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Draft—MOA Conference on Oakeshott, Strauss, and Voegelin Baylor University, Waco, Texas: 12-14 November 2009 “‘What’s Gone and What’s Past Help…’: Oakeshott and Strauss on Historical Explanation” Kenneth B. McIntyre Assistant Professor of Political Science Concordia University Montreal, QC Canada

It has been almost forty years since J.G.A. Pocock spoke of the transformation of the

study of political thought, but the transformation described by Pocock appears to have been

delayed or perhaps even dismissed. The history of political thought remains a field without a

discipline, despite the efforts of the Cambridge School historians, including Pocock, Skinner, and

Dunn, among others, to create a more self-consciously rigorous historical treatment of the history

of political thought.1 Though the work of both Pocock and Skinner owes a great deal to

contemporary analytic philosophy, their defense of the autonomy of history is also directly

connected with the elaboration by British Idealists like R.G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott

of a logic of explanation unique to historical understanding.2 The Cambridge School writers’

critique of the history of political thought as it was practiced in the early to mid-20th century

combined the analytic sensitivity to linguistic issues with the Idealists’ vision of a specific and

independent type of historical inquiry. However, though the critique and the positive program

proposed by these historians was largely accepted by many, it has remained less than effective in

1 In fact, both Pocock and Skinner, in their recent work on the practical character of history writing and the centrality of rhetoric to political theory respectively, have undermined their own commitments to the autonomy of the history of political thought, and their work now appears to be closer to that of various postmodernists who consider historical writing to be merely another form of rhetorical manipulation. See Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume I: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), and J.G.A. Pocock, Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). The best example of the postmodern treatment of history writing remains Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). 2 For the influence of the Idealists on the Cambridge School, see, e.g., Kenneth McIntyre, “Historicity as Methodology of Hermeneutics: Collingwood’s Influence on Skinner and Gadamer,” Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 138-166.

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unifying the field of political theory, as is evident by the extraordinarily diverse approaches to

studying and writing about the history of political thought still accepted in academic circles.

One version of these various approaches can be found in the works of Leo Strauss.

Strauss was one of the primary targets of the Cambridge School writers, primarily because he

insisted upon referring to his work as historical.3 In this paper, I intend to examine Strauss’s

various writings on historicism and the methodology of historical explanation, not because they

exemplify the confusion extant in the field of political theory though I believe that they do, but

instead because they manifest several specific presuppositions about the character of historical

explanation that are both inadequate theoretically and ultimately ahistorical. Strauss offers a

critique of historicism which conflates the idea that history is an autonomous explanatory mode

with the notion that all ideas are to be understood only as the conditional expression of the

temporal situation of a particular age. Further, he suggests that historical explanation should be

concerned with the understanding the intention of the author, but never really explains what he

means by this or how it might happen. Finally, he develops a method of reading past

‘philosophers’ which focuses on esoteric writing, but his defense of this method is neither

theoretically coherent, nor, in the form in which he explains it, particularly relevant to historical

explanation.

3 Skinner and Pocock were primarily concerned to offer critiques of Strauss’s practices as an historian of ideas and so they concentrated their efforts on his commentaries on other thinkers. They initially claimed that their critique of Strauss’s work served to demonstrate that Strauss was a bad historian, but its real import was to show that Strauss was not a bad historian because he was not an historian at all. According to both Skinner and Pocock, instead of writing recognizable histories of political thought, Strauss wrote myths or legends designed to support his own contemporary political ideas and obsessions. In this paper, I am less interested in the practice of the history of political thought and more in the logic of historical explanation, so I will focus on Strauss’s scattered remarks on history and the methodology of the history of political thought. See Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, James Tulley, ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988) 29-67;and J.G.A. Pocock, “Prophet and Inquisitor: Or, A Church Built on Bayonets Cannot Stand: A Comment on Mansfield’s “Strauss’s Machiavelli”” Political Theory 3 (1975) 385-401.

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I contrast Strauss’s lack of historical or methodological sophistication with the work of

Michael Oakeshott on historical explanation. In developing a relatively coherent account of the

logic of historical explanation, Oakeshott provides what Strauss does not: a way of thinking

about the history of political thought that does not reduce the subject to mere rhetorical

manipulation or to an exercise of myth creation. Oakeshott focuses on the differentia of history

by developing a logic of explanation specific to history. He does so by identifying a distinct

conception of the historical past, and by elaborating a sophisticated understanding of the

character of historical change and historical identity.

For both writers, history of some sort was central to their activity. For Strauss, the

investigation of the history of political philosophy was a necessary preparation for actual

philosophical work, and consisted primarily in ridding ourselves of the detritus of the modern

world. Oakeshott, by contrast, was a modernist and embraced the experience of the historical

past as one of the most revolutionary new experiences of the modern age and as a distinctive and

autonomous kind of experience with a logic of explanation specific to it. The differences

between Oakeshott and Strauss on history are central to understanding why these two thinkers,

despite seeming similarities between their political theories, actually share very little in common.

In section one, I offer a brief account of the professional and intellectual context of

Strauss’s work on history, and examine some of the theoretical difficulties in Strauss’s work,

since his writings on the logic of historical explanation are not in fact specific to history. In

section two, I discuss both the context of Oakeshott’s work and its contribution to the philosophy

of history, while also suggesting in more detail why Strauss’s work is ultimately irrelevant to

historical explanation. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of both thinkers’

approaches to history for the practice of history, especially intellectual history. I suggest that

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Strauss’s approach leads to a variety of insoluble historical difficulties and encourages the

construction of what Oakeshott would call legendary pasts, while Oakeshott’s leads to some

paradoxical conclusions about the possibility of certain types of history (e.g. the history of

philosophy, the history of science, the history of history, etc.).

