Summary
[...] he sees the depend- ence of theory on practice as being so unavoidable that not only is the rationalist incapable of skillful perform- ances guided solely by theory, he is not even able to stick to his purported guidelines while performing poorly. [...] it offers a complementary but still significantly different critique of planning to those of Mises and Hayek.
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Extract
Michael Oakeshott On Rationalism in Politics
The British philosopher and historian Michael Oakeshott is a curious figure in twentiethcentury intellectual history. He is known mostly as a "conservative political theorist," although he rejected ideology and his conservatism was primarily temperamental. Furthermore, his work on politics was only a fraction of his output, which comprised idealist philosophy, aesthetics, religion, education, the philosophy of history, and even horse racing. His popularity reached its zenith in the 1950s and early 1960s, when he was well known on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing on the BBC and becoming the favorite philosopher at National Review. But he never seemed to seek popularity, and did little or nothing to boost his own when it subsequendy faded. Today, despite the growing interest in Oakeshott since his death in 1990, even his best-recognized work, his essay "Rationalism in Politi...
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