An Ethics Study On Oakeshott’s Political Views

Based on the relevant literature on Oakeshott’s political views and comparisonwith other scholars’ theory, this thesis is divided into three chapters.Discussion begins from the second chapter. This chapter explains thephilosophical foundation of Oakeshott’s political view as a whole. Oakeshott’spolitical view is built on the basis of his understanding of empirical world. He thinksthat the world is a world of experience, a world of meaning. Human beings grasp theworld in three modes, which are independent and have no distinction of each other.Standing alone outside of the three modes, Philosophy can criticize and examinethem, but can not replace any of them. Then, Oakeshott’s criticism on rationalismpolitics is explained. Rationalism, the most important way of thinking andunderstanding since the modern times, has influenced every part of political systemand social life, which masters politics in almost all European countries. Rationalistpolitics overly respected rational, especially technical rationality. Meanwhile,rationalist politics lay emphasis on design and arrangement, and pursue perfection,trying to solve all the problems once and for all. This chapter summarizes the mainfeatures of Oakeshott’s political views under the discussion on the rationalist politicsfrom emergence, features, essence to damage.The third chapter interprets “freedom”, the core concept of Oakeshott politicalview, from ethical perspective. It discusses Oakeshott’s understanding on thepolitical meaning and connotation of liberty respectively. The aim of his politicalthough is to protect individual freedom, which is the real way of life style andinherited from tradition. Then, the traditional heritage of freedom is explored fromconservative ingredients and moral implications, to illustrate the treasure ofOakeshott’s freedom thought towards tradition. Then, it discusses Oakeshott’s viewson the relationship between individual freedom and state authority from theperspective of nationalism. Oakeshott’s “public” ideology is introduced. He proposesthat public consist of “anti-people”, and public cause harm to individual freedom. Oakeshott tries to construct “civil unions” country under the rule of law to overcomethe tension between individual freedom and state authority, while manycontradictions are difficult to reconcile in this theory.The fourth chapter describes the defects of Oakeshott’s political thought andsignificance for Chinese today. The defects are as follows: first, his criticism towardsrationalist politics is too arbitrary; second, his individualistic concept of freedomtends to be narrow. It is pointed out that we can be enlightened through Oakeshott’spolitical view in the present political environment.