes the manifold errors of the
benighted past to the lack (prior to his own time) of a suitably rational method for
attaining knowledge. More than hinting at the Rationalists intellectual pride,
Oakeshott writes that if he were more self-critical he might begin to wonder how
the race had ever succeeded in surviving [without him].6
The relative absence of self-criticism in the Rationalist temperament is quite
significant in terms of Oakeshotts own intellectual development. By studying
Oakeshotts early writings with some care, Luke OSullivan has shown that
Oakeshott was to some extent a committed rationalist himself in his youth.
Especially in the 1920s, Oakeshott subscribed to a form of rationalism connected
with British Idealism, one that placed great emphasis on formal definition as the
proper culmination of philosophical reflection. Oakeshott was at pains during this
period to work out definitions of politics, the state and the self in order to seek
their unity in some notion of a rational general will.7 Perhaps more importantly,
Oakeshott shared the widespread hope of many Idealist Rationalists of the 1920s
that radical improvement in European politics was imminent.8 Only when this
hope was so manifestly dashed in the events leading up to World War II did
Oakeshott turn away from his Rationalist persuasion. Thus, he for his part was
capable of self-criticism, while those who clung to Idealism after the war were not.
OSullivan observes that Oakeshott moved towards an increasingly sceptical and
262

oakeshotts concept of ideology

minimalistic approach to political philosophy . . . largely by way of selfcriticism.9 Robert Grant has suggested something similar in his fine treatment of
Oakeshotts Idealist outlook, and this goes some way towards explaining
Oakeshotts apparently intimate knowledge of the rationalist temperament.10
Because of the Rationalists unbounded confidence in his ability to formulate
saving truths, Oakeshott described his cast of mind as gnostic.11 This is one of
several places where Oakeshotts presentation of rationalism overlaps with Eric
Voegelins famous reflections on ideology, in this case Voegelins theory
developed in the 1950s and 1960s that modern ideologies are at root variants of
gnosticism.12 But one should not press this similarity too far. Oakeshotts
emphasis is consistently less on the spiritual aspects of the phenomena he has in
mind than on other aspects. Why? The answer is certainly notas one might at
first conjecturethat Oakeshott failed to recognize the spiritual decadence of
the modern condition. His own words suffice to refute this. He lists among the
deep motivations of rationalism a decline in the belief in Providence and
the desire to substitute an infallible technique for a beneficient [sic ] and
infallible God.13 So whatever Oakeshotts own spiritual inclinations may have
been, he was certainly aware of the close link between rationalism and religious
scepticism in the West. He knew these phenomena were connected from the
beginning and remained so in his own time.
But Oakeshott had a different, much more compelling reason, to prescind from
offering too much spiritual commentary in his work on the gnostic Rationalist
(relative to someone like Voegelin). It is that Oakeshott declined to view the
human experience as reducible to a single mode, even one as elevated as
religious or spiritual experience. Such pluralism was a fundamental feature of
Oakeshotts thought, even from his earliest writings. To some extent it can be
traced back to his reading of Bernard Bosanquets History of Aesthetics, in which
art is approached in pluralist terms.14 But for Oakeshott, art, poetry and music;
geometry, physics and astronomy; ethics and religion; and finally philosophy are
essentially different groups of activities, radically disparate ways of engaging the
world. They simply could not be collapsed as if they were variants of one
fundamental engagement.15 And precisely because human experience occurs in a
plurality of modes, so too must social scientific explanation be multimodal in
scope when it attends to phenomena of any complexity. To describe something as
pervasive, not to say invasive, as modern rationalism in strictly spiritual terms
would involve a kind of fallacy that Oakeshott, perhaps more than anyone of his
generation, was keen to avoid.
What Oakeshott emphasized instead of (or in addition to) spiritual themes in his
analysis of rationalism was its philosophical presuppositions and character in
politics. Philosophically, rationalism reposes on a theory of knowledge which
Oakeshott described as the prioritizing of technical over practical knowledge,
or rather the assertion that . . . practical knowledge is not knowledge at all . . .
that, properly speaking, there is no knowledge which is not technical
knowledge.16 Technical knowledge for Oakeshott is what can be learned in a
book . . . and applied mechanically, while practical knowledge is everything else
263

david d. corey
about knowingwhat cannot be reduced to verbal formulae. Practical knowledge,
as Oakeshott described it, only exists in practice, and the only way to acquire it is
by apprenticeship to a master . . . who is perpetually practicing it. He continues:
In the arts and in natural science what normally happens is that the pupil, in being taught and
in learning the technique from his master, discovers himself to have acquired also another
sort of knowledge than merely technical knowledge, without it ever having been precisely
imparted and often without being able to say precisely what it is. Thus a pianist acquires
artistry as well as technique, a chess-player style and insight into the game as well as a
knowledge of the moves, and a scientist acquires (among other things) the sort of judgment
which tells him when his technique is leading him astray and the connoisseurship which
enables him to distinguish the profitable from the unprofitable directions to explore.17

The philosophical foundation of rationalism thus comes to light as the elevation of

that part of knowledge which can be transmitted epideictically over that part which
cannot. And the Rationalist approaches knowledge in this way because he is (to a
fault) obsessed with certainty. Technique seems more certain than practice
because it appears perfectly self-contained, as if it begins and ends in the certainty
of rules.
A particularly striking example of the Rationalists approach to politics is
supplied by Ludwig von Mises short treatise on liberalism from the late nineteentwenties. Die Probleme der Politik sind Probleme der gesellschaftlichen
Technik, writes von Mises, und ihre Losung mu auf demselben Wege und mit
denselben Mitteln versucht werden, die uns bei der Losung anderer technischer
berlegung und durch
Aufgaben zur Verfugung stehen: durch vernunftige U
Erforschung der gegebenen Bedingungen. According to this view, Alles, was der
Mensch ist und was ihn uber das Tier hinaushebt, dankt er der Vernunft. Warum
sollte er gerade in der Politik auf den Gebrauch der Vernunft verzichten und sich
dunkeln und unklaren Gefuhlen und Impulsen anvertrauen?18 The question is
wrongly posed, Oakeshott would likely have said. The main error of the
Rationalist is not his over-reliance on reason (though that is an error), but rather his
obtuse contraction of reason to mere technical knowing.19
Genealogically, Oakeshott traced the philosophical foundations of rationalism
back to Bacon and Descartes, even though he did not regard either of these
thinkers as full-blown Rationalists. Rather, he thought that modern rationalism
sprang from the exaggeration of Bacons hopes and the neglect of the scepticism
of Descartes. Rationalism was what commonplace minds made out of the
inspiration of men of discrimination and genius.20 What does this mean? Bacon
hoped to discover a new method of attaining certain knowledge, utterly superior to
any method from the past (scholasticism was especially to be rejected). According
to Bacon, the mind of the inquirer needed first to be purged of all opinion. Then
what was needed was a clear set of rules for attaining knowledge that could be
memorized and mechanically applied, and Bacon hoped such rules might apply
universally to all branches of knowledge. However, Bacon knew that he had not
succeeded personally in achieving this dream. Descartes for his part adopted
Bacons project more or less wholesale, but also came to appreciate its radical
264

