"Faith" Or "Skepticism": On The Theory Of Civil Association Of Oakeshott

This article based on the theory of civil association is to explain the reason of crisis of liberalism. By discussing the crisis of rationalism we could learn a lot from the theory of Oakeshott. On one hand, we differentiated the concept between "civil association" and "enterprise association" seriously, on the other hand, we discussed the feasibility of the theory of civil association. It comprised four parts. The first part is mainly about the crisis of modern politics caused by the rationalism in politics. On this base, we drew the premise of the central concept of civil association. It was the theory of law or how to rule by law. Thirdly, we particular analyzed the concept of civil association from "origin", "moral practice" and the metaphor of artofnavigation. We could decide the scope of the concept of civil association. At last, we could conclude that the political philosophy of Oakeshott is to make a decision between "Skepticism" and "Faith". And it is also the idea of this article.Specifically, we criticized the western rationalism from the point of epistemology. Then, we supported the view that the rationalism can not intervene politics or political practice legally. On this base we continued comparing the idea of "Faith" with the idea of "skepticism". They were the two points of the theory of Oakeshott. And we also got the point by analyzing the two styles.