Talk of ‘Tradition’ and the Historical/Practical Past Distinction (2)

Given what I said earlier, what about Oakeshott’s own use of the concept of tradition?  Well, what we have here, I think, is quite interesting (well, interesting for the Oakeshott groupie…).  For, a criticism that is sometimes made of Oakeshott’s attempts at writing historical essays is that their methodology is frequently inconsistent with his own philosophy of history (see, e.g., Thomas Smith’s 1996 article on the topic, freely available online).  This criticism is typically made upon the assumption that Oakeshott could and probably should have been consistent if he had taken his work as an historian of ideas more seriously, or alternatively, that he could and probably should have found consistency the other way by simply lowering the unreasonable stringency of his philosophy of history (the latter, in a nutshell, is Smith’s view on my reading).

Looking at Oakeshott’s use of the concept of tradition, however, suggests the tension here is much more deeply rooted in his philosophy: for in short, the essays that surround ‘The Activity of Being an Historian’ in Rationalism in Politics employ the concept of tradition in a manner that fundamentally bridges the historical and practical modes of discourse.

So, on the one hand then, the term ‘tradition’ is just used as a synonym for the more wordy (and flowery) ‘idiom of social activity’; any pattern of human behaviour that lasts and develops over time, therefore, is a ‘tradition’ in Oakeshott’s usage of the term.  Simply used like that, and the concept is perfectly ‘historical’.  On the other hand, in employing it for purposes of political theory, Oakeshott seeks to make a normative claim in favour of consciously ‘traditional’ behaviour against consciously ‘rationalist’ behaviour (the idea being that insofar as an action is ‘successful’, it will be so because it was at least implicitly ‘traditional’, ‘rationalist’ action being an impossibility).  Since understanding one’s actions as part of a tradition involves (or perhaps simply is?) understanding them historically – it being the error of the ‘rationalist’ to try and understand his actions in an ahistorical manner – we thus get the conclusion that secure practical reasoning involves applying historical knowledge.  Successful action in a social context, then, involves a unity of theory and practice in historical thinking!

Interesting enough, this is precisely the conclusion Collingwood reaches in his philosophy of history.  In ‘The Activity of Being an Historian’, Oakeshott flatly rejects it though, his main argument being that since such a doctrine implies making normative judgements about past events, and normative judgements essentially involve speaking of what should have happened rather than what actually happened, it contradicts the essence of ‘historical’ inquiry.  On the face of it, this argument seems quite sound (well, it does to me).  Where does it leave his emphasis upon ‘tradition’ in his political theorising however…?