I. Strauss

Strauss’s critique of historicism and his approach to questions concerning the character of

historical explanation are directly related to his professional and intellectual experiences at

German universities and to his personal experience of German political life in the 1920s and

1930s. First, Strauss’s experience in the German academy prepared him for a world in which

professors were held in high esteem not only by their students, but also by the political

community as a whole. Professors played a quasi-prophetic role in the public life of the

German-speaking parts of Europe, a role which is quite foreign to the Anglophone experience of

the place of academic life. For example, Martin Heidegger was treated by both his own students

and much of the population like movie stars are treated by eager teenagers today. Of course, this

inordinate influence also played a part in the decision by the National Socialists to involve

Heidegger in the promotion of their political program.4 Strauss, even after his emigration to the

U.S., never really moderated his inflated sense of the importance of professors, nor did he ever

really deny the relevance of the prophetic role of such academics in public life. Second,

Strauss’s experience of the failure of the Weimar government played a significant role in his

exaggeration of the dangers to Western (especially American and British) liberal and democratic

traditions. He never quite felt that the Anglophone liberal tradition was sufficiently capable of

4 There are numerous intellectual biographies of Heidegger which provide both background on the unique status of the German professoriate during the 19th and early 20th centuries and offer detailed accounts of Heidegger’s own proto-celebrity status in the 1920s and 1930s. See, e.g., Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, trans. Allan Blunden (New York: Basic Books, 1993). See also Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).

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withstanding the onslaught of historicism, positivism, and moral relativism without a solid

philosophical foundation, and he rejected the notion that liberalism could supply such a

foundation.5 Thus, for Strauss, the question of the relationship between history and philosophy

was not an academic matter, but a practical one with wide-ranging political implications which

necessarily called out for the intervention of the prophetic professor. Finally, Strauss’s writings

on the character of history are best understood in the intellectual context of the German debates

about historicism in late 19th and early 20th century.6 The methodenstreit in economics, the

dispute between proponents of the universality of the scientific method and the particularity of

the geisteswissenshaften, the emergence of a Weberian quasi-positivist via media, and the further

refinement and development of classical studies in philology and philosophy all played

significant roles in the creation of the German intellectual atmosphere during Strauss’s

education.7 For our purposes, the most relevant of these debates concerned the character and

importance of historical explanation. There emerged two different versions of historicism at the

time.8 One usage related to the emergence of the practice of history, and was connected with

Ranke, Dilthey, Windelband, and Rickert and their defense of the autonomy of historical

5 For example, see his discussion of Locke and Burke in Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953) 202-251, 294-323. 6 For a discussion of the different meanings of historicism, see Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present, Revised Edition (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983) 295-298, note 1. Strauss’s corpus is also marked by the characteristic German obsession with the ancient Greeks. For a discussion of the history of the intellectual, philosophical, and aesthetic dimensions of this phenomenon, see E.M Butler, The Tyranny of Greece over Germany (Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 1958). Benedetto Croce also comments on this phenomenon when praising Jacob Burckhardt’s “rediscovery of the true Greeks, fellow pessimists, a suffering and bitter people, not at all like the Greeks vaunted by classical German poetry and philosophy as living serenely and happily in a bodily and spiritual harmony.” Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, Sylvia Sprig, trans. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000) 111. 7 For an account of the methodenstreit, see Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 17-130. For the debates about the methodology of the human sciences, see Iggers, German Conception, 124-228. 8 There are, of course, more than just two uses of the term. Popper uses the term ‘historicism’ to describe a system in which an investigation of the past is used to generate laws of history which purport to then predict the future, but his is an eccentric usage and will not be dealt with here. See Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge Classics, 2002).

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explanation. The other usage was connected to the claim that philosophy should become more

historically sensitive, or, in its more extreme form, that philosophical thinking could only be

understood within the historical context of the philosopher. In its progressive form, which was

associated specifically with Hegel, this meant that philosophical advances involved appropriating

the truth of past concepts while rejecting the dross, while, in its radical form, which was

associated with Nietzsche, it involved the rejection of progress and an acceptance that human

thought is defined largely by its inescapable historicity.9

The tension between these alternatives was still largely extant at the time that Strauss

wrote his essays on history and political philosophy. In fact, during the 1930s, Friedrich

Meinecke discussed some of the problems with historicism as a philosophical claim and the

positing of natural law or natural right as an alternative in Historism: The Rise of a New

Historical Outlook. However, unlike Strauss, Meinecke was a defender of historicism, and a

keen critic of natural law arguments. Meinecke’s subsequent association with the National

Socialists, although it was short-lived, along with Heidegger’s abortive relationship with the

National Socialists, connected historicism of the philosophical kind with totalitarian politics, and

informed Strauss’s own connection between the two.10 Strauss’s experiences in Germany

provided the conditions in which a primarily practical concern with the past would be

paramount. Indeed, the primary focus of Strauss’s historical essays was always practical and not

9 Louis Mink observes that “when Heidegger says…that the disclosure of historical reality to historical inquiry is possible only because of the historicity…of the historian’s Dasein (as of yours or mine), he destroys at a stroke the possibility of specifically historical understanding by globalizing the notion to comprehend all understanding.” Louis O. Mink, Historical Understanding (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987) 112. 10 For Strauss’s explicit linking of historicism and National Socialism, see Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959) 27. Hereafter cited as WPP.

