Description and Prescription in the
Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott
By Justin Murphy
May 8, 2006
Contents
- Introduction
- Conditionality
- Mind, Proposition, and Action
- Axiomatic Truth and Categorical Information
- Modes of Experience
- Coherence
- Conclusion
I.
The final conclusions to be drawn from and about Oakeshott's work consistently refuse to draw themselves. His writing is sharp, but never quite conclusive. His work always appears explanatory but never overtly prescriptive. Superficially, it takes the form of description but always seems to push in a certain vaguely prescribed direction. This is specifically where I will enter his thought. My purpose is to expose, clarify, and hopefully make sense of that dark, dangerous, and exceedingly troublesome crossroads of description and prescription.
On the surface, the writings of Oakeshott almost always take the form of description. Most of his investigations are, in fact, self-avowed endeavors of clarification. To understand more clearly what is meant by a given term is often clearly stated as his purpose. This is what he takes to be the pursuit proper to philosophy: working towards a more complete understanding of existence.
His language is always ostensibly of the form that is usually associated with clarification and explanation. His work conspicuously lacks overt moral, ethical, or political commandments. But to conclude that his work is free of recommendations would be a mistake. Embedded in his work are, in fact, important elements of philosophical, moral prescription. To determine and understand the character, form, and potency of these prescriptions, and to reconcile them with a style of philosophy that stubbornly refuses to make them, is our task. I argue that pure, overtly prescriptive philosophy cannot be found in the work of Oakeshott for reasons specific to his teachings. More importantly, however, I will contend that his descriptive style of philosophy intimates its own prescriptions while always carefully navigating around the troubled waters of injunction. The basically positivistic style that appears on the surface, and the prescriptive elements that stir below, are at once reconcilable and illuminating.
In addition to settling a critical tension, we may hope for a separate and still more attractive fruit. The issue of prescription and description, if it is to be resolved as I hope, may contribute to an entirely more thorough understanding of Oakeshott's body of work. For the question before us is impossible to isolate; it appears and reappears in every word he writes.
II. Conditionality
In the shadow of all his work, and in the spotlight of some, Oakeshott betrays a constant and thorough contempt for the fantasy of unconditional principles of right and wrong that are supposed to exist prior to and independent of activity. Oakeshott's criticism of rationalism is a grand metaphor of our particular conflict between description and prescription. In it is found both a particular manifestation of the conflict and, I think, the first suggestion of its resolution.
As Oakeshott understands it, the sphere of actual, concrete existence is an infinite, eternal spread of endless phenomena. Without the perception of a phenomenon, it cannot be said that anything is distinguished, separated, defined, or understood. It requires observation, some kind of recognition and understanding, for an event, object, action, or process to be distinguished from the rest of existence. Only after the act of understanding can anything be considered to have an identity; before observation, everything remains a single, entirely homogenous whole.[1] Through the acts of observation and understanding we distinguish between parts of existence by imposing on them identities. These identities are contrived and then distinguished according to common characteristics. Thus, in the homogenous spread of existence that may be within one's field of vision, we are able to understand that before us, say, a person sits in a chair. The particular part of this spread of existence we call "person" is that which appears to meet the general criteria of the ideal type to which we have given that label. It is roughly 5 feet tall; it has arms, legs, a head, skin; it appears to possess the characteristics of a person. But it is only through the employment of this idiom[2] with reference to the general characteristics attached to the ideal type that one's scene of vision becomes a picture of distinguishable concepts such as "chair" and "person."
The central problem is that while it is possible to achieve understanding through this process of identification, it is always necessarily incomplete and inadequate. Understanding always takes for granted the assumptions necessary for its significance. We may call the object in the chair a "person," but this ideal type we employ for identification is hardly determinate. It relies on the uncritical acceptance of concepts such as "arm," or "skin." We can define such concepts, but never so thoroughly that they will fully encapsulate the robustness of concrete existence. Definitions can be revised and narrowed ad infinitum but the longest list of adjectives and qualifications will still be only one arbitrary way of phrasing and arresting a part of existence. The implication is that discourse can only take place on an uncritical level; one can ask what time it is but only if the concept of time is protected at that moment from being called into question. Stating the time is sensible only to the extent that time, as an identity, is protected from criticism. In this sense, assertions may be understood, but only conditionally.
The same difficulties exist in understanding human conduct. Identifying human action is possible, but only through the arrest that is conditional understanding. As no understanding is without its conditions, no understanding is complete or final. Every understanding is a tentative and imperfect phrasing of a perceived identity, never fully encapsulating the concrete experience. Therefore, understandings are always a temporary "platform" of arrested experience, an “invitation” for reevaluation and reformulation.[3]
Where there is no firm ground in understanding, there appears no appropriate force to propel injunctive, prescriptive assertions. If identities refuse to stay still, all calls to action that are alleged to be uniquely proper or “correct” are suspiscious. For how can any injunctive assertion be considered sacrosanct and universal when the idiom it invokes is a logical makeshift? At the very first step of understanding existence, the weaknesses of prescription rear their head. If understanding can always be improved but never finally captured, then the task is not to feign secure knowledge (as prescriptions would), but to further refine understanding by the techniques of description. In the work of Oakeshott, philosophy, if it cannot find solid ground for absolute normative claims, must concern itself with advancing past its current and unsatisfactory platform for a higher but never final platform. This is only achieved through the vocabulary of positivism: reformulation, clarification, specification, exposure.
