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political improvement are very laughable things," but not because he
is against improvemenl. Rather, Oakesholl is skeptical of the schemer's
"exa ltation of ideas," his cerlaimy that his ideas are "righl" for the
polity and should be implemented fOrlhwith. "Politics," Oakeshott
says, " is a deliberative and a persuasive or argumemative, not a
demonstrative, undertaking."
It
has nothing to do with discovering or
demonstrating truths.
A parliamentarian and an admirer of those great eighteemh–
century politicians, Burke, Fox, and Pitt, Oakeshott is an Old Whig
whereas Samuel Johnson was disposed
to
take the side of the Tories,
believ ing as he did in the monarchy and in a " natural" hierarchy.
Though Oakeshott, then, is not a Johnsonian Tory, he is one with
Johnson and Johnson's Whiggish friends, Burke and Gibbon, in
emphasizing the role habit plays in the affairs of man . Oakeshott, like
his eighteenth-cemury forebears.,
knows that rules are regarded as
authoritative not because they are the schemes of this or that emhusiast
but because they are the product of " local imelligences " and have been
amended slowly over the years. As a result they have come to possess the
authority of something long in use.
If
Oakeshott's cautionary tale is full of astringent wisdom, it is a
tale that in the end leaves out too much, one that is made
to
order for
England, perhaps, but one that ignores a world in which new begin–
nings must inevitably occur after legitimacy-whether monarchical or
tribal-collapses, a world in which Russian dissidents have as their
goal
the creation of such a vernacular of civil intercourse. Oakeshott
does not dismiss all such "rationalist" enterprises; he ignores them,
arguing that he is not in the business of giving advice. An "intellectual
adventure," his book deals with politics only in its "ideal character."
But there is some thing disingenuous about Oakeshott's taking refuge
behind the door of theory, for why then does he contin'ually take shots
at those poor, deluded sou ls stumbling about in the political market–
place who are forever confusing questions of politics with ques tions of
policy? Moreover, Oakeshott complacemly assumes that once he has
banished questions of policy from politics he has thereby sufficiemly
dealt with them.
In
so doing Oakeshott seems to be saying that in
politics someone who possesses a disciplined imagination is someone
who scarcely thinks about policy at all.
STEPHEN MILLER