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academic, and he sincerely believed that a change in the way that political philosophy was taught

at the university level would have a positive foundational effect on public life in the West.11

Of course, Strauss’s essays on historical explanation and the relationship between history

and political philosophy are distinct from the conditions in which they were produced and

deserve to be considered separately from those conditions. One of Strauss’s central claims is that

“political philosophy is not an historical discipline.”12 This claim is not a particularly

controversial one, and it certainly would not in itself distinguish Strauss from contemporary

political philosophers like John Rawls, Robert Nozick, or Robert Dworkin. However, despite

this distinction and in contrast to most contemporary political philosophers, Strauss insists that

the study of the history of political philosophy is, at least currently, a necessary propaedeutic to

political philosophy itself. He writes that history is both “preliminary and auxiliary to political

philosophy.”13 These claims suggest that history is vitally important to Strauss, and they are

connected to his well-known argument about the decadent or morbid state of political philosophy

in the modern era.14 What is needed is a kind of quasi-archeological recovery of the past, and it

is the job of the intellectual or philosophic historian to engage in this act of recovery. Strauss

suggests that “we are…in need of historical studies in order to familiarize ourselves with the

whole complexity of the issue [i.e., of natural right and its relation to political philosophy]. We

have for some time to become students of what is called the “history of ideas”.”15 The modern

11 Strauss writes that “the need for natural right is as evident today as it has been for centuries and even millennia;” that “the rejection of natural right is bound to lead to disastrous results;” that “the contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism—nay, it is identical with nihilism;” that “the inescapable practical consequences of nihilism is fanatical obscurantism.” The correction of these philosophical errors and their consequent practical deformations lies in the hands of the philosopher and the Straussian ‘historian’. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953) 2, 3, 5. Cited hereafter as NRH. 12 WPP, 56. 13 WPP, 57. 14 The most concise statement of the decline of modern political philosophy, the ‘three waves of modernity doctrine,’ can be found in WPP, 40-55. 15 NRH, 7

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situation is so dire that the study of history is necessary to take us away from the current

approach to our situation and offer us alternative ways of thinking about our dilemma. Indeed,

studying history “is the only practicable way in which [we] can recover a proper understanding

of the fundamental problems [of politics].”16 This is a practical need which can be met by

delving into a past understood as a storehouse of ready-made ideas and examples, pulling, for

example, the concept of ‘natural right’ out of its musty old storage place, and placing it on

display as a model of reasonable thinking. This suggests that what Strauss is interested in is

what Oakeshott calls a practical, not an historical, past: a past both fixed and finished and a

course of events that is out there waiting to be described as story of villains and heroes, truth-

tellers and deceivers, and friends and foes.17 The priority which practical concerns are given in

Strauss’s work explains, at least partially, why, despite his emphasis on the absolute necessity of

historical study and despite the fact that the great majority of his corpus is composed of

reflections on past thinkers, he does not offer any sustained or systematic explanation of what

historical explanation is or ought to be. Indeed, Strauss even argues that the “epistemology of

history is likely to be of vital concern only to certain technicians, and not to men as men.”18

Nonetheless, Strauss does provide a critique of a certain way of thinking about and

explaining the past which he calls historicism. The critique is meant to serve as an example of

what historical explanation should not be, but it tends to conflate historicism as a philosophical

claim about the inherently conditional nature of all knowledge with historicism as a claim about

the specific or unique character of historical knowledge. Strauss’s primary target is the notion

16 Leo Strauss, “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History,” The Review of Metaphysics 5 (1952) 585. Hereafter cited as “CPH.” 17 Croce describes those who write about the past in purely practical terms in the following way: “there are vigilant custodians of the sacred fire of religion and patriotism who invent history books “for family use,” for the Germans or the French or any other people, or “for Catholic families” or “for Evangelicals,” which are filled with heroic deeds or pious acts of devotion and uplifting customs…; all these have contributed towards a kind of literary production which is called history and is often mistaken for history.” Croce, History, 5. 18 “CPH,” 559.

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that all thinking is inherently conditioned by its historical circumstances and can only be

understood in the context of those specific circumstances, though he often extends this critique to

include progressive or whiggish teleological accounts of the past, as well. So, for example, on

the one hand, he characterizes historicism as claiming both that “the object of historical

knowledge…is a “field,” a “world” of its own fundamentally different from…that other “field,”

“Nature””, and that “the restorations of earlier teachings are impossible, or that every intended

restoration necessarily leads to an essential modification of the restored teaching.”19 Without

pursuing exactly what such a ‘restoration’ would entail, Strauss suggests here that the historicist

claims that political ideas and political philosophy are necessarily connected with their own

specific political context and have little or nothing to teach us about the fundamental character of

political life.20 On the other hand, Strauss insists that historicism “believed that, by

understanding their past, their heritage, their historical situation, men could arrive at principles

that would be as objective as those of the older prehistoricist political philosophy.”21 These

supposed presuppositions of historicism have little to do with one another, and they are not all

commonly held either by historians or by critical philosophers of history.

