The Separation Of Poetry From Practical Experience And Its Significance

The political philosophy of Oakeshott is based on his philosophical epistemology of experience and its modes.In his early philosophical work,Experience and Its Modes,he systematically expounded the characteristics of the three modes of historical,scientific and practical experience,arguing that the relationship between philosophy,the totality,and the other modes of experience is between what is concrete and complete and what is abstract and incomplete.Among these,“poetry” is presented as the most thorough and positive part of practical experience.Nevertheless,in his subsequent research,Oakeshott gradually set aside his earlier notion of the possibility of unconditional access to the totality.With The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind as his masterpiece,Oakeshott proposed “the voice of poetry”,arguing that each mode of experience has its own unique preconditions and that understanding is constituted by multiple modes or voices that cannot be divided and are of equal importance,focusing instead on the critique and understanding of realpolitik.Ultimately,through an aesthetic understanding of the art of poetry,a view of poetic politics based on the art of conversation and characterized by intimation is established in order to explore potential ways out of the dilemma of rationalism in politics in the context of modernity.This thesis focuses on the area of Oakeshott’s poetic political thought that is often overlooked by researchers,and innovatively puts forward the vital proposition of “the separation of poetry from practical experience”,arguing that this change in Oakeshott’s thought marks the real maturation of his political philosophy.By explaining the development and changes of poetry in different periods of Oakeshott’s life and their causes,this thesis highlights the central position of poetic philosophy in Oakeshott’s political thought,with a view to grasping Oakeshott’s political philosophy accurately and coherently as a whole.