Anthony Grayling has convened a “symposium” on Reason in the latest issue of the New Scientist. Grayling’s position is very predictable but credit to him and the editors for bringing together a diverse group who for the most part seem to disagree with his conception. Neuroscientist Chris Frith, mathematician Roger Penrose and philosopher Mary Midgley are the highlights (at least for me) – Chomsky gives his usual pat responses. There is a series of short videos to accompany the symposium.
Reason with a capital “R”
The Contemporary Relevance of The Sensory Order
I’m pleased to discover that there’s a discussion going on at the blog The Austrian Economists relating to a posting by Steve Horwitz. Other luminaries such as Roger Koppl have chimed in. For the past year I’ve been working on a paper on the contemporary relevance of The Sensory Order – hence my keen interest.
Oakeshott on Religion, Science and Politics
Here are the abstracts for the forthcoming Zygon: A Journal of Religion and Science symposium on Oakeshott.
Elizabeth Corey (Baylor)
RELIGION AND THE MODE OF PRACTICE IN MICHAEL OAKESHOTT
Michael Oakeshott’s religious view of the world stands behind much of his political and philosophical writing. The present essay proceeds first by discussing Oakeshott’s view of religion and the mode of practice in his own terms. I then attempt to illuminate his idea of religion by describing it in less technical language, drawing also upon other thinkers such as Georg Simmel and George Santayana, who share similar views. I then turn to an evaluation of Oakeshott’s view as a whole, considering whether his ideas about religion can stand up to careful scrutiny and whether they have value for present-day reflection on religion.
Timothy Fuller (Colorado College)
OAKESHOTT ON THE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: NEED THERE BE A CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION?
Michael Oakeshott reflected on the character of religious experience in various writings throughout his life. In Experience and its Modes (1933) he analyzed “science” as a distinctive “mode” or account of experience as a whole, identifying those assumptions necessary for science to achieve its coherent account of experience in contrast to other “modes of experience” whose quests for coherence depend on different assumptions. Religious experience he thought was integral to the “practical mode.” The latter experiences the world as interminable tension between “what is” and “what ought to be.” The question, Is there a conflict between science and religion? is actually, in Oakeshott’s approach, the question, Is there a conflict between the scientific mode of experience and the practical mode? Insofar as we tend to treat every question as a practical one, these questions seem to make sense. But Oakeshott’s analysis leads to the view that “scientific experience” and “religious experience” are categorically different accounts of experience abstracted from the whole of experience. They are voices of experience which may speak to each other, but they are not ordered hierarchically. Nor can either absorb the other without insoluble contradictions.
Byron Kaldis (The Hellenic Open University)
OAKESHOTT ON SCIENCE AS A MODE OF EXPERIENCE
This paper offers a critical exposition and reconstruction of Michael Oakeshott’s views on natural science. The principal aim is to enrich Oakeshott’s modal schema either by throwing light on it in terms of its internal consistency or by bringing to bear on it recent developments in philosophy in general or the philosophy of science in particular. The discussion brings forth the special place reserved for philosophy, the crucial tenet of the separateness of these modes seen as Leibnizian monads as well as the special status allowed to science. It considers the possibility of combining one moment of philosophical thinking, namely ethics, with science in the midst of such modal separateness. Section I offers a general introduction of how to approach Oakeshott’s views on science. Section II stresses philosophy and its relation to science, while Section III elaborates on what the modes of experience are meant to be and how science is placed amongst them. Section IV examines Oakeshott’s more particular views on science.
Corey Abel (USAFA)
OAKESHOTIAN MODES AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE EVOLUTION DEBATES
This paper examines Michael Oakeshott’s theory of modes of experience in light of today’s evolution debates, and argues that in much of our current debate science and religion irrelevantly attack each other or, less commonly but still irrelevantly, seek out support from the other. The paper takes this opportunity to analyze Oakeshott’s idea of religion, and finds links between his early “holistic” theory of the state, his individualistic account of religious sensibility, and his theory of political, moral, and religious authority. By doing so, it shows that a modern individualistic theory of the state need not be barrenly secular, while also suggesting that a religious sensibility need not be translated into an overmastering desire to use state power to pursue moral or spiritual ends in politics. Finally, the paper suggests that Oakeshott’s vision of a civil conversation, as both a metaphor for Western civilization and as a quasi-ethical ideal, shows us how we might balance the recognition of diverse modal truths, the pursuit of singular religious or philosophic truth, and a free political order.
Efraim Podoksik (Hebrew University)
Review of Elizabeth Corey’s Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics
Epistemic Approaches to Democracy
For a limited time, issue 5:1 of EPISTEME is freely available to be downloaded
So far as I can tell, each article has to be downloaded individually.
EPISTEME – new issue out
The latest issue of EPISTEME is now out – currently available in hardcopy only.
Perspectives on Testimony
A reminder: if you haven’t already done so, this special offer has only one week to run (July 21).
