Michael Oakeshott and the Postulates of Individuality

michael oakeshott

A newly published paper by Andrew Norris in Political Theory

Michael Oakeshott’s political philosophy is the most sophisticated and compelling liberal alternative to the progressive, state-centered liberalism of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Oakeshott’s version of liberalism as the civil association of individuals underwrites more ideological positions (usually characterized as libertarian or conservative) that play a decisive role in contemporary American, British, and Australian politics; and his views regarding individuality are widely shared by many who are inspired by less rigorous thinkers such as Ayn Rand (e.g., Alan Greenspan and Paul Ryan). Though Oakeshott’s work aims to be non-ideological and analytic rather than normative, in its own style it presents the best case for the currently popular view that individual liberty flourishes only when the domestic activity of the state is radically curtailed and it refrains from the pursuit of a supposed common good, such as the institutionalization of universal health care. On this view, as deplorable as the current state of many inner-city and rural public schools may be, it would be a violation of the “morality of individualism” for the state to attempt to significantly improve them if this involved significant taxation as opposed to privatization and marketization; for extensive tax-funded state projects require the coerced appropriation of private property for ends not directly chosen by individual tax payers. In so far as Oakeshott gives the best account of such an argument and its grounds and implications, the careful study and evaluation of his views presents an opportunity to reflect upon the character and promise of our current political life.

Because of the difficulty of Oakeshott’s work, much of the scholarly commentary upon it has been expository; that that is not has tended to be either laudatory or partisanly critical of Oakeshott’s failure to pursue ideas that he rejects as pernicious or meaningless (e.g., popular sovereignty, republicanism, egalitarianism). In this essay, I attempt an immanent critique of Oakeshott’s understanding of the proper relation between the individual and the state, one that demonstrates that Oakeshott’s categorical position on the limits of state power is inconsistent with his other philosophical commitments. I develop the argument in five stages. I begin by summarizing Oakeshott’s views on individuality and civil association, indicating their importance and where I will question them. I then explicate Oakeshott’s conception of philosophy as the open-ended investigation of the postulates or conditions of phenomena. Turning to Oakeshott’s account of modernity, I consider his account of the emergence and moral status of modern individuality in both its proper and improper forms. I argue that though Oakeshott does not acknowledge it, his philosophical methodology commits him to the investigation of the postulates of both modes of individuality; that an extensive education is a central postulate of individuality; and that Oakeshott’s own writings on education confirm this. I conclude by suggesting that there is a strong case that the required education can only be guaranteed by a more robust state than that favored by Oakeshott, and that we cannot dismiss this possibility on principle, as he suggests. This is not an attempt to directly derive public policy from Oakeshott’s philosophy, but to clarify the postulates and implications of what he calls the “morality of individuality.”

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What Is Happening to Our Country? How Psychology Can Respond to Political Polarization, Incivility and Intolerance

Jonathan Haidt

APA keynote delivered by the one and the only Jonathon Haidt.

The Desecularization of Descartes

Descartes

John Cottingham’s discussion of Descartes has resonance to the way Locke has been treated in the academy. I was astounded going back some 30 years that Locke could be so blithely discussed on a political philosophy course (UCL) with no mention of the vital role God has in his system of ideas — The Reasonableness of Christianity. Is the dispensing of God what is meant by rational reconstruction?

Most philosophers would agree that attempting to teach Aquinas’s philosophy without attending to the centrality of God in his thought would create impossible distortions. I want in this paper to explore some of the ways in which this is also true of Descartes.

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Missa Solemnis

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missa-autographPerhaps this rates (see video below) as the greatest musical performance that I’ve ever witnessed — crikey, has it really been almost 30 years? (12th Sep, 1986). That year I think I attended some 30 concerts as a promenader but still never made it into the hard core club (not even close). Read the very excellent Peter Gutmann’s (no, not this equally excellent PG) illuminating article on the piece.

Was he or wasn’t he? (Religious, that is.) One of the most intriguing questions raised by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is the extent to which it reflects the composer’s own religious feelings. On the one hand, he insisted that his nephew receive religious instruction and took the last sacrament himself (although, on the verge of death, he may have been too weak to protest). Yet biographers generally consider him a non-observant Catholic who was fascinated by other religions – they note that he had Persian aphorisms framed on his wall, leaned toward pantheism and felt no need for explanation by intermediaries of the unfathomable mysteries of life. Indeed, Beethoven shunned ritual and was in touch with Johann Michael Sailer, a theologian who rejected mechanical observance in favor of an individual believer’s interior experience of spirituality, a philosophy which resonated with Beethoven’s personal Enlightenment-derived conviction in freedom and reason.

Willy Hess characterized the Missa Solemnis as “an avalanche released by a speck of dust.”

