Some Implications of Oakeshott’s Thought for Contemporary Korean Society and Politics

Abstract

Michael Oakeshott, who was once defined as a parochial ideologue, affiliated not only with the British conservative tradition but also with Margaret Thatcher, has begun to attract the attention of scholars around the world as a thinker who escapes that category. Oakeshott’s pluralist epistemology and related conception of modern individuality, his constructive theory of historical knowledge, his radical critique of rationalism in modern politics, his emphasis on the religious dimension of political and moral life, his views on the practice of politics, and his philosophy of education are today being reassessed. As a result, Oakeshott is increasingly recognized as one of the great political philosophers of the twentieth century, even as the greatest political philosopher the English-speaking world has produced since Burke or J. S. Mill.