The first claim, that history is a distinct and autonomous field of study, is certainly

associated with the emergence of critical history in the late 18th and early 19th century. The

Göttingen School of historians, Ranke’s critique of Hegel’s philosophical history, Creighton’s

critique of Acton’s moralistic history, Maitland’s critique of lawyers’ history, Windelband’s and

Rickert’s attempts to arrive at a neo-Kantian logic of historical explanation are all concerned

19 WPP, 60. 20 Strauss phrases it in this way: the historicist believes that “no political philosophy can reasonably claim to be valid beyond the historical situation to which it is essentially related.” WPP, 63. 21 NRH,

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with elaborating and defending the autonomy of history.22 The second and third claims,

however, are practical and epistemological and they have very little to do with the actual practice

of history or the logic of historical explanation. For example, historians rarely claim that the

only way to understand an author is to relate the author’s work to its temporal context, nor do

most believe that any sort of objective axiomatic conclusions about the human condition can be

drawn from historical study. In fact, Strauss himself appears to accept the third claim, and it

informs most of his historical work. He is constantly writing that “history shows…,” that

“history teaches…”, that “history seems…to prove….”23 One might ask how history can ‘prove’

something when Strauss is reading it when it couldn’t prove anything when the historicists were

doing so. Strauss’s difficulty in describing historicism can be attributed in part to the fact that he

appears to be ignorant of the actual practices of historians, skeptical that such practices are in

fact worth knowing anyway, and dubious about the value of history as it is currently practiced.

In fact, he insists that he does “not know of any historian who grasped fully a fundamental

presupposition of a great thinker which the great thinker himself did not grasp.”24 This is

perhaps not as arrogant a claim as it seems, given Strauss’s lack of acquaintance with any actual

historian.

The second and third claims that Strauss attributes to historicists are really directed at the

kind of philosophical arguments made both by Idealists like Hegel, Croce, and Collingwood, and

by the variety of thinkers grouped under the rubric of lebensphilosophie, like Dilthey, Nietzsche,

Heidegger, Meinecke, and Gadamer. Some of these thinkers certainly did make the claim that

22 For an overview of this period in historical scholarship, see Donald R. Kelley, Fortunes of History: Historical Inquiry from Herder to Huizinga (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); for the Göttingen School, Ranke, and Acton, see Herbert Butterfield, Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960) 32-61, 100-141, and 62-99 respectively; for Maitland, see Herbert Butterfield, The Englishman and His History (Hamden, CT: Archon Press, 1970) (originally Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944) 33-68; for Windelband and Rickert, see Iggers, German Conception, 124-159. 23 NRH, 18, 19, 24. 24 WPP, 228.

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past philosophers could only be understood as manifesting the ideas appropriate to their own

temporal and cultural situation, and most also believed that something could be learned from

history, either because historical philosophy necessarily involved a progressive refinement of

concepts or because philosophy and history were meant to serve human needs and thus were

primarily practical.25 Strauss’s most effective criticism of philosophical historicism is that it

does not self-reflexively treat its own claims historically. He writes that

only under one condition could historicism claim to have done away with all pretence to finality, if it presented the historicist thesis not as simply true, but as true for the time being only. In fact, if the historicist thesis is correct, we cannot escape the consequence that that thesis itself is ‘historical’ or valid, because meaningful, for a specific historical situation only. Historicism is not a cab which one can stop at his convenience: historicism must be applied to itself.26

Strauss’s critique is not particularly novel, but it does point to an inherent tension in

philosophical historicism.27 However, it says nothing about the logic of historical explanation.

In fact, Strauss’s arguments about the character of historical explanation are rather

exiguous, and consist primarily of two elements: a claim about the centrality of authorial

intention to interpretation and an argument about the connection between political life,

philosophy, and the necessity of secret or encoded writing. Strauss writes that “before one can

use or criticize a statement, one must understand the statement, i.e., one must understand it as its

25 Both Meinecke and Gadamer acknowledge the distinction between historicism as a claim about historical explanation and historicism as a claim about human historicity, and offer elaborate and systematic examinations of historicism in both senses of the term. See Friedrich Meinecke, Historism: The Rise of a New Outlook, trans. J.E. Anderson (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972); and H.-G. Gadamer, “The Problem of Historical Consciousness,” Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, Paul Rabinow and W.M. Sullivan, eds. (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley Press, 1987) 82-140. 26 WPP, 73. 27 Gadamer replies to Strauss’s critique by suggesting that “the consciousness of being conditioned does not supersede our conditionedness. It is one of the prejudices of reflective philosophy that it understands matters that are not at all on the same logical level as standing in proportional relationships….[W]e are not dealing with relationships between judgments which have to be kept free from contradictions but with life relationships. Our verbal experience of the world has the capacity to embrace the most varied relationships of life. Thus, the sun has not ceased to set for us, even though the Copernican explanation of the universe has become part of our knowledge.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition, Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, revised trans. (New York: Continuum, 1989) 448, 449, 532-541.

