Michael Oakeshott: The Critics Of Modernity From The Perspective Of Epistemology

The word 'Modernity' refers to a set of totally new life-styles, including ways of organizing society, patterns of communicating etc., and it has long become a focus of many great thinkers, and among them, Michael Oakeshott, undoubtedly, is quite special, not only because of his unique style of writing, a style unlike most of the other English philosophers, but also because of his complicated and somehow self-contradictory thinking. He chooses a quite different perspective to cut into this phenomenon. Unlike Hayek, who mainly focuses on the critics of Marxism or socialism, Oakeshott prefers to aim at modern life as a whole, that is to say, the ethos of modern human beings. After a cautious examination of history of thinking, he concludes that, it is 'rationalism' that permeates the whole human way of life. And then, from the perspective of 'epistemology', he penetrates deeply into this problem. With the distinction of two kinds of knowledge, that is, technical knowledge and practical knowledge, he points out that, when talking about the origin of 'modernity', it is not rationalism as a philosophical school that is to be blame, but the state of knowledge at the very beginning of the story. In his view, practical knowledge has long been deprived of its proper position, and this is the basic reason to explain the overwhelming domination of 'rationalism'. Apparently, his effort, together with the theory of tacit knowledge, has contributed to the revival of a remote tradition, namely, the Aristotlian practical philosophy.In this paper, I will begin with a discussion of Oakeshott's general description of 'modernity' and its manifestations in the domains of politics, education as well as morality. I will try to make explicit his theory of knowledge, that is, the assertion of 'practical knowledge' and of its regaining its due position. In addition, I would also like to trace back a little bit to his early thinking, in order to see how his awareness of problem came about and how his thinking took shape, by focusing on the change of meaning of the term 'practice'. And I will end my paper with some comments on his ideas.