III. Mind, Proposition, and Action
The precariousness of understanding is not limited to the act of thinking as though it were an isolated and purely “mental” phenomenon. The character of thinking, how it is undertaken, and its specific relationship to concrete activity are issues intimately connected to the nature of understanding. Furthermore, they open up entirely new doors and present entirely new questions. Oakeshott’s account of the relationship between deliberation and activity is important primarily for what it reveals about the logical relationship between prescription and the activity prescribed.
Oakeshott undertakes to discredit the common conception of “rationality” understood as acting towards a specific end in accordance with a premeditated, independent principle. On this account, activity is rational only to the extent it extricates itself from the prejudice of accumulated knowledge and cultivated tradition. Rationality, in this conception, is to act purposively with a specific end in sight, unaffected by distractive norms and irrelevant, extraneous mental clutter.[4]
This understanding falls short in the first place due to a misperception of the mind. It presupposes a fictitious distinction between the mind and its “contents.”[5] The metaphor of a mind as a physical container is misleading. For knowledge does not consist in units that “fill” the mind; rather, it is the mind.[6] For Oakeshott there can be no mind without knowledge, and to imagine a mind without it is simply to imagine no mind at all. Therefore an account of rationality that presupposes the mind as a container to be distinguished from its inputs incorrectly assumes its ability to free itself from those inputs. There is no “freeing” the mind from its traditions of thought, for its accumulated store of knowledge and prejudice is both the container and its contents at once. This invalidates the said conception of the mind and makes “rationality,” understood in this way impossible.
The common understanding of rationality encounters additional difficulties as it presents a chronological chain that begins with the formulation of a desired end, continues with the carrying out of this premeditated end according to a certain principle, and finishes in the completion of a concrete activity guided solely by reference to the originally formulated end. For Oakeshott the problem is that “reason” cannot exist prior to or independent of concrete action. It is impossible to formulate general principles about any kind of activity without having first conducted and experienced that activity. Reason is not the mechanism of an independent, instrumental mind dictating in a vacuum the proper way to conduct an activity; it is, instead, the cultivated residue of activity already experienced. When, in social interaction, moral behavior, or craftsmanship we formulate general rules to capture what we consider to be the most appropriate or “rational” way to conduct an activity, we are not referring to principles that exist prior to or in any way distinct from the activity; we are referring to principles retroactively formulated specifically because of what we have come to understand through the tradition of that activity.[7]
Principles of conduct, the material of prescription, are subsequent to concrete activity. They are the conclusions of feeling-out a certain kind of motion. In this understanding, to prescribe a course of action, that is to suppose one stands on sufficiently strong ground to isolate and choose as proper one course of action among others is to indulge anachronism; to issue an injunction to activity reverses the logically proper order of activity and normativity. Prescriptions outlining what is taken to be appropriate action are the result of concrete activity. They are the residue of activity, not its motor. Normative theorizing, therefore, is the vein attempt to start a process with its byproducts.
Because understanding is and must always remain to a certain degree indeterminate, activities are never fully and finally felt-out. The philosophy of prescription, then, hopes to offer an answer to a question before the question is properly understood, before it is concretely felt-out. Because understanding is not a process that has an end in sight, the feeling-out of concrete activity never comes to the final standstill that would be a logical prerequisite to issuing justifiable prescriptions. As we never achieve the final platform of understanding, we never reach a logically safe footing for the grounding and justification of moral precepts.
In conducting concrete activity, one is never acting solely in accordance with an abstract principle kept always at the forefront of his mental activity. In writing a paper an author works towards a thesis, but the concrete activity of writing the paper is never conducted fully and solely in accordance with that end. The author must choose his words, the order of his sentences, and other miscellaneous options of style and content. In this series of decisions, there are always elements of decision making that pay no attention to the thesis. There is always an element of arbitrariness, or at least opinion, whim, and personal preference. In other words:
Our particular attempts to convert 'what is here and now' into 'what ought to be' are governed by no general rules. Nobody not forced to do so by some moral or spiritual tyranny--of education or of command--conducts his life according to a set of absolute principles, unmodified by the common-sense, intuition, or insight which interprets such principles.[8]
Upon the refutation of conventional rationalism must come some positive explanation of the manner in which an activity is actually conducted. Oakeshott’s next move is revealingly positivistic. The series of small, miscellaneous decisions that comprise what we know as a general activity (e.g., style and content choices in the activity of writing) are guided and glued together by the tradition of that activity. Historical momentum and knowledge of what a certain general activity consists in and has consisted in over time, ultimately guides the infinitely reducible, minute decisions that together comprise what we understand as a general activity. The true spring of activity is a “knowledge of behavior” that is inherited and absorbed by doing.[9] The robust concrete activity of writing cannot logically be encapsulated by a rulebook, and therefore the deepest attention to the most detailed rules will not allow someone to begin writing if they are completely alien to physical, concrete practice of the activity.