oakeshotts concept of ideology

limits. Descartes became quite sceptical, according to Oakeshott, that anything
like geometrical certainty could be attained in the natural and especially the
human sciences. Thus, the sovereignty of technique, imagined by Bacon and
attempted likewise by Descartes, turned out to be a dream not a reality.21 But
again, if one were to retain Bacons hopes and neglect Descartes scepticism, one
would arrive at what Oakeshott understood to be the origin (or rather one aspect of
the origin) of modern rationalism.
This final qualification is worth stressing because it corroborates what I have
already said about the relationship between Oakeshott and Voegelin. In setting out
the historical origins of rationalism, Oakeshott was clear that in fact there are no
origins, only the slowly mediated changes, . . . the flow and ebb of the tides of
inspiration which issue finally in a shape identifiably new.22 Here is a caution
against seeking too precise a beginning for phenomena in our intellectual world.
And it goes hand in hand with a caution against artificially narrowing the domains
or modes in which human phenomena are experienced. In this vein, Oakeshott
stressed that by focusing on the problem of knowledge, he was in fact considering
only one element [inter alia ] in the context of [rationalisms] emergence,23 and
that the future development of rationalism would similarly involve every
department of intellectual activity.24 With Oakeshott we thus find an expansive,
pluralist view of human experience that calls for a multimodal approach to
philosophical and historical explanation. It is as if Oakeshott recognized the kind
of spiritual genealogy that Voegelin would have offered for modern rationalism
(or gnosticism, in Voegelins case) but did not think that it exhausted the
phenomena in need of explanation.25
The other aspect of rationalism that Oakeshott wanted to stress (besides its
philosophical origins) was its political character; and here we come into direct
contact with the matter of ideology. When rationalism manifests itself in politics it
entails a constant effort to replace traditional things (institutions, policies,
practices and habitual ways of thinking) with newly thought-out, more rational
versions. When the thing under attack is something like a policy, we get a
reform, for example healthcare reform or energy reform. But when the thing
under attack is a tradition of ideas (for example the just war tradition or the
common law tradition or the conservative tradition) we get something
categorically different from the thing being replacedwe get an ideology.26
I shall say more shortly about what the word ideology means in this context,
but for now let me gloss it as Oakeshott himself does, as a formalized abridgment
of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition.27 Ideology
is the result of idea reform, just as a new policy is the result of policy reform. But
the reform of a tradition of ideas is different because the result is inevitably a mere
simulacrum or hollow shell of the thing it is meant to replace. Of course the
Rationalist does not realize this. He supposes that a Declaration of Independence
is unequivocally better than the traditions of English liberty from which it
emerged. Or, to take an example from the present day, the Rationalist supposes
that a just war theory stated succinctly in rational propositions is unequivocally
better than a just war tradition encompassing centuries of experience and
265

david d. corey
reflection. He is, as Oakeshott thought, not utterly wrong in this view. Again
ideological abridgements have some advantages over a whole traditionclarity,
for instance. But significant losses are entailed as well. And in practical terms, the
losses may prove quite consequential. But before I explain why, let me take one
step back in order to round out Oakeshotts account of rationalism in politics.
I have said that Rationalists desire traditions of all sorts to be supplanted by selfconsciously reasoned-out reforms. But this is only one example of a general
tendency that Oakeshott saw at the heart of rationalism in politics. The heart of the
matter is that political activity itself is understood fundamentally as problem
solving, as if there were no other manner in which to approach the art of
governing. The reformation of institutions and ideas is one venue for problem
solving. The other, Oakeshott thought, was supplied by circumstance: sudden
inflation, unemployment, corporate corruption, budget stand-offs, terrorist attacks
and even hurricanes. Whatever problems the exigencies of collective life happen
to produce at a particular place and time will inevitably occupy half, if not more
than half, of the Rationalists political attention. These problems too must be
rationally solved, and government must engineer their solution. Because such
problems are (notoriously) unpredictableirrational in their sudden appearance
on the sceneOakeshott could protest that the Rationalist problem-solver waits
upon circumstance to provide him with his problems, but rejects its
[circumstances] aid in their solution.28 And Oakeshott thus referred to this
style of politics as that of the felt need. It is a crisis style of politics which may
prove more or less opportune for leaders depending on what else they wish to
accomplish, but it is a style that can never be avoided as long as politics is
understood primarily as problem solving.
A final aspect of rationalism in politics that is worth noting for its salience today
is what Oakeshott called the politics of uniformity, the belief that if a rational
solution for a political problem has been reached, to allow any relevant part of
society to escape from the solution is, ex hypothesi, to countenance irrationality.29
The view under attack here is, fascinatingly, one that Oakeshott may have once
held himself. Certainly in 1925, when he wrote a manuscript entitled
A Discussion of Some Matters Preliminary to the Study of Political Philosophy,
he was willing to cite with approval Spinozas dictum in the Ethics, that all
reasonable men agree.30 By the late 1940s, Oakeshott embraced a much more
sceptical view of uniformity of any kind. By then he would have likely agreed with
George Santayanas complaint about life in liberal society: if you refuse to move
in the prescribed direction, you are not simply different, you are arrested and
perverse.31
Ideology
The temptation to view rationalism as an ideology of some kind or perhaps as
another word for ideology itself is understandable. Like the most notorious
ideologies of the 20th century, rationalism (especially in politics) springs from
inadequately examined premises and tends to invade every area of lifeit is thus
266

oakeshotts concept of ideology

totalistic. But the problem with treating Oakeshottian rationalism as an ideology
is that Oakeshott himself did not do so, and I do not think one is entitled to play
fast and loose with terms Oakeshott took pains to employ with precision.
We therefore need to ask what he meant by ideology.
Oakeshott used this term in an unconventional waynot to refer to an
individuals personal worldview, as the term is often used today; nor to refer to a
science of ideas, as it was used by its originator, Destutt de Tracy in 179632; nor
to refer to the oppressive dogmas of the capitalist superstructure, as Marx and
Engels used the term33; nor to refer to pseudo-scientific intellectual systems (e.g.
Marxism) as writers like Eric Voegelin used the term.34 What, then, did Oakeshott
mean by it? He used the term ideology to refer to generalizations about human
conduct teased out of concrete experience and artificially purified so that they can
be stated propositionally in the form of a creed or manifesto or any other statement
of principles. Ideologies are abstractions in the quite literal sense of being
abstracted from the particulars of place, time and circumstance. They are the
general principles that seem implicit in particular experiences; they are what
remain after one has separated the ore of the ideal from the dross of the habit of
behaviour.35
As such, ideologies are not necessarily a bad thing. Oakeshott even
acknowledged that ideologies may be useful at certain moments in political life
because they give sharpness of outline and precision to a political tradition.36
Every society which is intellectually alive is liable, from time to time, to abridge its tradition
of behaviour into a scheme of abstract ideas; and on occasion political discussion will be
concerned, not (like the debates in the Iliad) with isolated transactions, nor (like the speeches
in Thucydides) with policies and traditions of activity, but with general principles. And in
this there is no harm; perhaps even some positive benefit. It is possible that the distorting
mirror of an ideology will reveal important hidden passages in the tradition, as a caricature
reveals the potentialities of a face; and if this is so, the intellectual enterprise of seeing what a
tradition looks like when it is reduced to an ideology will be a useful part of political
education.37

However, Oakeshott astutely avoided saying too much about the ways in which
ideologies may be useful because (he evidently thought) their dangers far
outweighed their benefits.
Ideologies are problematic not in themselves but in how they are understood and
used. And here one can distinguish two separate criticisms Oakeshott made. The
first is the less devastating. It is that ideologies qua doctrines are so arid
compared to the experiences they purport to represent that if one were to
understand an ideology as superior to, or even roughly equivalent to, the thing
itself (as inevitably happens) then one suffers a significant loss. This is what
I meant earlier when I said the Rationalist, insofar as he admires ideologies, is apt
to view the Declaration of Independence as unequivocally better than the tradition
of English liberty. It is not unequivocally better. Traditions are rich and fluid,
ideologies thin and fixed (at least as Oakeshott understands them). And we have
already seen why: ideologies only capture that part of human knowledge in any
267

david d. corey
given domain that can be formulated into preceptswhich is to say the technical
but not the practical part. St. Franc
ois de Sales was a devout man, Oakeshott
wrote, but when he writes [the Introduction to the Devout Life ] it is about the
technique of piety.38 Yet technical knowledge is not the bulk of knowledge, nor is
it sufficient as a guide. Successful human action often depends on habit, knack,
prudence, inspired genius, intuitive leaps, creativity, sympathetic awareness, taste,
and discrimination. Yet none of these capacities is captured in the technical
aspect of knowledge expressed in formulae and rules.
Oakeshott thus thought that the substitution of doctrine for genuine experience
tended to undermine whatever it touched by turning it into an abstraction. And he
claimed that religion had suffered more than any other domain in this respect.39
But Oakeshott also worried that whatever toll the ideological impulse had taken in
religion, it was poised to take an even more devastating toll across the board of
human experience. The problem in general in Oakeshotts view is that ideologies
are culturally destructive. First they destroy (in the name of rational improvement)
the traditions upon which they depend, then they necessarily shrivel up and die
themselves because they cannot survive without that which they transformed.
Oakeshotts most forceful expression of this problem occurs in the final
paragraph of Rationalism in Politics, as he turned to describe the morality of
the Rationalist:
Moral ideals are a sediment; they have significance only so long as they are suspended in a
religious or social tradition, so long as they belong to a religious or social life. The
predicament of our time is that the Rationalists have been at work so long on their project of
drawing off the liquid in which our moral ideals were suspended (and pouring it away as
worthless) that we are left only with the dry and gritty residue which chokes us as we try to
take it down.40

Oakeshott supplied several concrete examples beside the American Declaration of

Independence of what he took to be ideologies. He mentions, for instance, the
Declaration of the Rights of Man, insofar as that document is understood as a
guide for the founding of societies.41 And if his view of ideology were taken
up today, it would arguably implicate some of our most cherished doctrines and
manifestos: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the doctrine of free trade,
the right to healthcare, the United Nations Millennium Goals and the case for the
living wage. Insofar as these are instances of doctrinal abridgement intended to
guide political action, abridgements whose creators hope to win for their causes a
degree of urgent priority and universal applicability, Oakeshott would likely have
viewed them as ideological.42 And his warning would be that these abridgements
actually depend for their vitality on the religious and social traditions from which
they emerged and which they themselves purport to improve.
The second, more devastating problem with ideologies from Oakeshotts
perspective involves peoples expectation that they might serve as quasi-divine
guides for political practice. Again, Oakeshotts critique focuses not so much on
ideologies themselves as on how they are understood. Because ideologies are
abridgements of the lived experience of a political community, mere
268

oakeshotts concept of ideology

abbreviations, they cannot possibly fulfil the prophetic role of certifying our
political plans. Understandably we yearn for some kind of objective guide in
politics. Political deliberation is contentious and confusing, and a great deal often
turns on decisions that are made. Moreover, we are aware deep down (whether we
admit it or not) of the manifest uncertainty of so many political premises and
conclusions. Who can tell what the future will make of our actions? Who truly
knows what ought to be done?43 We thus look for a guide in the way in which
Dante the pilgrim looks to Virgil for help. But Oakeshott is adamant that ideology
cannot play this role because, in short, an a posteriori account cannot play an a
priori function. Political ideology purports to be an abstract principle, or set of
related abstract principles, which has been independently premeditated, writes
Oakeshott. It supplies in advance of the activity [of politics] a formulated end to
be pursued, and in so doing it provides a means of distinguishing between those
desires which ought to be encouraged and those which ought to be suppressed or
redirected.44 However, as Oakeshott continues:
So far from a political ideology being the quasi-divine parent of political activity, it turns out
to be its earthly stepchild. Instead of an independently premeditated scheme of ends to be
pursued, it is a system of ideas abstracted from the manner in which people have been
accustomed to go about the business of attending to the arrangements of their societies. The
pedigree of every political ideology shows itself to be the creature, not of premeditation in
advance of political activity, but of meditation upon a manner of politics. In short, political
activity comes first and a political ideology follows after.45

Because ideology takes flight like the owl of Minerva, only after and in response to
events on the ground, it can no more lead those events than the earths tides can
lead the phases of the moon. Desperate as we are for some playbook by which to
negotiate the contingencies of political life, ideologies (as Oakeshott conceives
them) cannot fill this need.46
To intelligent readers, this may seem one of Oakeshotts most doubtful claims.
What is to prevent a political thinker from using fragments of experience and
reconstructing them in a different exhortatory pattern?47 Or, why might
ideologies not function somewhat like the way hypotheses function in science?
Hypotheses are abstract statements about causal forces at work in the world.
Equipped with a hypothesis, a scientist often proceeds as if it were true and
observes the results. Hypotheses are in this sense a posteriori formulations that
nevertheless play a guiding role in the process of scientific discovery. Of course, a
hypothesis is by definition hypothetical, that is subject to revision in light of
further experience, and this differs from the qualities Oakeshott ascribes to
ideology, which include its being fixed, not fluid. But what if anything prevents
political ideologies from functioning in this way? This is a question that Robert
Grant raised in his elegant study of Oakeshott. And he concluded that Oakeshott
probably had some room for a hypothetical-corrective model of ideals in politics
and morality, even though his most extreme statements seem to rule this out.
Oakeshott seemed in fact to have increasingly moved in this direction later in his
life, and away from the strict view that ideals can never guide.48 Significantly, his
269

david d. corey
attachment to the strict view began very early in his youth. Grant dates it back to
his having read The Diversions of Purley by Horne Tooke at the age of sixteen.49
Ideologys relationship to rationalism
Having thus surveyed Oakeshotts use of the terms rationalism and ideology, it
remains to articulate their relationship. As the prior analysis shows, rationalism
and ideology are affiliated but distinct, and rationalism is plainly the broader term.
This is clear from the essay Rationalism in Politics, where Oakeshott introduces
his concept of ideology only in order to illustrate or supply an example of some
of rationalisms tendencies.50 He does not invite readers to conflate rationalism
and ideology. Moreover, Oakeshott was consistent enough in his usage to allow
readers to pinpoint rationalisms relationship to ideology precisely: ideology
stands to rationalism as an instrument or tool stands to a workman. It is, in effect, a
weapon in the Rationalists arsenal, one of the means by which he makes war on
traditional ways of life. It may indeed be such an essential weapon that one never
finds the Rationalist without it, but it is still a tool. Further evidence of this
relationship appears in the fact that while Oakeshott routinely presented the
disposition or character of rationalism in the form of a person (The Rationalist),
he did not tend to do this with ideology: the term ideologue rarely appears in his
work.
But this is just to scratch the surface of the fascinating and at times deeply ironic
way Oakeshott cast the relationship between ideology and rationalism. Ultimately,
his handling of both concepts seems designed to have had a calculated effect on
any Rationalist reader who might take up his work. Take ideologythis is not a
foreign word, but hails from the Rationalists own lexicon. To the typical
Rationalist, ideology means a system of dubious dogmas, often propounded to
benefit its creators at the expense of those who buy into them. One of the chief
goals of the Rationalist is to expose ideological beliefs, and anyone stupid enough
to retain an ideology after it has been debunked is said to suffer from false
consciousness.51 But this is not how Oakeshott used the term. Rather he
cunningly attached the bad word ideology to something the Rationalist himself
believes to be unequivocally goodnamely the cold and colourless abstractions
which the Rationalist calls science. Thus, does Oakeshott insinuate himself into
the Rationalists mind and wreak havoc with his categories. It is the Rationalist,
Oakeshott suggests, who in a way suffers from false consciousness by failing to
see the way his own abstractions distort reality.52
Something similarly ironic occurs with Oakeshotts handling of rationalism.
What is rational is typically thought to be good, but rationalism is not good
because it is overblown. Thus, what at first looks positively heroicthe reformer
hacking his way through prejudice and tradition, armed with nothing but his own
reasonsuddenly looks clownish when pushed too far. But there is more. How
does Oakeshott make the would-be hero appear clownish? He does so by
presenting a caricature. He selects certain essential features of his personality,
exaggerates these slightly for the purposes of clarity and hands the image back to
270

oakeshotts concept of ideology

the Rationalist in the form of a critique. But of course to describe Oakeshotts
method in this way is to reveal immediately what he has done. He has presented
rationalism to the Rationalist in the form of an ideology (as Oakeshott used the
term: a set of principles abstracted from experience),53 and this ideological
presentation is meant to be instructivenot by serving as a guide, but by revealing
the negative potentialities of the thing it caricatures. Oakeshott was clear in a
number of his writings that ideological abstractions could be usefulas a
caricature reveals the potentialities of a faceand here he illustrates its critical
possibilities.54
A final irony in Oakeshotts presentation of rationalism lies in what he
effectively obscures by casting it the way he does. Oakeshott refers to rationalism
as a disposition and an intellectual fashion. But an intellectual fashion that does
not quickly fadeone that, on the contrary, has been passed down from one
generation to the next for more than four centurieshas another name: it is a
tradition, and this has important implications.55 Of course, rationalism is an
awkward tradition, since it is defined in part by its own antipathy towards tradition.
But it is a tradition nonetheless, and precisely because of this, there is more to
rationalism than Oakeshotts abridgement of it suggests. Qua tradition, it
consists not only of technical knowledge but also of practical knowledge
communicated through apprenticeship. And this is in fact how rationalism is
handed down. Rationalist philosophers are inspired by their rationalist teachers,
and rationalist politicians apprentice under rationalist mentors.56 Despite the
Rationalists overwhelming prejudice that what is valuable in a tradition can be
reduced to formulae and written down in a book, rationalism itself (like all
traditions) does not operate this way as it passes from one generation to the next.
It receives its sustenance rather from what is not written down: the practice of
rationalism. But this means that rationalism is more dangerous than Oakeshotts
caricature initially suggests. Because rationalism is a rich and vibrant tradition
(and not an impotent crib) it is likely to be around for a long time. And Oakeshott
knew this was true. That is why I describe his procedure as ironic: after he reduces
rationalism to an abridgement, it seems that something so intellectually
impoverished could not possibly survive for long, but he knows, on the contrary,
that the Rationalist disposition of mind is not a fashion that sprang up only
yesterday, and that we should not expect a speedy release from our
predicament.57
Breadth of Oakeshotts critique
Oakeshott first published Rationalism in Politics in 1947, just two years after the
German surrender, and the essay offers some important insights into the mass
movements that had traumatized Europe through the war. Like all instances of
rationalism in politics, Nazism, Fascism and Communism can be interpreted as
springing from the desire for perfection coupled with the politics of uniformity.
They can each be understood as attempting to create an abstract syllabus of ideals,
one which would inevitably clash with practical life. And their errors can be
271

david d. corey
understood in terms of reductivismthe error of mistaking a part for the whole,
of endowing a part with the qualities of the whole.58 But Rationalism in Politics
is perhaps more noteworthy for what it does not say about Nazism, Fascism, etc.,
than for what it occasionally suggests. Oakeshott in fact never mentions these
movements by name. And his actual target seems to have been at once more local
and, in another sense, more historically sweeping. With respect to his local
target, Oakeshott was certainly aiming at the post-1945 Labour government in
Britain, whose policies he mocks in the final paragraph of Rationalism in
Politics.59 A number of other prominent writers including F.A. Hayek and Karl
Popper saw the increased planning of these years as rationalist and worthy of
denunciation. Oakeshotts private correspondence reveals that he agreed with their
critique.60
But while Oakeshott was motivated by the increased vogue for planning during
the post-war years in Britain, his target was not limited to the Labour government.
Rather, he made clear from the start of Rationalism in Politics that the disease of
rationalism could not be confined to one side of the contemporary ideological
spectrum. Already [it] had come to colour the ideas, not merely of one, but of all
political persuasions, and to flow over every party line.61 Thus, he claimed that
almost all politics today have become Rationalist or near-Rationalist, and backed
this up with a now-famous swipe at F.A. Hayek:
A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of
politics. And only in a society already deeply infected with rationalism will the conversion of
the traditional resources of resistance to the tyranny of rationalism into a self-conscious
ideology be considered a strengthening of those resources.62

As many commentators have since remarked, the attack on Hayek was not quite
fair, since Hayek himself criticized rationalism in ways quite similar to
Oakeshotts critique.63 Oakeshotts point though was that in his attempt to
popularize a defence of classical liberalism, Hayek had in effect presented it
ideologicallythe way a rationalist would. Thus, for Oakeshott, the political
Right was not exempt from the charge of rationalism or ideology.
Not only was Oakeshotts critique more far-reaching than a critique of the Left,
it was also more than a critique of modern-day Britain. The American Founding,
Oakeshott thought, was steeped in rationalism insofar as it celebrated the creation
of a new political society guided by abstract principles such as those set out in the
Declaration of Independence and a written constitution. Of course, one can
quibble with Oakeshott on this point. He was, for instance, inclined to interpret the
American Revolution as beginning with an admitted illegality and the express
rejection of a tradition,64 while others might justifiably interpret it in terms of the
Bill of Particulars of the Declaration of Independence, which enumerates crimes
according to English custom committed by George III.65 But, be that as it may,
Oakeshott could certainly point to a prominent rationalist strand in the American
Founding. He cites John Jay:
272

oakeshotts concept of ideology

The Americans are the first people whom Heaven has favoured with an opportunity of
deliberating upon, and choosing the forms of government under which they should live.
All other constitutions have derived their existence from violence or accidental
circumstances, and are therefore probably more distant from their perfection.66

No doubt, different Founders could be cited to counter this rationalist

temperament. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty pointed to a speech by John
Dickinson in order to challenge Oakeshotts thesis.67 But what Oakeshott could
maintain, nevertheless, was that rationalism was, to some extent, coeval with
Americas birth as a nation.
But the problem goes deeper. Why were some American Founders so inclined
towards rationalism? Part of the answer, Oakeshott thought, had to do with their
inheritance from Europe: The intellectual gifts of Europe to America . . . had,
from the beginning, been predominantly Rationalistic.68 And Oakeshott
explained why. The problem was the sudden influx of newcomers to politics
(new families as well as whole social classes) that accompanied the tumultuous
birth and consolidation of the nation-state. New princes could be made
overnight, and ever-widening swathes of society could be negotiated with for
support. Such newcomers lacked political experience and traditional political
education, and they looked, quite naturally, for a crib of some kind to make
up for their shortcomings. Oakeshotts view was that no such crib could possibly
do the job. There is no magic technique of politics that can remove the
handicap of a lack of political education.69 But the demand was intense, and some
writers began, eventually, to meet it. Machiavelli, according to Oakeshott, is the
classic case of a writer who knew that politics could not be reduced to a technical
manual but who nevertheless offered a crib to the new prince of his day. That is
because Machiavelli also offered something moresomething that would
supplement his booknamely himself.70 But by the time of John Lockeand in
the case of John Locke in particular, Oakeshott thoughtsomething crucial had
changed. Political writers had begun to believe in their own cribs, to think they had
successfully distilled the complete truth of their political traditions into the form of
an abstract treatise. Lockes Second Treatise was thus an ideology according to
Oakeshott, especially in the way some Americans used it, viz., as a set of abstract
principles designed to guide political action.71 And thus the Americans inherited
both the texts and the disposition of the Rationalist from their native England,
Oakeshott thought.
But where did England herself contract the disease? Oakeshotts answer is more
radical than many may realize. Let me illustrate the broad sweep of his critique of
ideology and rationalism by reference to a number of essays he penned in the late
1940s and 1950s. Of course, he famously pointed to the work of Bacon and
Descartes as contributing to the problem. But readers are apt to overlook
Oakeshotts careful qualification that the philosophical domain to which he
referred was only one element in the context of its [rationalisms] emergence.72
Thus, probing more deeply we come to Oakeshotts claim in an essay entitled
273

david d. corey
The Voice of Conversation in the Education of Mankind, from the same time
period, that the problem stemmed from the Reformation.
It all began, so far as we are concerned, when our civilization was seized with an unholy rage
to reform. And when religion was to be recast from the bottom up according to new dogmatic
principles, it was not to be expected that the rest of the arrangements of society should be
exempt from the visitation of this plague. Dogmatic politics appears, and Europe, unprepared
for this onslaught, was over-run by the barbaric armies of abstract intelligence.73

This, in effect, pushes the origins of European rationalism back a century earlier
than the account given in the essay Rationalism in Politics itself. Not only in the
17th century but also in the 16th century, and not only in philosophy but also in
religion, can rationalism be found.
But in fact Oakeshott traced the origins of European rationalism back much
further than the Reformation, as is clear from another essay he wrote during the
same period (c.1948) called The Tower of Babel. There Oakeshott proclaimed
the fact that what Europe inherited from both classical and Christian culture, at
least as far as morality goes, was not the gift of a morality of habitual behaviour,
but of a moral ideology.74 Europe was, in other words, Rationalist in moral
orientation from the start, insofar as it had inherited ancient Greek, Roman and
Christian ideals. And Oakeshott was quite specific about what he had in mind.
With respect to Christianity, the urge to speculate, to abstract and to define,
overtook Christianity as a religion and as a way of moral life by the middle of the
third century.75 Christianity, which was once habitual, unselfconscious and
authentic had by then assimilated itself to the intellectualized forms of morality
inherited from the classical world.
And as far as antiquity is concerned, the problem, Oakeshott thought, stretched
back at least to Plato who, on Oakeshotts interpretation, viewed
knowledge of the idea of justice as genuine knowledge released from the uncertainties and
relativities of doxa; and as the necessary and sufficient condition of political discourse,
which thus could become demonstrative argument governed by an ideology composed of a
single idea given the status of an axiom.76

Oakeshott thus explicitly deemed the philosophical project of Platos Republic

Rationalist and ideological.77
But he also (elsewhere) implicated the historical Socrates, and thus the very
roots of philosophy in the West, in a way that I do not believe has been adequately
noted. In his essay entitled Conduct and Ideology in Politics, written around
1955, Oakeshott did not mention Socrates by name, but he did level a withering
critique of the classic Socratic question (What is x?). To ask what is justice?
Oakeshott wrote, as if one needs to have a clear definition of it before one can think
clearly about how to be just, is to commit a twofold error. First, words like these
are not necessarily as simple to define as words like table or tree, and yet we
seem perpetually to assume that they are. And when our efforts to define them
produce controversy and confusion, we never question our initial assumption: we
dont wonder whether perhaps the enquiry is misconceived; we only think we
274

oakeshotts concept of ideology

havent gone far enough with it.78 Second, even if such words could be defined in
a precise and uncontroversial manner, the fact remains that we have no warrant for
treating their definition as oracles which ought to tell us what to do, which ought
to enable us to triumph over all circumstances.79 This brings us right back to
Oakeshotts most devastating critique of ideology: general principles are merely
short-hand expressions of what we know to be exceedingly intricate manners of
behaviour, never fixed or finished.80 Stated more fully:
As I understand it, in politics, as in everything elsein astronomy, in business and in moral
lifewe do not begin with an abstract idea but with an activity. We do not begin with the
idea of astronomy, or honesty or justice, and then try to find out what object or condition
of things is referred to in this idea and then set about pursuing it, because in fact we cant
begin in this manner. Instead, what we do is to give way to an impulse to take a certain
direction in activity, not knowing at all where it is leading us, and without the necessity of
supposing that it is leading us to any specific condition of things. Nobody could know a
priori or by any amount of enquiry, what astronomy is, or what justice is; each of these is
an activitythe activity of an astronomer or the activity of a high-court judgenot an
object to be understood and achieved.81

Thus, if Socrates were serious about pressing his What is x? questionif he

really thought this were a precondition for human conduct (as opposed to an
elenctic device to expose confusion and slow down action, as the present author
would interpret it)then Socrates must have been, on this account, one of the
pioneers of rationalism and of the ideological approach to moral-political life.
Of course, Oakeshott recognized differences between ancient and modern
rationalism, and these differences are by no means trivial. Modern rationalism
tried to draw a much more severe line of demarcation between knowledge and
opinion than ancient rationalism. For Plato and Aristotle, knowledge was to be
attained through opinion. Dialectic (literally, reasoning through, or speaking
through) began with opinions and endeavoured to purify or transcend them
through various processes of intellectual hygiene and intuitive leaps. But dialectic
was never understood to be a technique, according to Oakeshott, in the way in
which Descartes and Bacon understood their modern approach. Nor did the
ancients think one had to undergo a complete purge of the mind, which, for
Oakeshott, also marks the modern approach. Yet what is crucial to notice at this
point is that whatever the notable differences between ancient and modern
rationalism as Oakeshott construed them, one thing was the same. The effort to
proceed by abstractionto look for some kind of saving principles that might tell
a person once and for all how to conduct oneself in the worldwas common to
both ancient and modern rationalism. In other words, and as Oakeshott says
explicitly, both forms of rationalism engaged in ideological thinking, with all the
problems this entails.82
This at least was Oakeshotts view as it emerged in his essays (published and
unpublished) from the late 1940s into the 1950s. I shall note that prior to this time,
he was significantly less critical of rationalism, if he was critical of it at all. For
instance, his 1939 book, The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary
275

