Oakeshott’s Political Thought And Modernity

For a long time,whether Oakeshott’s political thought should be classified as "liberalism" or "conservatism" has been the main focus of academic debate.This obscures the uniqueness of Oakeshott’s political thought.In recent years,the study of Oakeshott’s political thought from the time category has become the mainstream,and the relationship between Oakeshott’s political thought and modernity has been further clarified.However,the existing research also has two shortcomings.1.The theory of modernity can be divided into the modernity narrative of "fracture theory" and the modernity narrative of "evolution theory",but the existing research has not reflected on which modernity theory Oakeshott’s political thought is based on.Second,the existing research has not been able to provide a systematic elaboration on the relationship between the characteristics of Oakeshott’s political thought and its tradition.In order to advance the research on Oakeshott’s political thought,we ask the following two questions: 1)What ideological resources did Oakeshott construct his political thought from? 2)What is the difference between his thinking and the theoretical construction of "fracture theory" modernity narrative political thinkers(such as Strauss,Kojeve,Voegelin,etc.)?This paper firstly reconstructs Oakeshott’s political thought from three aspects: knowledge,tradition,civic association and modern politics.In Oakeshott’s political thought,composed of epistemology,philosophy of history and political philosophy,three self-evident beliefs are implied,namely,the rule of law is the essence of the civic union,man is the existence of history,and man is the existence of freedom.In order to explore the sources of these three beliefs,the author focuses on identifying Oakeshott’s political thought from three aspects: his favor for civic union,his opposition to a historical change model established by immutable essence and teleology,and his view of freedom.Inheritance with the three traditions of the common law system,the Scottish Enlightenment and the Augustinian-nominal traditions.It can be seen from this that although Oakeshott’s political thought has the aspect of European idealism,its essence still maintains the British background.This is the answer to the first question in this article.In response to the second question,this article expounds the modernity narratives of Oakeshott,Strauss,Kojeff,Voegelin,etc.differences between thinkers to reveal the uniqueness of Oakeshott’s political thought.This paper argues that Oakeshott adopts the "evolution theory" narrative of modernity,and his political thoughts with British background are more enlightening to the process of China’s political modernization.