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author consciously meant it,” and that “the originator of the doctrine understood it in one way

only, provided he was not confused.”28 Strauss is not alone in insisting upon the centrality of

authorial intention in the interpretation of past texts. However, he is somewhat unique in that,

despite his insistence that intention is the criterion for any correct interpretation, he offers no real

explanation of what he means by intention. Indeed, Strauss repeats his invocation of intention

throughout his essays on history and political philosophy, but appears to believe that the mere

repetition of a few set phrases can adequately replace the explanation of such phrases.29

Questions concerning intention prompt the question ‘why did ‘x’ do or write ‘y’?’, and they

involve a different kind of answer than the mere repetition, translation, or interpretation of a text,

statement, or action.30 Questions of intention necessarily involve placing statements into

contexts in which they can be found to be some sort of answer to a question or placing actions

into contexts in which they can be understood as attempted solutions to problems.31 Strauss’s

only apparent attempt to elucidate the concept ‘intention’ is by insisting that “the task of the

historian of thought is to understand the thinkers of the past exactly as they understood

themselves.”32 This elaboration does not clarify things, however. What is the import of the term

‘exactly’? It cannot mean the re-enacting of a particular thinker’s entire life experiences, which

would be quite impossible. It does not appear to be related to Skinner’s elaborate account of

28 “CPH,” 581 and WPP, 67. In contrast, G.E.M. Anscombe notes that “a man’s intention in acting is not so private and interior a thing that he has absolute authority in saying what it is.” G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969) 36. 29 M.F. Burnyeat makes a similar observation, writing that “the injunction to understand one’s author “as he understood himself” is fundamental to Straussian interpretation, but he never explains what that means.” M.F. Burnyeat, “Sphinx Without a Secret,” The New York Review of Books 32/9 (May 30, 1985). 30 For an enlightening discussion of these issues, see Anscombe, Intention and Cora Diamond and Jenny Teichman, eds., Intentions and Intentionality: Essays in Honour of G.E.M. Anscombe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979). 31 As Alasdair MacIntyre writes, “we cannot…characterize behavior independently of intentions, and we cannot characterize intentions independently of the setting which make those intentions intelligible both to agents themselves and to others.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd edition (Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, IN, 1984) 206. 32 WPP, 67.

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historical intentionality based upon his interpretation of perlocutionary intentions and

illocutionary results.33 It seems that it might involve some sort of quasi-Collingwoodian re-

enactment of the thoughts of previous thinkers, but this sort of re-enactment supposes that there

is some course of events existing somewhere which could be re-enacted.34 This might be the

case, but this is a problematic claim and remains only an implication of Strauss’s work which is

never made explicit by Strauss himself. In fact, the most obvious implication of Strauss’s

argument is that an interpreter ought to avoid anachronism by placing the historical actor’s work

in a proper linguistic context, a conclusion that would not be foreign to practicing historians.

Again, however, Strauss is reluctant to make this claim explicit and, in fact, makes other

arguments which tend to undermine the sense of it.

Strauss’s argument concerning intention is connected to an assertion that he makes about

the character of languages and to a contention that the logical end of an historical investigation of

political philosophy is a consideration about the truth or falsity of a past philosopher’s

arguments. First, Strauss appears to believe that human language consists of a stable set of

concepts which can be used to directly describe material and spiritual reality in an adequate way.

For example, he writes that “every political situation contains elements which are essential to all

political situations: how else could one intelligibly call all these different political situations

“political situations”?” and “it is hard to see…how one can speak adequately of the modern

state…without knowing first what a state is.”35 These claims present a clear example of the

33 For an attempt to connect Strauss and Skinner in terms of their claims that some sort of conception of authorial intention is central to historical explanation, see Ian Ward, “Helping the Dead Speak: Leo Strauss, Quentin Skinner and the Arts of Interpretation in Political Thought,” Polity 41 (2009) 235-255. 34 It is unlikely that Strauss meant to appropriate anything from Collingwood. He wrote an ill-informed and unconvincing attack on Collingwood and Collingwood’s posthumously published collection of essays The Idea of History in 1952. See “CPH,” 559-586. 35 WPP, 64 and WPP, 59.

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problem of ‘sameness’ in linguistic and historical studies.36 The problem is: how can we tell if a

concept used by Epicurus is the same as a concept used by Hobbes? What counts as being the

‘same’? If a concept (e.g. justice) is defined at a conceptually rigorous level before the historical

work begins, the claim of sameness disappears because few, if any, writers will be seen to be

addressing the concept in the specific way that it has been defined. This represents a

philosophized or analytic, not an historical past. If by contrast, the historian allows for the

variety of approaches to the concept taken by past authors to represent a real variety of

viewpoints, then the variety itself undermines any claim to sameness.

The notion of language implicit in Strauss’s statements is a manifestation of what T.D.

Weldon calls the illusion of real essences, and it involves the notion that we can find out the truth

about the world by merely defining words.37 According to this illusion, nouns are names of

things which are eternal and immutable, and, since we can only have knowledge of unchanging

things, our knowledge of the world consists of learning proper definitions of unchanging

concepts. The problem with this claim is that language is almost completely conventional, and

the most stable kinds of words in terms of meaning are primarily empirical (e.g., water, earth,

house), not conceptual, like most political concepts (i.e., justice, equality, liberty).38 As

conventions change, languages change, and, as languages change, translations change. Thus,

because of the conventional character of languages and especially of non-empirical concepts like

justice, equality, freedom, etc., literal translations are impossible. Understanding the meaning of

an historical text necessarily involves an understanding of both the grammatical language of the

36 For a discussion of this issue, see Willard V. Quine, “Meaning and Translation,” The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language, Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz, eds. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964) 460-474. See also George Steiner, After Babel, 2nd Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 37 For a discussion of the term, see T.D. Weldon, The Vocabulary of Politics (London: Penguin Books, 1953) 20-30. As Weldon writes, “linguistic conveniences do not beget metaphysical entities.” Weldon, Vocabulary, 28. 38 Thus, translations of words like aqua or terra are a great deal more stable than translations of words like libertas or jus. Nonetheless, even relatively stable empirical referents have histories. See, e.g., Peter Scholliers, ed., Food, Drink and Identity : Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe since the Middle Ages (Oxford: Berg, 2001).