Doing, engaging in the concrete activity, and cultivating an understanding of how it is done is the only way to even comprehend principles describing the activity. The many scattered choices involved in carrying out a single activity are made with reference to one’s understanding of how the activity is generally carried out. Therefore what characterizes action we consider appropriate, correct, sensible, or rational is not allegiance to a premeditated principle; it is, rather:
Faithfulness to the knowledge we have of how to conduct the specific activity we are engaged in. “Rational” conduct is acting in such a way that the coherence of the idiom of activity to which the conduct belongs is preserved and possibly enhanced. This, of course, is something different from faithfulness to the principles or rules or purposes (if any have been discovered) of the activity; principles, rules, and purposes are mere abridgements of the coherence of the activity, and we may be easily faithful to them while losing touch with the activity itself.[10]
A writer opts for a semicolon not because the formation of two sentences would be definitively “wrong” with respect to some principle independent of the activity, but because the tradition of his language cultivated both by those who have practiced it before him and also by his own personal practice suggests it is the choice more faithful to the activity as it has been refined up until that point. Additionally, all of our writer’s semicolons, and everything else he produces, contributes as well as builds off of the tradition of the activity of writing. It is a process, not a static reference point. It is not “faithfulness to something fixed and finished (for knowledge of how to pursue an activity is always in motion).”[11]
This understanding is a conception of rational activity representative of Oakeshott’s essentially positivistic approach to theorizing. Rational activity is conduct characterized not by obedience to injunctions, which are logically secondary. It is characterized rather by continual inquiry into the motions of concrete action; its desiderata are 1.) allegiance to the current sum of knowledge about an activity, that is, the most refined description of the activity to date, and 2.) an either deliberate or unaware contribution to the idiom of an activity; the contribution of one’s own understanding of the activity as it is. Conduct that is rational first recognizes and acknowledges the current albeit conditional platform of understanding to which its tradition has climbed. Then, through its own uniqueness, it elevates the current understanding to a new platform nonetheless conditional and temporary. Normative prescriptions are rejected as anachronistic and logically unsound at any rate, and in their stead is offered the more sound and forward-looking if less conclusive pursuit of formulation, reformulation, understanding, and description.
In other words, moral or political injunctions make little sense when the relationship between activity and propositions about activity is disclosed. What is considered advisable or recommendable is contingent on the activity of moral or political behavior, and it is contaminated by extension with the same vulnerability and conditionality of the understanding used to distinguish it. “In short, moral judgment is not something we pronounce either before, or after, but in our moral activity.”[12] The superior alternative is always to engage the concrete activity at its current place in its tradition, pursue its contents, and perhaps push outward on what is already there in order to make more whole, but never complete, the idiom of that activity.
IV. Axiomatic Truth and Categorical Information
At this point, philosophy appears firmly locked into a largely descriptive, positivistic character. In Political Discourse can be found what Oakeshott understands to be the two possible techniques for securing moral prescriptions a stable and satisfactory foundation. Practical political discourse, historically and currently, is understood by Oakeshott to be logically unscrupulous practical activity. It undertakes the consideration of proposals by uncritically accepting first principles. Proposals are combated with opposing proposals not constructed to be more logically secure, but to be generally more palatable and more persuasive.[13] It is understood that in practical political discourse technical scrutiny of initial postulates is inappropriate; it is a painfully time-consuming endeavor which would make impossible necessary action. Therefore, practical political discourse defaults to description as the only weighing mechanism for evaluating competing courses of action. If systematic logical scrutiny is inappropriately difficult and ultimately unsatisfactory, then the chosen course of action will always be the one formulated in the most persuasive language. Oakeshott understands contemporary political discourse as as a descriptive engagement; it is a matter of formulating one's proposal with the greatest degree of superficial sensibility and the most reasonable generalized conjectures. It is not a process guided by ultimate truths or independent rules of conduct, but necessarily by the winds of persuasion and rhetorical appeal. The necessity grows out of the insoluble difficulties of grounding normative judgements.
What Oakeshott terms "demonstrative" political discourse, or political prescriptions elevated to the status of indisputable correctness, could be possible through two methods. Both are considered and rejected. For prescriptive force to be attainable, one may have access to irreducible and unquestionable axioms of universal applicability. This appears to offer the promise of demonstratively "correct" political proposals, and therefore a route to philosophically valid political prescription. Alternatively, full and complete categorical knowledge about human action and political circumstances would perhaps be sufficient material to allow for the determination of perfect and certain truth in political prescriptions. Each avenue is rejected for reasons that reinforce the viewpoint I have offered.