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October 29, 2008

Michael Oakeshott on The Philosophy of History, a 1948 Broadcast

I was hanging out with Morgan last night, and we were lamenting the absence of conservative giants like Joseph Schumpeter or Michael Oakeshott on the intellectual scene, whatever the problems of conservatism as a philosophical orientation. Now the Michael Oakeshott Association has made a 1948 BBC radio broadcast on the philosophy of history available on the web.

In 1948 Michael Oakeshott made a radio broadcast about the philosophy of history on the BBC’s University Program. Leslie Marsh obtained permission from the BBC to play the broadcast at the MO Association’s inaugural conference in 2001 and to make it available on our web site.

Hence, available once again for you to download are the transcript of the broadcast and the following audio files.

First lines in .mp3 format (570 Kb)

First lines in .wav format (6.12 Mb)

Later lines in .mp3 format (719 Kb)

Later lines in .wav format (7.73 Mb)

Full broadcast (.mp3 only, 11.8 Mb)

Posted by Robin Varghese at 05:17 PM | Permalink

Comments

Thanks Robin. Here is some more food for thought from Michael Oakeshott (from his essay The Tower of Babel, 1948, compiled in Rationalism in Politics, 1962):

Too often the excessive pursuit of one ideal leads to the exclusion of others, perhaps all others; in our eagerness to realize justice we come to forget charity, and a passion for righteousness has made many a man hard and merciless. There is, indeed, no ideal the pursuit of which will not lead to disillusion; chagrin waits at the end for all who take this path. Every admirable ideal has its opposite, no less admirable. Liberty or order, justice or charity, spontaneity or deliberateness, principle or circumstance, self or others, these are the kinds of dilemma with which this form of the moral life is always confronting us, making us see double by directing us always to abstract extremes, none of which is wholly desirable.

... each man hears and understands the promptings of some allegiances more clearly than others. As the ancient Greek well knew, to honor Artemis might entail the neglect of Aphrodite ... That there should be many such [moral] languages in the world, some perhaps with familial likenesses in terms of which there may be profitable exchange of expressions, is intrinsic to their character. This plurality cannot be resolved by being understood as so many contingent and regrettable divergences from a fancied perfect and universal language of moral intercourse (a law of God, a utilitarian ‘critical’ morality, or a so-called ‘rational morality’). But it is hardly surprising that such a resolution should have been attempted: human beings are apt to be disconcerted unless they feel themselves to be upheld by something more substantial than the emanations of their own contingent imaginations. This unresolved plurality teases the monistic yearnings of the muddled theorist, it vexes a moralist with ecumenical leanings, and it may disconcert [one who looks] ... for uncontaminated ‘rational’ principles out of which to make it.

Posted by: Namit | Oct 29, 2008 6:56:32 PM

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October 29, 2008

Michael Oakeshott on The Philosophy of History, a 1948 Broadcast

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