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writer and the political, aesthetic, religious, scientific, or philosophical languages being used.

This contextualizing of the text would not completely determine the meaning of the work, but it

would entail a much larger project than merely reading a text over and over again (especially a

text in translation).

Second, Strauss’s inadequate understanding of the character of language makes it easy

for him to suggest that an elaborate and complex text dealing with philosophical questions

(among other things) might be ‘simply true’. Strauss repeatedly insists that historians of political

philosophy “must be willing to consider the possibility that [the text/arguments of the

philosopher in question] is simply true.”39 Like most of his other strictures concerning the

interpretation of the past, Strauss does not explain what this means or how such a judgment

could be made. However, statements of this sort, presenting the adjudication of truth claims as a

relatively easy matter, represent what Weldon calls the illusion of the geometrical model.40

Because mathematics, and, for the Greeks geometry, seem to provide examples in which

demonstrative cases of true arguments can be easily found, there is a constant temptation among

philosophers to make analogies between linguistic or conceptual problems and problems of

mathematics. However, as Weldon points out, geometry is a “postulational system in which

some axioms and rules of inference are laid down and conclusions are derived by means of

them.”41 The analogy between geometry and politics or political philosophy is particularly

weak. In neither politics nor political philosophy are there axioms similar to those in geometry

from which to deduce demonstrable conclusions. Indeed, one might argue that the tradition of

39 WPP, 68. For other statements about the ‘simply true’, see NRH, 20 where Strauss repeats the phrase twice on the same page. 40 For a discussion of the term, see Weldon, Vocabulary, 33-36. For an example of the complexity of truth claims, see Robert Brandom, Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002) 1-17. Brandon offers five different conceptions of rationality under each of which questions concerning the truth of propositions might be addressed. 41 Weldon, Vocabulary, 34.

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philosophy in the West is largely defined by its conscious and constant attempt to question the

presumptive axiomatic character of the assumptions which inform practical, religious, and

scientific life.

Further, the conventionality of language means that the intentions of the author do not

completely exhaust the possible meanings of the text. The notion that the writer is in complete

control of meaning itself is far-fetched, yet it is central to Strauss’s most famous doctrine.

Strauss writes that “in a book in the strict sense there is nothing that is not intended by the

author.”42 This understanding of authorial perfection might seem to be more at home in a

fundamentalist religious tract than an essay on historical explanation, but it is deployed by

Strauss to support his controversial claim that philosophers necessarily hide the real meaning of

their work behind a screen of obfuscation. If the author is in complete control of meaning, any

seeming contradiction, incoherence in argument, or factual error must be the result of secret,

coded, or, as Strauss calls it, esoteric writing.43

Strauss offers three different arguments in support of his thesis that philosophers hide

their ‘true teachings.’ The first is non-controversial but it does not accomplish what Strauss

really intends to convey, while the second two rely on assertions rather than arguments, are

colored by highly rhetorical language, and depend upon an unconvincing claim about the

difference between knowledge and opinion. First, Strauss argues that some writers in the past

wrote in code, and that some philosophers did so as well. He notes that “the influence of

persecution on literature is precisely that it compels all writers who hold heterodox views to

42 Leo Strauss, Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections (New York: City College Papers, no. 6, 1967) 18. Strauss’s description of esotericism sometimes reads like an updated version of the sortes Virgilianae: everything is perfect, and everything is meaningful. 43 As Pocock writes, “we enter a world in which nobody ever makes a mistake or says anything which he does not intend to say; in which nobody ever omits to say something which he does not intend to omit…[and] if there are no anomalies…, then everything that Strauss can impute to [an author] as an intention is an intention.” J.G.A. Pocock, “Prophet and Inquisitor: Or, A Church Built on Bayonets Cannot Stand: A Comment on Mansfield’s “Strauss’s Machiavelli”” Political Theory 3 (1975) 393.

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develop a peculiar technique of writing, the technique…of writing between the lines.”44 This

could be read as a normal heuristic reminder about the possibility of coded writing in specific

historical situations if not for Strauss’s perverse claim that persecution ‘compels’ heterodox

writers to write esoterically. Nonetheless, historians are quite aware of the possibility that past

writings are written in code, but whether or not it is so is an historical question easily handled by

normal means of contextual analysis.45

Second, as noted above, Strauss claims that there are writers who are so vastly superior to

other human beings in terms of their capacity to control meaning that their writing should be

taken as if it were logically perfect.46 The conclusion Strauss draws from this notion is that any

contradiction in the work of a ‘genuine’ philosopher should be taken as a clue to a secret

teaching. He avers that “if a master of the art of writing commits such blunders as would shame

an intelligent high school boy, it is reasonable to assume that they are intentional.”47 For this

sort of argument to work, either a prior claim to some notion of what makes a writer ‘a master of

the art of writing’ must be argued, and Strauss makes no attempt to inform the reader of any

criteria of judgment, or we must accept the authoritative judgment of others as to the question of

‘master writer.’ It appears that the real criterion of ‘master writer’ is dependent solely upon

Strauss’s own authority. In any case, it is difficult to understand how Strauss can maintain that

44 Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952) 24. Cited hereafter as PAW. 45 See, for example, Pocock, “Prophet,” 385-401; and Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 145-150. 46 For a different but still compelling critique of the presuppositions of esoteric writing, see Bevir, Logic, 145-150. Bevir argues that no method of investigation of the meaning of past texts can presuppose that the authors of those texts are of logical necessity dissembling. Bevir writes that “an esotericist must assume, prior to any concrete investigation, that its [i.e., a particular group’s] members are especially likely to hold certain beliefs. But such an assumption must be illegitimate since we cannot know what sort of beliefs the members of a group are likely to hold except as a result of concrete investigations…[Strauss’s particular] “argument assumes…that philosophers know the truth, and the truth is dangerous, so philosophers hide the truth, where all of these assumptions are, to say the least, highly dubious.” (149-150). According to Bevir, following Kant, deception is necessarily parasitic on the expectation of sincerity. Thus, for Bevir, Strauss “mistake[s] an expectation for a presumption.” Bevir, Logic, 147. 47 PAW, 30.

