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ation of rules, not policies. Why so? Because rules, which Oakeshott
calls "a vernacular language of civil intercourse," constitute the
cement, as it were, that binds citizens with differem imerests into a
polity. Individual citizens of course have " private" interests, but they
also have a "public" obligation to subscribe to rules that all citizens–
no matter what their particular interests-regard as authoritative. The
citizen's relationship to the polity, Oakeshott never tires of saying, is
formal, not substamial; it is "association in respect of a common
language and not in respect of having the same beliefs, purposes,
interests, etc. ... " This special " formal " relationship Oakeshott calls
civil association to distinguish it from
relationship~
based upon
common goals, beliefs, and purposes, which Oakeshott ca ll s "emer–
prise association."
Needless to say, the theoretical territory Oakeshott inhabits is very
different from that of most contemporary political philosophers. We
are in need of a guide, especia ll y since Oakeshott likes to use words in
strange and strained ways. Moreover, he is not very clear about certain
key notions-rules, for example. We can say, though, that by rules he
means something more than a nation's body of law or parliamentary
procedures; he means the custom and ceremony that make for civil
order-that is, what we must consider in " playing" the citizen. And by
rules he does not mean the nineteenth-century Liberal notion of "the
rule of law." Rule-of-law theorists were preoccupied with the rights of
individuals whereas Oakeshott is concerned with what holds a state
together. A scholar of Hobbes, Oakeshott is very much aware of the
fragility of the civil order. Any polity-composed as it is of numerous
enterprise associations-can easily collapse into a "state of nature" if
the rules lose their authority. And the rules, after all, are vulnerable.
According to Oakeshott, they lack any "higher" justification and they
also lack "any notable elegance or economy of design. " Like the rules
of baseball (Oakeshott's analogy is to cricket), they do not lend
themselves to abstract, "rational" considerations about their equity.
If
Hobbes is always in the back of Oakeshott's mind, so also, in a
negative sense, is Marx, the Marx who believed that the state of the
future would not be a polity but a managerial enterprise, one in which
rules are not adjudicated but, rather, orders are given. Like Hannah
Arendt, Oakeshott is trying to rescue politics from the depredations of
Marx. His argument, however, cuts both Right and Left, for implicit in
his notion of rules is also an attack on those who want the state to be a
kind of moral arbiter. Both conservatives and liberals, Oakeshott
implies (he avoids such terms a ltogether), seem at times all too ready to