In addition to the introduction, this issue comprises 10 papers (168 pages). Well worth the effort!
Epistemic Approaches To Democracy
This is the latest issue of EPISTEME: it’s currently available as hard copy but not online, though this will happen before long.
EPISTEMIC APPROACHES TO DEMOCRACY
Guest Editor: David Estlund
• Introduction: Epistemic Approaches to Democracy, David Estlund
• Science, Religion, and Democracy, Philip Kitcher
• The Epistemic Value of the Democratic Process, William Nelson
• Pure Epistemic Proceduralism, Fabienne Peter
• The Premises of Condorcet’s Jury Theorem Are Not Simultaneously Justified, Franz Dietrich
• Epistemic Democracy and the Social Character of Knowledge, Michael Fuerstein
• A Culture of Justification: The Pragmatist’s Epistemic Argument for Democracy, Cheryl Misak
• Toward a Social Epistemic Comprehensive Liberalism, Robert B. Talisse
• An Epistemic Defense of Democracy: David Estlund’s Democratic Authority, Elizabeth Anderson
Testimony – Free Download
Amateur Philosophers
A Companion to Michael Oakeshott
Here is the collection of newly commissioned essays edited by Paul Franco and Leslie Marsh forthcoming from Penn State University Press.
1. Editorial Introduction (Paul Franco & Leslie Marsh)
The editors give an overview of the importance of Oakeshott to 20th Century philosophy and account for the abiding interest in Oakeshott’s work.
2. The Pursuit of Intimacy, or Rationalism in Love (Robert Grant)
An account of Oakeshott’s life and times designed to introduce readers to the flesh and blood man.
3. The Victim of Thought: The Idealist Inheritance (David Boucher)
A discussion of Oakeshott’s idealist theory of knowledge and metaphysics in relation to Hegel and British Idealism.
4. Philosophy and its Moods: Oakeshott on the Practice of Philosophy (Kenneth McIntyre)
Oakeshott on philosophical method.
5. Michael Oakeshott’s Philosophy of History (Geoffrey Thomas)
A critical exposition of Oakeshott’s philosophy of history, one of the most important aspects of Oakeshott’s philosophy and often considered to be one of the most profound treatments of historical knowledge in the 20th century.
6. Radical Temporality and the Modern Moral Imagination: Two Themes in the Thought of Michael Oakeshott (Timothy Fuller)
An analysis of Oakeshott’s concept of philosophy as it developed over the course of his career and especially as it relates to political philosophy.
7. The Religious Sensibility of Michael Oakeshott (Elizabeth Corey)
Oakeshott wrote extensively on religion and theology from the 1920s right through to the 1970s. Only now is this aspect of Oakeshott attracting attention.
8. Whatever It Turns Out To Be: Oakeshott on Aesthetic Experience (Corey Abel)
A discussion of Oakeshott’s philosophy of art, especially in connection with his important essay “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind”.
9. Un Début dans la Vie Humaine: Michael Oakeshott on Education (Paul Franco)
Oakeshott’s philosophy of education is gaining more and more prominence as a classic defence of a liberal arts education while simultaneously being a critique of instrumentalist education.
10. Michael Oakeshott on the History of Political Thought (Martyn Thompson)
Oakeshott’s legendary lectures on the history of political thought, delivered at the LSE in the 1950s and ‘60s, have recently been published. The question of how to write the history of political thought was an abiding concern of Oakeshott’s and links him to other contemporaries such as Leo Strauss, J.G.A. Pocock, and Quentin Skinner.
11. Oakeshott and Hobbes (Noël Malcolm)
Oakeshott’s interpretation of Hobbes as the preeminent philosopher of the political theory of individuality is generally regarded as one of the most important contributions to Hobbes scholarship in the 20th century.
12. The Fate of Rationalism in Oakeshott’s Thought (Kenneth Minogue)
A critical analysis of this best-known aspect of Oakeshott’s political philosophy, which bears comparison with other postwar critiques of central planning and utopian thinking by Berlin, Hayek, Popper, and Polanyi.
13. Oakeshott and Hayek: Situating the Mind (Leslie Marsh)
Oakeshott and Hayek contemporaneously presented the two major and most sustained critiques of rationalism. Conceived as social epistemologists, a contrastive and critical picture is drawn.
14. Oakeshott as Conservative (Robert Devigne)
Oakeshott is generally regarded as one of the most important conservative thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. This essay presents a critical analysis of his distinctive and skeptical brand of conservatism with comparisons to other 20th-century conservatisms.
15. Oakeshott on Civil Association (Noël O’Sullivan)
Civil association, defined in opposition to purposive or enterprise association, is the central concept of Oakeshott’s most highly developed statement of his political philosophy set out in his magnum opus On Human Conduct.
16. Oakeshott on Law (Steven Gerencser)
This is one of the most neglected aspects of Oakeshott. The rule of law is a vital to Oakeshott’s conception of the liberal (civil) state.
manwithoutqualities 