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such a claim is a ‘classical idea.’ The whole range of Greek and Roman skeptical thinkers would

seemingly object to such a claim. Any version of the Augustinian notion of original sin would

militate against it, so that it certainly is inapplicable to classical Christian notions of human

capability. If, as the saying goes, even Homer nods, there is no reason to presuppose that there

are a select few who are always vigilant. Indeed, there is no historical reason for believing this

to be the case. In fact, the claim is imported as an historical conclusion from Strauss’s

stipulative definition of the nature of philosophy.

Strauss’s third argument about esoteric writing is drawn directly from his understanding

of the character of philosophy. He posits a radical difference between knowledge and opinion as

central to the idea of philosophy, which he then translates into a claim about the inherent and

logically necessary opposition between philosophy and the political community. He writes that

philosophy is “the attempt to replace opinions about the whole by knowledge of the whole,” and

“there is a necessary conflict between philosophy and politics if the element of society

necessarily is opinion, i.e. assent to opinion [because] philosophy…is…the attempt to dissolve

the element in which society breathes.”48 Because society depends for its survival upon the

acceptance of ‘opinions’, ‘genuine’ philosophers must hide the truth from society behind an

exoteric teaching, and must reveal their real teaching only to “trustworthy and intelligent

readers.”49 After all, as Strauss reassures us in an earnest rhetorical tautology, “thoughtless men

are careless readers, and only thoughtful men are careful readers.”50 According to Strauss, this

esoteric writing constitutes the truly political kind of political philosophy because it consists of

defending philosophy in a political way.

48 WPP, 11; WPP, 229; WWP, 221. Strauss insists that “esotericism necessarily follows from the original meaning of philosophy.” WPP, 227. 49 PAW, 25. 50 PAW, 25.

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However, the radical distinction between knowledge and opinion cannot be upheld.51 To

be informed, even at the most elementary level, requires a knowledge of the subject of

information which would allow one to be informed (i.e., the knowledge of the particular

language in which communication takes place, the knowledge of the particular convention or

practice being discussed, etc.). For example, a person who knows a great deal about games will

learn a new game easily; a person who is completely ignorant cannot even have an opinion about

a game. In fact, philosophy has often been described as a way of coming to know better what we

know already, but unsatisfactorily.52 Further, even if there were such a distinction, there is no

reason to assume that it applies to the political realm. Unless one completely accepts Strauss’s

stipulative distinction between philosophers as those with knowledge and all others as those who

rely upon opinion, then there is no reason not to conclude that statesmen and politicians have

knowledge of a particular sort which is practical and which is relevant to their own activities in a

way in which philosophical knowledge is not. Finally, Strauss’s conclusions about the necessary

opposition between philosophy and politics rely upon the treatment of certain authors, such as

Plato or al-Farabi, not as historical sources but as absolute authorities. In this unquestioning and

historically naïve acceptance of not only the philosophical but also the empirical validity of the

descriptions of past authors, Strauss shows all of the characteristics of what Collingwood called

‘scissors-and-paste history.’53 Indeed, Strauss accepts Plato’s account of the relation between

51 The radical separation of knowledge and opinion and its manifestation in esoteric writing constitutes one of Strauss’s most well-known formulations. He also claims that there is a radical distinction to be made between ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem’, or reason and faith. For a compelling critique of Strauss’s account of this distinction which convincingly argues that Strauss is mistaken about the character of both ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem,’ see Steven Grosby, “Jerusalem and Athens: In Defense of Jerusalem,” Hebraic Political Studies 3 (2008) 239-260. 52 Collingwood writes that “in a philosophical inquiry what we are trying to do is not to discover something of which until now we have been totally ignorant, but to know something better which in some sense we knew already.” R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method (Bristol, UK: Thoemes Press, 1995) 11. 53 R.G. Collingwood describes ‘scissors-and-paste history’ as “a kind of history which depends altogether upon the testimony of authorities…[I]t is not really history at all, but we have no other name for it.” As Collingwood makes

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philosophy and politics in Athens as if it were ‘simply true,’ but historians of classical Athens

have been quite dismissive of Plato’s account for some time.54 If Strauss’s so-called

philosophical claims about the necessary relationship between philosophy and esoteric writing

are unconvincing, there is no real need to address his more eccentric heuristic claims about

numerology, the frequency of contradictory theses, and the contradiction of ‘known’

orthodoxies.55

The primary conclusion to be drawn from Strauss’s aperçus about history and

methodology is that they have little to do with history at all. He is unconcerned with the

differentia of historical explanation, and considers the past indifferently as a storehouse of

political legends or examples, as a suppositiously real course of events, or as anything and

everything that has ever been done, thought, said, or written. He appears to distinguish the

history of philosophy as some special branch, not of history, but of philosophy itself, and, in this,

he shares a great deal more with his so-called historicist enemies than he might wish to admit.

