Liberal Education and Classical Republicanism

McIlwain, David

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_3

David McIlwain⁴

Part of the book series: Recovering Political Philosophy ((REPOPH))

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Abstract

McIlwain compares the ideas of Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss on liberal education, a topic which was of great importance to both thinkers. In examining their reasons for insisting on the elevated role of the university, McIlwain defends Oakeshott and Strauss from charges of social elitism and highlights the relevance of liberal education in underpinning political moderation. This involves the comparison of Oakeshott’s “conversation of mankind” and Strauss’s dialogue of the great minds. Oakeshott and Strauss’s emphasis on the intrinsic value of liberal education is also interpreted alongside their commitment to classical republicanism. The chapter also considers the effects of training and mobilization on Oakeshott’s pessimism about the universities and reflects on the figures of Heidegger and Churchill in elucidating Strauss’s hopes for the liberally educated.

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Notes

1.
Michael Oakeshott, “Political Though as a Subject of Historical Enquiry,” in What is History? and other essays, Selected Writings, Volume I, ed. Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004), 411.
2.
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 21.
3.
Efraim Podoksik, In Defence of Modernity: Vision and Philosophy in Michael Oakeshott (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003), 227–229.
4.
Michael Oakeshott, “Learning and Teaching,” in The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 57.
5.
Michael Oakeshott, “A Place of Learning,” in Voice of Liberal Learning, 6.
6.
Michael Oakeshott, “Education: The Engagement and Its Frustration,” in Voice of Liberal Learning, 99.
7.
Michael Oakeshott, “The Universities,” in Voice of Liberal Learning, 126.
8.
Michael Oakeshott, “The Definition of a University,” Journal of Educational Thought 1, no. 3 (1967): 139.
9.
Oakeshott, “A Place of Learning,” 15.
10.
Oakeshott, “Universities,” 148.
11.
Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 8.
12.
Ibid., 10.
13.
Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism,” ed. David Janssens and Daniel Tanguay, Interpretation 26, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 372.
14.
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 25.
15.
Ibid., 8.
16.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 513.
17.
Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (New York: Free Press, 1959), 54–55.
18.
Leo Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 29.
19.
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 152.
20.
Leo Strauss, Letter to Gershom Scholem, July 7, 1973, cited in Richard L. Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 178–179 n. 38.
21.
“Leo Strauss on Churchill,” The Churchill Project, Hillsdale College. https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/leo-strauss-on-churchill (accessed 23 June 2016).
22.
Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (London: Pan Books, 2001), 194–195.
23.
Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Pimlico, 2000), 55.
24.
Gilbert, Churchill, 67–68.
25.
Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, 146, 152.
26.
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 14.
27.
Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Corrected and Expanded Edition, Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 274.
28.
Steven B. Smith, “Leo Strauss: The Outlines of a Life,” in The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, ed. Steven B. Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 23.
29.
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 24.
30.
Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (New York: Free Press, 1959), 90.
31.
Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 125.
32.
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 4.
33.
Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 17.
34.
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 7–8.
35.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 124.
36.
Robert Grant, Oakeshott (London: The Claridge Press, 1990), 115.
37.
See Michael Zuckert and Catherine Zuckert, Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 34.
38.
Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 29.
39.
Leo Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” in Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 148.
40.
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 24. Strauss made two notable, though in comparison minor, forays into practical politics in defending the State of Israel in a letter to National Review in January 1955 (an episode to which I will return in Chap. 8) and signing a public letter endorsing President Nixon for reelection in 1972.
41.
Oakeshott, “Education,” 104.
42.
Ibid., 76–80.
43.
Ibid., 83 ff.
44.
Ibid., 64.
45.
Oakeshott, “Universities,” 152.
46.
Perry Anderson, Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (London: Verso, 2005), 23.
47.
Oakeshott, “Education,” 86–87.
48.
Oakeshott, “Universities,” 133–134.
49.
Ibid., 152.
50.
Oakeshott, “A Place of Learning,” 24–25.
51.
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 225.
52.
Kevin Williams, Education and the Voice of Michael Oakeshott (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2007), 170.
53.
Oakeshott, “Education,” 89.
54.
Michael Oakeshott, “The Idea of a University,” in Voice of Liberal Learning, 112.
55.
Oakeshott, “Universities,” 121.
56.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 38.
57.
Strauss, City and Man, 238.
58.
Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 190.
59.
Thomas L. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to his Thought and Intellectual Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 53.
60.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 213.
61.
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 116.
62.
Leo Strauss, “The Problem of Socrates,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 107. See Pangle, Leo Strauss, 80–81.
63.
Pangle, Leo Strauss, 53.
64.
Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 12.
65.
Thomas L. Pangle, introduction to Strauss, Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, xix.
66.
Strauss, City and Man, 35.
67.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 315.
68.
Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 242 n. 1.
69.
David Boucher, “Oakeshott, Freedom and Republicanism,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7, no. 1 (2005): 81.
70.
Ibid., 84.
71.
Michael Oakeshott, “Introduction to Leviathan,” in Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 8.
72.
Michael Oakeshott, “Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes,” in Hobbes on Civil Association, 157.
73.
Michael Oakeshott, Lectures in the History of Political Thought, Selected Writings, Volume II, ed. Terry Nardin and Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006), 176.
74.
Boucher, “Oakeshott, Freedom and Republicanism,” 92.
75.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 315.
76.
Boucher, “Oakeshott, Freedom and Republicanism,” 93.
77.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 260.
78.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 111.
79.
Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays: new and expanded edition, ed. Timothy Fuller (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 416–417.

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Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia
David McIlwain

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McIlwain, D. (2019). Liberal Education and Classical Republicanism. In: Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_3
Published: 15 March 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13380-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13381-8
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