Before this book, I'd only heard of Michael Oakeshott through name-dropping from conservative friends. No one but that small conservative circle ever mentioned him and after reading this, I can and can not see why.

As noted below, this is an expanded collection of essays ranging from Oakeshott's views of political rationalism's follies to exegesis of Hobbes. The common thread of all of these essays is Oakeshotts distaste for the rationalistic tendency of, not faith in reason, but overconfidence in it. Reason, Oakeshott reasons (ha-ha)is an instrument. Life is a collection of emotions, faiths, conquests, mistakes, and a vast array of experiences that may or may not have to do with reason at all. Thus, the mistake made in political thought is its overreliance on utopian, "I know better than you" reason. Oakeshott, with this as a springboard, makes his case for a conservative libertarianism.

Oakeshott hints that this rationalism is all the most relevant on the 'left'. I'm not sure this is quite accurate, after all, how could we explain John Dewey, Herbert Marcuse and Richard Rorty, but as I said, Oakeshott only hints. Scott Ryan brilliantly points out that someone like Ayn Rand and I'd suggest, Plato, give the 'right' a tainted legacy of rationalism as well. The problem with Oakeshotts essays in the section on rationalism in politics is that after he expounds his view that with rationalisms inadequacies, political philosophy becomes muddy, he spends 300 more pages on political philosophy. It's like a bad joke!!

What this book is good for is section 3 (on Hobbes) and section 4 (on conservatism and politics). As Oakeshott is more conservative that liberarian, this book is a great exposition of why conservatives (or those true to the label) are how they are preferring big government where social tradition is concerned but small government in economics. Why does conservatism put such high value on tradition? Why does it see welfare centralization with skepticism? Why the religious tendencies? All of these are, advertently or not, elucidated in section 3 and 4.

Beware, Oakeshott has a tendency to be wordy - not in the sense of content, but in the, "If I can say it effectively in 100 words, I'll tack on an extra 300 for kicks," kind of way. About the physical book; as noted below, "The Liberty Fund" makes a habit out of publishing inexpensive, impressively beautiful books. The print and binding quality are phenomenal and if this is available in "Liberty Fund" hardcover, spend the extra money - it's worth it!

Rationalism in Politics is a book of political philosophy. Those who have read philosophy know what to expect: defining and re-defining of terms, endless distinctions and debate, preference for the vague and abstract, dislike of plain language, and a near-perverse resistance to drawing useful conclusions. All of which suggest a degree of skepticism and compulsiveness which will frustrate the average reader, especially those engaged in the practical activity of making a living. I suspect that many readers find such books not worth the effort.

But for those patient few, and those, such as professors and students, who fill their time with abstract pursuits, Rationalism in Politics does have something to offer. I would argue that it does hold some valuable lessons, particularly about the limitations of politics and the impossibility of the quest for perfection.

This is a revision of the 1962 edition. The essays are arranged thematically rather than chronologically to show the consistency and continuity in Oakeshott's work. The early sections define rationalism, show how it has crept into politics, and examine how reason can be misused and misunderstood, both in politics and in the study of politics. The long middle section examines the work of Thomas Hobbes, while the latter parts deal with human conduct and poetical thinking.

The title essay, first published in 1947, probably has the most to offer the average reader, as its subject matter is ubiquitous and recognizable, both in and out of politics. Call it the triumph of technique. I believe what Oakeshott calls rationalism can also be called ideology, a preference for ideas and intellectual constructs over custom, habit, and tradition. Like the ideologue and the revolutionary, the rationalist thinks little or nothing has been done before his time. Skeptical and optimistic, he brings all issues before his intellect as though he is the first to have considered them, as though starting with a tabula rasa. The rationalist views the world more through the veil of ideas than with his five senses.

The persistent problem-solver, he is fully prepared to legislate for the whole world without ever leaving his armchair. From that isolation, the sort of ideas he has in mind are those which can be reduced to rational principles or formulae and set down in books. He fails to recognize any knowledge except technique; he believes technique leads to certainty and that making conduct self-conscious is always a gain - that what one discovers on one's own is always better than what one has inherited. He favors standardization over liberty, rules over experience, reason over tradition, uniformity over variety, and certainty over ambiguity.

Oakeshott wrote a complex, extended essay in definition, but I believe it is one in which many Americans will see aspects of their own lives, assuming they have the patience and the free time to dig into this heavy, sometimes difficult book.

This handsomely-bound expanded Liberty Fund edition of Michael Oakeshott's essays features some material not included in the earlier edition (notably, but not only, Oakeshott's introduction to Hobbes's _Leviathan_). But the greatest treat is still the title essay.

In "Rationalism in Politics," Oakeshott sets out to dissect the sort of modern "rationalism" that reduces reason to explicit technical knowledge and has no place for the sort of "traditional" knowledge we soak up through imitation. (Readers of F.A. Hayek will find a parallel here, though not an exact one, with Hayek's own view of implicit knowledge and its role in market processes.) His deft characterizations of such "rationalism" will no doubt remind many readers of many leading lights of the political left, but they also remind me -- perhaps surprisingly -- of someone else.

I have a friend who insists, with much justice, that Ayn Rand was essentially a "leftist" despite her defense of views that have generally belonged to the political right. In support of his claim, he cites a number of well-known features of Rand's thought, including (of relevance here) her utter rejection of tradition and religion, her deep distrust of "implicit" reasoning, and her almost messianic plans to "remake" the world in accordance with her own explicit conceptual scheme while riding roughshod over basic human realities that might interfere. (For more on this general topic, see Paul Johnson's _Intellectuals_. Though unfortunately he does not take Rand as one of his targets, his remarks on what happens when such "intellectuals" put their ideas into practice could practically have been written about the "Objectivist" movement.)

This thesis gains a great deal of plausibility from a reading of Oakeshott. Rand's hideously inadequate understanding of "reason" is remarkably consonant with the variety of "rationalism" which he skewers here, and which she more or less enshrined in her own feeble attempts at epistemology.

And as her journals and letters show, she deliberately pitched her philosophy of "Objectivism" toward left-liberals, presenting it as a non-Statist replacement for traditionalism and conservatism while basing it on essentially the same "radical" empiricist-nominalist-materialist-secularist worldview (up to and including a remarkably similar view of "reason") as Marx and Lenin. (Readers will find further discussion of this last point in John Robbins's imperfect but helpful _Without A Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System_.)

Now, I certainly don't mean to suggest that the _only_ reason for reading Oakeshott is to disabuse oneself of Rand-worship! Far from it; all of Oakeshott's immensely learned essays sparkle with insights that will be of interest to political thinkers of all stripes. But I do think he will be of special interest to the growing number of conservative libertarians who wish to recover classical liberalism from the spell of one of its most dangerously bewitching "defenders."

The enemies of liberty on the political left are fairly obvious, and most classical liberals are unlikely to be taken in by them. The greater hazard is posed by those "friends" who borrow more or less classical-liberal _conclusions_ and try to place them on a foundation which will not hold them, indeed which leads to their very opposite if (unlike Rand) one starts from the allegedly foundational premises and works forward.

I also don't mean to imply my own complete agreement with Oakeshott. But those who wish to exorcise Rand's demonic influence from the politics of classical liberalism will have a hard time finding a more powerful antidote than the opening essay in this volume.