From Aristotle to John Searle and Back Again: Formal Causes, Teleology, and Computation in Nature

edward feser

The richly eclectic Ed Feser has brought my attention to his latest paper. If you don’t know Ed’s work or at least his blog (as well as his popular writings), you really should explore his diverse interests. Ed is one of those highly unusual writers because he so naturally draws on contemporary, ancient and scholastic perspectives and this latest article is a classic instantiation of the worlds he simultaneously inhabits. I’ve repeatedly said that the most interesting people are those with a distinctive quality of mind, regardless of the particular positions they hold — an attitude that has long since been expunged from much of formal philosophical teaching. Ed reminds me a bit of Richard Sorabji in the sense of marrying the deep philosophical (and unfashionable) past with the ever present — and that’s high praise indeed. Anyway, here’s the abstract to Ed’s paper:

Talk of information, algorithms, software, and other computational notions is commonplace in the work of contemporary philosophers, cognitive scientists, biologists, and physicists. These notions are regarded as essential to the description and explanation of physical, biological, and psychological phenomena. Yet, a powerful objection has been raised by John Searle, who argues that computational features are observer-relative, rather than intrinsic to natural processes. If Searle is right, then computation is not a natural kind, but rather a kind of human artifact, and is therefore unavailable for purposes of scientific explanation.

In this paper, I argue that Searle’s objection has not been, and cannot be, successfully rebutted by his naturalist critics. I also argue, however, that computational descriptions do indeed track what Daniel Dennett calls “real patterns” in nature. The way to resolve this aporia is to see that the computational notions are essentially a recapitulation of the Aristotelian-Scholastic notions of formal and final causality, purportedly banished from modern science by the “mechanical philosophy” of Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Newton. Given this “mechanical” conception of nature, Searle’s critique of computationalism is unanswerable. If there is truth in computational approaches, then this can be made sense of, and Searle’s objection rebutted, but only if we return to a broadly Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy of nature.

The plan of the paper is as follows. The next section (“From Scholasticism to Mechanism”) provides a brief account of the relevant Aristotelian notions and of their purported supersession in the early modern period. The third section (“The Computational Paradigm”) surveys the role computational notions play in contemporary philosophy, cognitive science, and natural science. The following section (“Searle’s Critique”) offers an exposition and qualified defense of Searle’s objection to treating computation as an intrinsic feature of the physical world—an objection that, it should be noted at the outset, is independent of and more fundamental than his famous “Chinese Room” argument. In the fifth section (“Aristotle’s Revenge”), I argue that the computational paradigm at issue essentially recapitulates certain key Aristotelian-Scholastic notions commonly assumed to have been long ago refuted and that a return to an Aristotelian philosophy of nature is the only way for the computationalist to rebut Searle’s critique. Finally, in “Theological Implications,” I explore ways in which computationalism, understood in Aristotelian terms, provides conceptual common ground between natural science, philosophy, and theology.

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Zionism and the Black Church

Zionism

Discovering that there were African-Americans in the 1970s who were also offended at the outrageous notion that ‘Zionism is Racism’, and voiced their loud and eloquent opposition, I was comforted. I took great pride in knowing that Black leaders in the U.S. not only condemned that ‘Zionism is Racism’ lie, but stood boldly with their Jewish friends . . . It seemed they were trying to figure me out. Their expressions had a mixture of curiosity and contempt . . . For them, a Black person standing with Israel was an anathema.

— Pastor Dumisani Washington

This book should befuddle the monometric rationalist regressives. (Purchase here).

See also Chloe Valdary’s very recent article: Black Lives Matter’s Jewish Problem Is Also a Black Problem

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The Excitements

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If you appreciate Northern Soul and/or any of the Daptone acts, you will surely enjoy these guys. Hailing from Barcelona, they will I think, be right at home on Frenchman Street in New Orleans — and I have no doubt that will happen before long. In the meantime check them out here.

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The long and the short of it

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We are indebted to Sam Harris for bringing us Eric Weinstein in Sam’s latest podcast Faith in Reason: A Conversation. What a luxury it is to have about 2.5 hours of real intellectual engagement (i.e. not resorting to cheap rug-pulling strategies) and not be subject to the faux Facecrack type knee-jerk regurgitated indignation (or pat ideological virtue-signaling) that is now very much characteristic of institutionalized philosophy. Eric has such a nuanced and conceptually interesting take on some of the deepest philosophical and social issues around — and importantly he has humility. As I’ve said umpteen times before, if you want to get a genuine philosophical education, one can do no better than listen to guys like this who are not climbing the greasy pole (see Eric’s Cartesian diagram below and guess where, for the most part, professional philosophy lies?) And Sam himself is getting better and better at this job: Eric brings out a much more subtle and finessed Sam Harris at least on matters of faith. There is much to be said for the in-person chat as Eric rightly says and this came through with Sam’s chat with Dennett as well. So Sam can “play it again and again” please support him here.

Lot’s of stigmatized truth that needs to be reclaimed

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