Michael Oakeshott’s Theological Genealogy of Political Modernity

Abstract

This essay attempts to provide a historical account of Michael Oakeshott’s famous distinction between civil and enterprise association. As such, it demonstrates that Oakeshott’s political skepticism and his concomitant view of civil association can in part be explained by his reliance on Augustinian theology. In a similar vein, Oakeshott’s linkage of enterprise association with the rationalism of Bacon must be considered in terms of Oakeshott’s understanding of Pelagianism and Gnosticism. Unsurprisingly, it will be demonstrated that despite Oakeshott’s disagreements with the political philosopher Eric Voegelin, he was very impressed by Voegelin’s work on the Gnostic origins of modernity. Consequently, a major claim of this essay is that Oakeshott’s speculative understanding of modern political thought constitutes a theological genealogy of political modernity in all but name.

This article was originally a paper written for Professor Mark Lilla’s seminar, The Archaeology of Ignorance. Although it had almost nothing to do with the seminar, I would like to acknowledge Professor Lilla, along with the other seminar participants, Brittany Pheiffer, Alana Heine, and Abram Kaplan.

Notes

1. See, for instance, Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 2005); Heinrich Meier, The Lessons of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Nicholas Guilhot, “American Katechon: When Political Theology Became International Relations Theory,” Constellations 17 (June 2010): 224–53.

2. Elizabeth Campbell Corey, Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 2.

3. Timothy Fuller, “The Work of Michael Oakeshott,” Political Theory 19 (1991): 330.

4. Glenn Worthington, “Michael Oakeshott and the City of God,” Political Theory 28 (2001): 378.

5. Corey, Michael Oakeshott, 4.

6. For a book addressing Oakeshott’s German contemporaries who pursued a similar project of theological genealogy, see Benjamin Lazier, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

7. Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 114; hereafter cited in the text.

8. Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 8.

9. Michael Oakeshott, The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1953), xxii–xxiii.

10. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1946), xxvii.

11. Michael Oakeshott, Hobbes on Civil Association (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975), 45.

12. Michael Oakeshott, “The Tower of Babel,” in Rationalism in Politics, 77.

13. Ibid. Plenty of Christian theologians have made similar arguments. The Anabaptist theologian John Howard Yoder once remarked: “The most impressive transitory change underlying our common experience, one that some thought was a permanent lunge forward in salvation history, was the so-called Constantinian shift.” John Howard Yoder, “Is There Such a Thing as Being Ready for Another Millennium?” in The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann, ed. MiroslavVolf, Carmen Krieg, and Thomas Kucharz (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1996), 65.

14. Oakeshott, “The Tower of Babel,” 77.

15. Cited in Corey Abel, “Oakeshott’s Wise Defense: Christianity as a Civilization,” in The Meaning of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism, ed. Corey Abel (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2010), 21.

16. Cited in Corey, Michael Oakeshott on Religion, 11.

17. Michael Oakeshott, Lectures in the History of Political Thought (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2006), 326.

18. Elizabeth Corey, “The Religious Sensibility of Michael Oakeshott,” in A Companion to Michael Oakeshott, ed. Paul Franco and Leslie Marsh (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 2012), 137.

19. Ibid.

20. Cited in Corey, Oakeshott on Religion, 25.

21. Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 114.

22. Michael Oakeshott, Review of Eric Voegelin, TheNew Science of Politics, in What Is History?And Other Essays, ed. Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2004), 232.

23. Michael Oakeshott, Morality and Politics in Modern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 96.

24. Abel, “Oakeshott’s Wise Defense,” 23.

25. Corey, “The Religious Sensibility of Michael Oakeshott,” 142.

26. Oakeshott, Morality and Politics, 10.

27. Oakeshott, Morality and Politics, 34.

28. Oakeshott, Morality and Politics, 34.

29. Michael Oakeshott, “The Vocabulary of a Modern European State,” in The Vocabulary of a Modern European State, ed. Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2008), 232.

30. Oakeshott, “The Vocabulary of a Modern European State,” 233. This shares much in common with Alasdair MacIntyre’s suggestion that the modern language of morality consists of nothing more than “fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed a simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical, and practical, of morality.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (South Bend: Notre Dame University Press, 2007).

31. Oakeshott, “The Vocabulary of a Modern European State,” 233.

32. Oakeshott, What Is History? 231.

33. Oakeshott, What Is History? 231.

34. This follows closely Charles Taylor’s idea of a social imaginary: “People act within a frameworkwhich is there prior to and independent of their action.” Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 192.

35. Oakeshott, What Is History? 231–32.

36. Oakeshott, Morality and Politics, 110.

37. Oakeshott, Morality and Politics,24.

38. Oakeshott, Morality and Politics,25.

39. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 25.

40. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 27.

41. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 74, 80.

42. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 81.

43. On the post-secular position as it relates to the public sphere, see Jürgen Habermas, An Awareness of What Is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age (New York: Polity, 2010).On the theological origins of modernity, see in particular Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society; Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

44. See, for instance, the classic work by Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (New York: Collier Books, 1990).

45. Michael Oakeshott, “Review: The Opium of the Intellectuals,” in The Vocabulary of a Modern European State, 143.

46. Oakeshott, “Review: The Opium of the Intellectuals,”143.

47. Michael Oakeshott,“Review: The Science of Politics,” 232.

48. Oakeshott, Politics of Faith, 106.

49. Raymond Aron, “For Progress, after the Fall of the Idols,” Chicago Review 32 (1981): 110.