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Michael Oakeshott and the 'disposition' to conservatism.

Apr 21, 2008, Vol. 13, No. 30 • By BARTON SWAIM
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Lectures in the History of Political Thought

Selected Writings of Michael Oakeshott, Vol. II

Edited by Terry Nardin and Luke O'Sullivan

Imprint Academic, 516 pp., $58

Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics

by Elizabeth Campbell Corey

Missouri, 253 pp., $39.95

"To be conservative," wrote Michael Oakeshott in 1956, "is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."

These words first appeared in "On Being Conservative," later collected in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962). Thus did Oakeshott reject the notion that conservatism could be defined by reference to a coherent set of ideas or precepts; conservatism was, for him, a "disposition" to prefer and enjoy what one has rather than risk it for the possibility of something better.

Oakeshott's conservatism stands against what he took to be the principal fallacy of modern political thinking, Rationalism. What defines the Rationalist is his un-shakeable belief that social and political ills require only the application of human reason for their elimination. The Rationalist believes political governance must be based entirely on theoretical or technical knowledge--arguments, facts and figures, ideas--and he has no regard for practical knowledge, the kind of knowledge one acquires over time by being constantly engaged in an activity.

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