And his particular contribution to the mythology of the tradition of political thought consists of

the unremitting reverse whiggism of his tale of the declension of political philosophy from a pre-

lapsarian state of Platonic bliss to its current wallowing in the slough of Heidegerrian despond.56

clear the historian does not deal with ‘authorities’ but only with sources. R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Revised Edition, Jan van der Dussen, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 257, 249-282.. 54 For an historian’s account of the relationship between philosophy and Athens during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., see M.I. Finley, “Socrates and After,” Democracy: Ancient and Modern, Revised Edition (London : Chatto and Windus, 1973) 110-141. 55 For Strauss’s thoughts on numerology, see Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958) 48-53. In regard to the other maxims, Strauss writes “if an able writer who has a clear mind and a perfect knowledge of the orthodox view and all its ramifications, contradicts surreptitiously and as it were in passing one of its necessary presuppositions or consequences which he explicitly recognizes and maintains everywhere else, we can reasonably suspect that he was opposed to the orthodox system as such.” PAW, 32. This, of course, presupposes that we know beforehand who counts as ‘an able writer’ and what ‘clear mind and perfect knowledge’ mean. Strauss also claims that “if we find in writings of a certain kind two contradictory theses, we are entitled to assume that the thesis which is more secret, i.e., which occurs more rarely, expresses the author’s secret view.” WPP, 230. Strauss appears here to be confusing prominence in an argument with mere numerical appearance. 56 John Gunnell makes a similar argument about the character of Strauss’s ‘histories’ of political thought, suggesting that “what is presented is not so much intellectual history as an epic tale, with heroes and villains, which is designed

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II. Oakeshott

The intellectual and professional context of Oakeshott’s essays on the philosophy of

history presents a stark contrast to that of Strauss. Unlike the Germans, the English did not look

to their university professors for political guidance, and Oakeshott always accepted this

separation as proper.57 Further, though Oakeshott was critical of the direction of Anglo-

American politics, he never expressed any sympathy with the notion that the failure of the

Weimar Republic had important lessons to teach the Americans or the British. In fact, Oakeshott

was quite clear that the only lessons that the German tradition of politics offered to the

Anglophone world were negative ones.58 For Oakeshott, the Anglo-American political tradition

was rich enough not to need to draw upon such foreign experiments, and, in any case, political

communities can neither be saved nor destroyed by philosophy, good or bad.59

Oakeshott’s defense of the autonomy of history was directly connected with his academic

concerns, not with his practical fears. Indeed, though he rejected the methods of the natural

sciences as a model for historical explanation, he also and just as vehemently denied the

relevance of the practical world to historical understanding. His account of the logic of historical

to lend authority to a diagnosis of the deficiencies of the present.” John Gunnell, Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987) 68. 57 As Alasdair MacIntyre writes of Hume’s understanding of the character of philosophy, “philosophy…is like the hunting of woodcocks or plovers; in both activities the passion finds its satisfaction in the pleasures of the chase. And this view of philosophy accords very well with the place which we have seen accorded to it within the dominant English and Anglicizing social and cultural order. Philosophy is a delightful avocation for those whose talents and tastes happen to be of the requisite kind, just as hunting is a delightful avocation for those whose talents and tastes are of that kind.” Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) 301. See also Oakeshott’s collected essays on the character of a liberal arts education and its relevance to the practical, political world in Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). For an account of university life during Oakeshott’s career as a professor, see Noel Annan, Our Age: English Intellectuals Between the Wars—A Group Portrait (New York: Random House, 1990). 58 In an unpublished and intemperate essay written during World War II, Oakeshott writes that “what we have to protect against, because it is an enemy of our civilization, is the German character.” Michael Oakeshott, “On Peace With Germany,” What Is History? and Other Essays (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004) 167. 59 In an essay on British politics in the late 1940s, Oakeshott writes that “reputable political behavior is not dependent upon sound or even coherent philosophy.” Michael Oakeshott, The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: Essays and Reviews 1926-51, ed. Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2007) 205.

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explanation is best understood in the historical context of the increasing freedom of academic

historians from subservience to the practical demands of politics and religion on the one hand

and from the temptation to follow the model of the natural sciences on the other.60 Thus, his

essays on the logic of history were intimately related to his understanding of the limitations of

the academy and the irrelevance of academic research to practical life.

Further, unlike Strauss whose comments on the nature of historical explanation are sparse

and poorly developed, Oakeshott’s interest in history manifested itself in a series of systematic

examinations of the unique character of historical explanation. Oakeshott produced three long

reflections on the logic of history and numerous short reviews and essays on the subject.61 All of

these pieces reflect Oakeshott’s attention to the differentia of historical explanation. Though he

asserts from the beginning that history is not the only way of thinking about the past and that

historical explanation is ultimately unsatisfactory from a philosophical point of view, he still

insists that history has developed a unique and internally coherent conception of a distinctive

kind of past which can be understood according to a logic of explanation specific to history.

60 Oakeshott considered the emergence of historical understanding to be a recent event, and claimed that reflection on the character of history becomes common only “in the past two hundred years”. Oakeshott also wrote that “it must be remembered that in considering ‘history’ we are considering an activity which…has emerged gradually and has only recently begun to acquire a specific character.” Michael Oakeshott, “The Activity of Being an Historian,” Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, rev. ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991) 152, 166. