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Interpretation Of The Oakeshott Experience The Concept Of Practical Philosophy

Posted on:2012-02-08Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:H ZhengFull Text:PDF
GTID:2206330335998311Subject:Foreign philosophy
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Oakeshott is an important thinker of the twentieth cenlury, partlcularly in the field of practical philosophy, due to the extraordinary originality and importance of his thought. This dissertation chooses his concept of experience as the key to his thought, trying to show both the consistency between Oakeshott's early and late thought and the practical philosophical significance contained in the concept through a practical philosophical interpretation of the concept. There are three moments of practical philosophy. The first moment is the determination and understanding of philosophy itself. The second moment is the philosophical investigation of both practice and politeia. The third moment is the investigation of the relationship between philosophy and practice, whereby to reach philosophy with practical consciousness, that is, practical philosophy.This dissertation first examines the general determinations of experience from which Oakeshott finally draws his own understanding of philosophy, the discussion of modes of experience being the transition. For Oakeshott, experience is thought, the world of experience is the world of ideas. Different modes of experience are patterns of thinking with different presuppositions and modifications. They are arrested worlds of ideas, abstract compared with the concrete whole world. In contrast, philosophy is the pursuit of the concrete whole of experience, thus it is unconditional thinking. The unconditionality of philosophical thinking is its consciousness of its own conditionality.The dissertation then examines Oakeshott's philosophical investigation of practical experience. Practical experience has two dimensions, one is practice, and the other is politeia, the context in which practice goes. Hence the dissertation examines respectively Oakeshott's understanding of practice and of politeia. Oakeshott argues that practice has two aspects, one is self-disclosure, the other is self-enactment. Self-disclosure is the engagement of agents responding to their own understood contingent situations by choosing to do or to say this rather than that in relation to imagined and wished-for outcomes, which are consist of the actions of other agents. Self-enactment concerns the motive and sentiment of practical activity. Since the transactions inter homines are themselves transitory, they postulate more durable relationships between agents, which Oakeshott calls Practices. There are two kinds of Practices, one is designed to promote the transactions thus instrumental to the transactions, the other is non-instrumental, which Oakeshott calls Moral Practice.Association between agents in terms of Moral Practices Oakeshott calls civil association, which is the context of the practical activity preferred by Oakeshott. Therefore this dissertation then specifically examines Oakeshott's concept of civil association. Oakeshott takes civil association as the essence of a state. Civil association differs from enterprise association. The differentiation between civil association and enterprise association constitutes an important part of the practical philosophy of Oakeshott. Enterprise association is the association between people who jointly pursue the substantive purposes, thus it is to meet the substantive purposes. Civil association is a system of laws consist of Moral Practices, which Oakeshott also calls respublica. Ruling is the maintenance of respublica, and political practice is the engagement of promoting changes in the conditions of the respublica in terms of their desirability.Finally, this dissertation examines the relationship between philosophy and practice in Oakeshott's thought, whereby completes the practical philosophical interpretation of his concept of experience.
Keywords/Search Tags:experience, practice, philosophy, civil association, politics
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