Abstract
It is not obvious why Oakeshott should be considered as a defender of the natural law tradition in legal and political philosophy. In On Human Conduct (1975),1 Hobbes on Civil Association (1975)2 and On History (1983),3 Oakeshott provided a complex theoretical analysis of the modern rule of law, in which he examined the constitutional order of the European state in terms of the principles of political morality central to the Hobbesian tradition of natural right. In doing so, he rejected the governing ethical and metaphysical assumptions of the great natural law tradition of Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas. Likewise, in his critique of the mentalities of European rationalism, which culminated in the publication in 1962 of the collection of essays Rationalism in Politics,4 Oakeshott called into question the very possibility of the sort of pursuit of universally valid principles of political morality that had characterized the work of the classical and medieval philosophers of natural law.
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Notes and References
Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975 ).
Michael Oakeshott, Hobbes on Civil Association ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975 ).
Michael Oakeshott, On History and other Essays ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983 ).
Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other Essays ( London: Methuen, 1962 ).
Michael Oakeshott, Experience and its Modes (Cambridge University Press, 1933).
Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Authority of the State’, Modern Churchman 19 (1929–30), 313–27.
T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. A. C. Bradley ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883 ).
T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, in Works of Thomas Hill Green, ed. R. L. Nettleship, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1885–8), Vol. 2, pp. 335–553.
F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 2nd ed., rev. ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927 ).
Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes’ (1960), in Rationalism in Politics pp. 248–300.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Vocabulary of a Modern European State’, Political Studies 23 (1975), 319–41, 409–14.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘Talking Politics’, National Review 27 (1975), 1345–7,1423–8.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 2, pp. 1–62.
René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1, pp. 177–291.
Bernard Williams, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978 ).
Michael Oakeshott, ‘Rationalism in Politics’, Cambridge Journal 1 (1947–8), 81–98, 145–57; rpt. in Rationalism in Politics pp. 1–36.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘Rational Conduct’, Cambridge Journal 4 (1950–1), 3–27; rpt. in Rationalism in Politics pp. 80–110.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Tower of Babel’, Cambridge Journal 2 (19489), 67–83; rpt. in Rationalism in Politics pp. 59–79.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘Scientific Politics’, Cambridge Journal 1 (1947–8), 347–58.
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John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge University Press, 1960).
Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence’, Politica, 3 (1938), 203–22, 345–60.
F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom ( London: George Routledge and Sons, 1944 ).
F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960 ).
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F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976 ).
F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy, Vol. 3: The Political Order of a Free People ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979 ).
Michael Oakeshott, ‘Contemporary British Politics’, Cambridge Journal 1 (1947–8), 474–90.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Political Economy of Freedom’, Cambridge Journal 2 (1948–9), 212–29; rpt. in Rationalism in Politics pp. 37–58.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘On Being Conservative’ (1956), in Rationalism in Politics pp. 168–96.
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© 1992 Charles Covell
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Covell, C. (1992). Michael Oakeshott and F. A. Hayek: Natural Law and the Philosophy of Liberal Conservatism. In: The Defence of Natural Law. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22359-6_3
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