Religion and the Mode of Practice in Michael Oakeshott

Abstract

Michael Oakeshott's religious view of the world stands behind much of his political and philosophical writing. In this essay I first discuss Oakeshott's view of religion and the mode of practice in his own terms. I attempt next to illuminate his idea of religion by describing it in less technical language, drawing upon other thinkers such as Georg Simmel and George Santayana, who share similar views. I then evaluate Oakeshott's view as a whole, considering whether his ideas about religion can stand up to careful scrutiny and whether they have value for present-day reflection on religion.Michael Oakeshott's religious view of the world stands behind much of his political and philosophical writing. Yet it is difficult to get a firm grasp on what religion means to Oakeshott. His ideas about it constitute nothing that most people would recognize as religious. He rarely writes about God, creeds, dogma, metaphysics, theology, or transcendent experience. Many readers find it a stretch to see his thought as religious at all. How, then, can one reasonably assert that it was an essential part of his philosophy?To appreciate the centrality of religion in Oakeshott's work we must attend to two preliminary tasks. First, there is the obstacle of the language Oakeshott employs to discuss religion. His most explicit consideration of it took place only in his youth, during the 1920s and 1930s. During these years he was immersed in the philosophical school of British Idealism, and

Existential Failure and Success: Augustinianism in Oakeshott and Arendt

“…140 This is a form of selfdiscovery requiring 'self-examination and a reflective consciousness that comes to know itself by making decisions, by acting on those decisions, and by considering and evaluating the consequences that follow from them'. 141 If we look at an early essay of Oakeshott's. 'Religion and the World' (1929), on how the individual should handle religious and secular dualism, what emerges is an account of how the individual retains an authenticity in the face of worldliness.…”