david d. corey
Europe, contains no hint that doctrines are problematic per se. And the lengthy
section of that book on Catholic Social Teaching in particular speaks approvingly
of the way various writers from Aquinas to Pius XI distilled the tradition of
Catholic political thought into condensed doctrinal statements. But by the postwar years, Oakeshott was suddenly focused on rationalism and its instrument,
ideology. In fact he worked like a surgeon probing deeper and deeper for clear
margins beneath a festering tumour. And like the doctor who fears he may be
the bearer of bad news, Oakeshott worried that his patient might not survive the
ordeal. He traced the phenomenon of ideology to the roots of philosophy in
the West. What hope could there be, then, for a non-ideological style of politics
today?
Significance of Oakeshott on ideology
Oakeshotts critique of ideology shares some features with other prominent 20thcentury critiques. He shows readers that ideologies present the world reductively
and that they are dangerous in the moral and political domains because their
adherents expect the world to conform to rules that are overly simplistic. And
when the world refuses to countenance the reductive system, the ideologue tends
to blame others or the world itself, rather than to doubt his own manner of thinking
and acting.
But Oakeshotts critique of ideology is unique both because of the peculiar way
he defines it and also because of its historical sweep. A typical way of criticizing
ideology in the 20th century was to view it as a relatively modern phenomenona
derailment of some sort from the tracks European nations had been on before
and to imply therefore that it might be corrected by turning back to an earlier time,
recovering an earlier understanding of politics. This was, for example, how Eric
Voegelin approached the problem of ideology. He thought modern scientism
was the trigger, as it were, that made modern ideology possible.83 Similarly,
Hannah Arendt in her magisterial Origins of Totalitarianism, though she differed
from Voegelin in significant ways, nevertheless agreed that ideologies were a
very recent phenomenon, and used a historical (as well as a phenomenological)
method to point a way beyond them.84 Against this backdrop Oakeshotts analysis
is unique in suggesting that to discover a time before ideologies would be much
harder than it seems. He explicitly rejects, for instance, the idea that our
ideological politics today stem from the birth of modern science or the everincreasing presence of scientists in politics.85 Because the problem of ideology
goes so far back not only into American and European history but also into the
history of the West, it is hard to see how one can steer a course around it. Indeed,
one is inclined to say that ideology as Oakeshott understood it is not an historical
development so much as a permanent psychological propensity of man. And thus,
similarly, the remedy would not be found by glancing backwards in time at all, but
rather in examining ourselves and considering what it really means to think and
act, both individually and collectively.
276

oakeshotts concept of ideology

In general, Oakeshott held a more sceptical and pessimistic vision than other
20th-century writers when it came to cures for ideological politics. He did not
think the problem was going away anytime soon. He seemed to believe, on the
contrary, that it was getting worseboth in the sense of becoming more deeply
engrained and also in the sense of spreading like a cancer to more and more areas
of human endeavour. I know of only one place in his writing where this pessimistic
vision appears to recede, and it is worth quoting the passage in fulleven though
it is a lengthy onein order to ask what, if anything, it might represent in
Oakeshotts thinking about the problems of ideology for our future. The passage
appears in his essay The voice of conversation in the education of mankind
(c.1948) from which I have quoted already:
Politics occur when men apply their intelligence to the arrangements of a society. In this
sense the Middle Ages were blessed with little or no politics. It all began, so far as we are
concerned, when our civilization was seized with an unholy rage to reform. And when
religion was to be recast from the bottom up according to new dogmatic principles, it was not
to be expected that the rest of the arrangements of society should be exempt from the
visitation of this plague. Dogmatic politics appeared; and Europe, unprepared for this
onslaught, was over-run by the barbaric armies of abstract intelligence. But just when the
over-night inventions of a people drunk with the wine of abstract ideas (being used only to
the small-beer of custom) threatened to return the world to primeval chaos, mankind was
saved by the perception that politics, alone among the subjects of discourse, belongs solely to
the realm of conversation: dogmatic intelligence was met by conversational intelligence, and
what we now call politics is the by-product of this encounter. To whom we owe this
perception is a secret lost in the obscurity of the past. But whoever he was, he was certainly a
second Prometheus for whom the world waited for salvation from the fire that the first had
poured into the belly of the race. At least, he was the first democrat; and his gift was the gift
of oil and wine, the power to neutralize this ideological rage. And the deluge, by which it was
intended to turn the dark satanic mills designed to grind out the illusion called social
perfection, was diverted from its mischievous purpose and set to water a pleasure-garden for
the recreation of the race, before it emptied itself harmlessly into the sea when all things are
lost in sweet oblivion.86

The essay in which this passage appears was not published during Oakeshotts
lifetime and only appeared in 2004 when Luke OSullivan included it in his
collection What is History and Other Essays. What should readers make of it? To
me it seems like a flight of fancy in which Oakeshott presents a solution to
the problem of ideology that has not occurred, and is not likely soon to occur. The
solution occurred, as he imagines, when some unsung hero (Oakeshott himself?)
came to the realization that politics is better understood on the model of
conversation than on the model of problem solving.87 And we are left to imagine
that from this initial insight, the cure might spread outwards to other modes of life,
so that not only in politics would man feel some relief.
But this happy ending flies in the face of what Oakeshott published in
Rationalism in Politics. There he says not only that the disease is as old as the
patient, but also that we should expect no speedy release. Which position
represented Oakeshotts real view? Since nothing like the cure imagined earlier
277

david d. corey
appears to have occurred, we must conclude, I think, that the position taken in
Rationalism in Politics was Oakeshotts real view. But I think we can also see
that he held out some hope for the powers of human imagination and the human
capacity for conversation. Perhaps eventually these could be used to ignite a
practice of politics that would be somewhat more free from the ideological
propensities that have tempted mankind since the dawn of timeor at least since
the dawn of philosophy in the West.
Notes and References
1. On the purported end of ideology, see D. Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion or Political Ideas in
the Fifties (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960); see also Eric Voegelin, Liberalism and its history, Review of
Politics, 36(4) (1974), pp. 504 520.
2. On the continued usefulness of ideology as an analytical concept, despite its contested range of meanings, see
M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996);
Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
3. M. Seliger, Ideology and Politics (New York: Free Press, 1976), p. 31, equates Oakeshotts concept of
ideology with his critique of rationalism. H. Williams, Concepts of Ideology (New York: St. Martins Press,
1988), pp. 4147, equates it with Oakeshotts distinction between practice and philosophy, which is yet
something different. Important exceptions include P. Franco, Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); T. Nardin, The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); and R. Grant, Oakeshott (London: Claridge Press, 1990).
4. J. M. Robertson, a Liberal member of British Parliament from 1906 to 1918, presented rationalism in its
most positive light in his seminal Short History of Free Thought, Ancient and Modern (New York:
Macmillan, 1899). In the religious domain, rationalism had advocates such as A. W. Benn, The History of
English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1906), and critics such as G. K.
Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1908). Accounts of rationalisms significant role in
European political history appeared in G. de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism, trans., R. G.
Collingwood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927), and H. Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism
(London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1936). Oakeshotts critique of rationalism first appeared in Rationalism in
politics, The Cambridge Journal, I, pp. 8198, 145 157 (19471948), and was later republished in
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1962).
5. For Oakeshotts rough appropriation of Weberian ideal typology, see his discussion of identification and
ideal characters in On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 3 6.
6. Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty
Fund Press, 1991), p. 7. All quotations from Rationalism in Politics refer to this edition, not to the edition
from 1962.
7. L. OSullivan (Ed.), Michael Oakeshott: Early Political Writings (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010), p. 3.
8. OSullivan, ibid., p. 5.
9. OSullivan, ibid., p. 2.
10. Grant, op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 2530.
11. Grant, ibid., p. 6.
12. See, e.g. E. Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952); Science,
Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery, 1968).
13. Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 7, 8, 23 (italics added).
14. See OSullivan, op. cit., Ref. 7, pp. 23.
15. See Oakeshott, Experience and its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933). For a later
variant of this insight, see his essay The voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind, in Rationalism,
op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 488 541. An excellent treatment of Oakeshott on modality is Nardin, op. cit., Ref. 3,
chapter 1.
16. Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 16.
17. Oakeshott, ibid., p. 15.
18. Ludwig von Mises, Liberalismus (Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1927), p. 6: Political problems are
problems of social engineering, and their solution must be tried in the same way and by the same means that
are available to us in solving other technical tasks, through rational reflection and exploration of the given

278

oakeshotts concept of ideology

19.

20.
21.
22.
23.

24.
25.

26.
27.
28.
29.

30.

31.
32.

33.

34.

35.
36.
37.
38.
39.

40.

conditions. Everything man is and what elevates him above the animal, he owes to reason. Why should he
only in politics forgo the use of reason and trust in dark and unclear feelings and impulses?
Space does not permit quotation from von Mises positive embrace of rationalism in section three of his
introduction to Liberalismus (ibid., pp. 5 6), but readers may refer to those pages as further illustration of
what Oakeshott meant by the rationalist temper in politics.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 22.
Oakeshott, ibid.
Oakeshott, ibid., pp. 17 18.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 18. Elsewhere he would stress the religious element. See especially, Oakeshott, The
voice of conversation in the education of mankind, in L. OSullivan (Ed.) What Is History and Other Essays
(Exeter: Imprint Academics, 2004), p. 195, where he traces rationalism back to the unholy rage to reform,
thus back to 16th-century religion rather than to 17th-century philosophy.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6., p. 22.
See, e.g. Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, op. cit., Ref. 12, chapters 46. This is not meant as a
dismissal of Voegelins work. On the contrary, because ideology is so Protean in character, it allows for
(even requires) different angles of analysis, and no one has done more than Voegelin to expose its spiritual
aspectthe ways in which it emerges from a spiritual revolt against the human condition as it is given. But
there are other dimensions to explore beyond the spiritual.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 9.
Oakeshott, ibid.
Oakeshott, ibid.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 10. I. Berlin offers a strikingly similar critique of the politics of uniformity in his Two
concepts of liberty, in Henry Hardy (Ed.) Isaiah Berlin: Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),
p. 199: If I am a legislator or ruler, I must assume that if the law I impose is rational (and I can consult only
my own reason) it will automatically be approved by all the members of my society so far as they are rational
beings. For if they disapprove, they must, pro tanto, be irrational. The subsection of Berlins essay called
The temple of Sarastro (pp. 191200) reads as a sustained meditation on Oakeshotts conception of
rationalism and the politics of uniformity. Delivered in 1958, the lecture which formed the basis of Berlins
essay could have easily been influenced by Oakeshotts essay on rationalism, which first appeared in 1947.
See OSullivan, op. cit., Ref 7, p. 113; Oakeshott is referring to Spinozas Ethics, Bk 4, prop. xxxv. In his
introduction, OSullivan p. 30, marks a relevant shift in Oakeshotts thinking about the state. In the 1920s he
conceived the state as resting on solidarity of feeling, opinion and belief, whereas his view in On Human
Conduct is that it rests on mere agreement about the authority of law.
G. Santayana, The ironies of liberalism, in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (New York:
Scribners, 1922), p. 181.
Antoine Louis Destutt de Tracy, Elemens dideologie (Paris: Courcier, 18151818); for an analysis of
which, see E. Kennedy, A Philosophe in the Age of Revolution: Destutt de Tracy and the Origins of
Ideology (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1978).
See especially Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, written in 1846 but not published
until the 20th century. A classic but still valuable analysis of Marxs concept of ideology is P. Ricoeur,
Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, G. H. Taylor (Ed.) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 21
102; see also T. Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 7091.
For Voegelins analysis of ideology in terms of spiritual disease and revolt, see, e.g. Israel and
Revelation, in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 14 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
19952006), p. 24; see also Wisdom and the magic of the extreme, in The Collected Works of Eric
Voegelin, Vol. 12, p. 322.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 41.
Oakeshott, Political education in Rationalism, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 55.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 58. For a slightly more expansive statement of the usefulness of ideologies in ethics and
politics, see Oakeshott, Conduct and ideology in politics, in OSullivan (Ed.), op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 254.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 14, n. 8, my italics.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 8; cf. Oakeshott, The Tower of Babel, in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays,
op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 484 485, where he briefly sketches out the process by which Christianity became an
ideology in the third century.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 41.
A. MacIntyre, whose account of practices in After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1984) echoes Oakeshotts discussion of practical knowledge and tradition, takes a similar view of the
dependence of moral virtues on the traditions from which they emerge; see pp. 15, 187 203, 210 211,
256 263.

279

david d. corey
41. Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 11.
42. Evidence for this appears in a letter Oakeshott wrote to Karl Popper in 1948, explaining his understanding of
rationalism. There he refers to a modified version of Utopianism which picks at one problem of society at a
given moment and is prepared to upset the whole of the society in order to get that one problem solved. The
letter is reprinted in S. Jacobs and I. Tregenza, Rationalism and tradition: the Popper-Oakeshott exchange,
European Journal of Political Theory, 13(1) (2014), pp. 324.
43. See Oakeshott, Political discourse, in Rationalism, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 7881; readers of Hannah Arendt
will recall that she treats this problem as one of the potentially paralyzing risks of political action in The
Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 236 248.
44. Oakeshott, Political education, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 48.
45. Oakeshott, ibid., p. 51.
46. Franco, op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 8592, is excellent on this point; see especially p. 91: Ideological politics are not
simply undesirable; they are strictly speaking impossible.
47. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 322.
48. Grant, op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 5556.
49. Grant, ibid., p. 12.
50. Consider the following passages from Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 9, 16, 26
(my italics):

51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.

57.
58.
59.

60.

[The Rationalist] always prefers the invention of a new device to making use of a current and well-tried
expedient . . . This is aptly illustrated by the Rationalists attitude towards a tradition of ideas. There is,
of course, no question either of retaining or improving such a tradition, for both these involve an attitude
of submission. It must be destroyed. And to fill its place the Rationalist puts something of his own
makingan ideology.
The heart of the matter is the pre-occupation of the Rationalist with certainty . . . For example, the
superiority of an ideology over a tradition of thought lies in its appearance of being self-contained.
How deeply the Rationalist disposition of mind has invaded our political thought and practice is
illustrated by the extent to which traditions of behavior have given place to ideologies, the extent to
which the politics of destruction and creation have been substituted for the politics of repair, the
consciously planned and deliberately executed being considered (for that reason) better than what has
grown up and established itself unselfconsciously over a period of time.
As for instance in G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, [1920] 1971).
Cf. Nardin, op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 132; and A. Botwinick, Michael Oakeshotts Skepticism (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 121.
Cf. Franco, op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 86, who observes that Oakeshotts treatment of rationalism is curiously
truncated and uncomplicated.
Oakeshott, Political education, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 58.
Oakeshotts comparison of rationalisms emergence to that of various architectural styles supports this claim.
Gothic is not just a style, but a tradition. So too with rationalism. See Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics,
op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 1718; and cf. Conduct and ideology in politics, op. cit., Ref. 37, pp. 252 253.
For example, Marx and Engelswhom Oakeshott calls the authors of the most stupendous of our political
rationalismscame by their disposition less through the written teachings of thinkers like Hegel and
Feuerbach than by apprenticing under Bruno Bauer, the charismatic Young Hegelian. And though they
eventually broke with Bauer (just as they broke from the idealism of Hegel and Feuerbach) the teachers
impact lingered on. One cannot break with a teacher as easily as one breaks with a teaching.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 34.
Oakeshott, Ibid., p. 16.
In his private notebooks from the period, he writes: Rationalism. The project of turning the public schools
into special boarding schools for children from broken[?] homes, in need of psychiatric attention, deprived
children, etc. What the rationalist does not understand is that this is the complete destruction of public
schools; he thinks of it as a useful adaptation. The public schools are a product of a certain sort of culture.
Their distinctive virtues spring from a certain sort of education related to the children who come to them
from a certain sort of home. These are counterparts of one another: the school would not exist with, at any
rate, a dominant child of this sort. My copy of The Complete LSE Notebooks is a digital transcript prepared
by Luke OSullivan and circulated privately. The entry appears on p. 78. Some excerpts from the Notebooks
will appear in print later this year as L. OSullivan and R. Grant (Eds), Michael Oakeshott: Notebooks and
Letters 192290 (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2014).
Hayeks The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, [1944] 2001), which was a popular version of the second
volume of his treatise, The Abuse and Decline of Reason, offered a trenchant critique of British collectivism

280

oakeshotts concept of ideology

61.
62.
63.

64.
65.

66.

67.
68.
69.
70.
71.

72.

73.
74.
75.
76.
77.

78.

79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.

and planning. Similarly, Poppers essay, Utopia and violence, The Hibbert Journal 16 (1948), pp. 109
116, reprinted in Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 4th ed.
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), distinguished between true rationalism, which Popper endorsed,
and the false rationalism of utopian collectivists. Popper sent an early version of this paper to Oakeshott at
Cambridge, and they corresponded about the similarities and differences between their understandings of
rationalism. See Jacobs and Tregenza, op. cit., Ref. 42.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 5.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 26.
The Road to Serfdom, op. cit., Ref. 60, is an effective critique of rationalism and uses the term itself in much
the way Oakeshott would (see p. 220). Later, Hayek would offer a more explicit analysis of rationalism in
The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960), chapter 4.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 31.
For an excellent weighing of the rationalist and traditionalist interpretations of the American Revolution, see
L. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955), pp. 4750. Hartzs
view was that the Americans were something virtually unrecognizable from the European perspective:
a blend of traditionalism and rationalism: Were they rationalists or were they traditionalists? The truth is,
they were neither, which is perhaps another way of saying they were both. . . . Radicalism and conservatism
have been twisted entirely out of shape by the liberal flow of American history.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 33; the passage is from John Jays Charge to the
Grand Jury of Ulster County, September 9, 1777. Hayek also took exception to Oakeshotts interpretation of
Americas Founding. In his The Constitution of Liberty, pp. 473474, Hayek countered Oakeshotts
quotation from John Jay with one from John Dickinson: Experience must be our only guide. Reason may
mislead us. It was not Reason that discovered the singular and admirable mechanism of the English
Constitution. It was not Reason that discovered . . . the odd and in the eye of those who are governed by
reason, the absurd mode of trial by Jury. Accident probably produced these discoveries, and experience has
given a sanction to them. This then is our guide.
Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, op. cit., Ref. 63, p. 473, n. 33.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 32.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 28
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 30.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 32. Many Locke scholars (including myself) will disagree with this characterization of
Lockes text, especially those who understand something of the way Lockes ideas changed over time in light
of changed circumstances on the ground.
Ibid., p. 18, my italics. In Oakeshotts notebooks, soon to be published by OSullivan, a brief entry reads:
There is a story, appended to the account of St Francis preaching to the Saracens, in which the Sultan, the
King of Egypt, asked him in secret to entreat God to reveal to him, by some miracle, which is the best
religion. Rationalism did not begin with Descartes.
Oakeshott, The voice of conversation, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 195. This unpublished essay was written in or
around 1948, thus during the same period as Rationalism in politics, though perhaps a year or two later.
Oakeshott, The Tower of Babel, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 485.
Oakeshott, ibid.
Oakeshott, Political discourse, op. cit., Ref. 43, p. 82.
See Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 20; Political discourse, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 82
85; On Human Conduct, op. cit., Ref. 5, pp. 27 31, 49; and Experience and its Modes, op. cit., Ref. 15,
p. 321. See also G. Callahan, Michael Oakeshott on rationalism in politics, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty
(January/February 2009), p. 28; and D. Spitz, A Rationalist Malgre Lui: The perplexities of being Michael
Oakeshott, Political Theory, 4(3) (1976): 335352, especially pp. 335337.
Oakeshott, Conduct and ideology in politics, op. cit., Ref. 37, p. 249. In terms of OSullivans thesis about
Oakeshotts self-critique, this passage seems to redress Oakeshotts own emphasis on definition from his
early days of Idealism. See OSullivan, op. cit., Ref. 7, pp. 67.
Oakeshott, Conduct and ideology in politics, op. cit., Ref. 37, p. 250.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 251.
Oakeshott, ibid., p. 250.
Oakeshott, Political discourse, op. cit., Ref. 43., pp. 82 83.
See Eric Voegelin, The origins of scientism, in The Collected Works, Vol. 10, op. cit., Ref. 34, esp. p. 190;
and Immortality: experience and symbol, in The Collected Works, Vol. 12, op. cit., Ref. 34, p. 75.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951), p. 468. The
historical and phenomenological approach towards a remedy is on display in, for instance, The Human
Condition, op. cit., Ref. 43.

281

david d. corey
85. Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 34.
86. Oakeshott, The voice of conversation, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 195.
87. Oakeshott famously used the metaphor of conversation to describe the interaction of different modes or
voices within a civilization. See, e.g. Oakeshott, The study of politics in a university, in Rationalism,
op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 187188; Political education, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 6263; and The voice of poetry in the
conversation of mankind, Rationalism, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 489 491, 497, 535. In his correspondence with
Popper (see Ref. 42), Oakeshott also claims that politics is best understood on the model of conversation, an
idea Popper found very appealing.

282