Abstract
In spite of the constant disdain of conservatives for utopias, they continued the Greek tradition of reflection on the good regime. The good regime for Oakeshott contained the possibility of a decent life and freedom, potentially resulting in conflicts. For him the good regime does not prevent fights, but it provides some solution to settle them. This logic involves the need for enforcement. The authority for many people on the Right seems to be a plausible and convenient solution for the problem of conflicts, emerging from freedom. For Oakeshott, too, authority is a keystone of good order. What is more, authority—just like Sittlichkeit/tradition/practice—is a sui generis reality. It cannot be rationally created, but it can be demolished.
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Notes
- 1.
See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).
- 2.
“When I was born, a social order that was fifteen centuries old finally collapsed. [ . . . ] Never had such a great ruin appeared before the eyes of peoples. [ . . . ] Never had such a great reconstruction incited the genius of men. A new world arose on the debris of the old one; spirits were restless, passions ardent, minds in labor; all of Europe changed, [ . . . ] opinions, mores, laws, were swept along in a whirlpool so rapid that new institutions could scarcely be distinguished from those that no longer existed. [ . . . ] The origin of sovereignty had been displaced; the principles of government were changed; a new art of war had been invented, new sciences created; men were no less extraordinary than events; the greatest nations of the world took children as leaders, while old men were expelled from public affairs [ . . . ] soldiers without experience triumphed over the most battle hardened groups; generals who had just come out of school overthrew powerful empires [ . . . ] the rule of peoples was solemnly proclaimed; and never were such strong and such glorious individuals seen. Everyone rushed into an arena that fortune seemed to open to all”. Gustave de Beaumont, Marie, ou esclavage aux États-Unis, (Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1835), vol. 1, 39–40, quoted in Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Eduardo Nolla, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), lvii–lviii.
- 3.
Michael Oakeshott, On History, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 149–151.
- 4.
“Archetypes have grown out of the soil of history: slowly, painfully, organically. Stereotypes have been manufactured out of the mechanical processes of mass production: quickly, painlessly, artificially. They have been synthesized in the labs of the entertainment industries and in the blueprints of the social engineers.” Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited, (Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2017[1949]), 137.
- 5.
Peter Viereck, Unadjusted Man in the Age of Overadjustment, (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), x.
- 6.
William James, Pragmatism, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 68.
- 7.
Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 32.
- 8.
Ibid., 32.
- 9.
Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 152.
- 10.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, new and expanded edition, ed. Timothy Fuller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991), 356.
- 11.
Georg Simmel, “The Transcendent Character of Life,” in On Individuality and Social Forms, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 354.
- 12.
Michael Oakeshott, Religion, Politics and the Moral Life, (New Haven: Yale Univesity Press, 1993), 105.
- 13.
Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 120.
- 14.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 141.
- 15.
Oakeshott, Religion, Politics, 205.
- 16.
His criticism of modernist epistemology has received much wider attention than his fragments on the good regime. On his concept of civil association see Kenneth B. McIntyre, The Limits of Political Activity Oakeshott’s Philosophy of Civil Association, (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004), and Noel K. O’Sullivan, “Michael Oakeshott on civil association” in A Companion to Michael Oakeshott ed. Paul Franco and Leslie Marsh, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 290–311.
- 17.
Michael Oakeshott, “The Rule of Law,” in On History, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999).
- 18.
See Robert A. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 107–174.
- 19.
“For where number is, there must be order, or else of force there will be confusion. Let there be divers agents, of whom each hath his private inducements with resolute purpose to follow them (as each may have); unless in this case some had pre-eminence above the rest, a chance it were if ever any thing should be either begun, proceeded in, or brought unto any conclusion by them; deliberations and counsels would seldom go forward, their meetings would always be in danger to break up with jars and contradictions. In an army a number of captains, all of equal power, without some higher to oversway them; what good would they do? In all nations where a number are to draw any one way, there must be some one principal mover”. The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1888), vol. III: 188. “This order of things and persons in public societies is the work of polity, and the proper instrument thereof in every degree is power”. Ibid., 139.
- 20.
See Robert A. Nisbet, Twillight of Authority, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000).
- 21.
Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith.
- 22.
Oakeshott, Religion, Politics, 77.
- 23.
Ibid., 86.
- 24.
Ibid., 78 and 87.
- 25.
Ibid., 79.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
But in this essay there is clear reference on Hobbes’ Leviathan when Oakeshott uses the Biblical passage from Leviathan’s cover: Non est potestas super terram quae comparatur ei” (Oakeshott. Religion, Politics, 87).
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Ibid., 87.
- 32.
Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 5–42.
- 33.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 129.
- 34.
Ibid., 149.
- 35.
Ibid., 150.
- 36.
Ibid., 156.
- 37.
See his “The Rule of Law” essay in Oakeshott, On History, 129–178.
- 38.
Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith, 9. See also Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 149–150.
- 39.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 156.
- 40.
Oakeshott, On History, 161.
- 41.
Ibid., 173.
- 42.
Oakeshott wrote referring to Hobbes that “Neither before nor after the establishment of civil association is there any such thing as the People, to whom so much previous theory ascribed sovereignty.” (Rationalism in Politics, 281).
- 43.
Oakeshott, Religion, Politics, 87.
- 44.
Ibid., 85.
- 45.
Ibid., 77.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
Ibid., 85.
- 48.
Oakeshott, On History, 151.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
Ibid., 153.
- 51.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 156. Or again, “the authority of the state is not . . . founded upon a contract or any other form of the consent of the people” (Oakeshott, Religion, Politics, 87).
- 52.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 149. Emphasis added.
- 53.
Oakeshott Religion, Politics, 86.
- 54.
Ibid., 79.
- 55.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 157. Emphasis added.
- 56.
See Stephen Turner, “Oakeshott on the Rule of Law: A Defense,” in Cosmos and Taxis 1, no. 3 (2014), 72–82.
- 57.
See the footnote 24.
- 58.
Oakeshott, Religion, Politics, 77.
- 59.
What is more, Oakeshott stultified (critiqued? undermined?) Weber’s two types of authority existing in modern politics, the charismatic and the rational ones. Both ideal-types of legitimate Herrschaft are meaningless for him: partly because both of them are revolutionary, partly because both of them are instrumental—they are accepted as instruments to get salvation or to solve some problem—, and partly because the first one is fragile, while the second one is against reasonability, against practice.
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Molnár, A.K. (2022). Authority: Fragments of the Good Regime. In: Kos, E.S. (eds) Oakeshott’s Skepticism, Politics, and Aesthetics. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83055-7_9
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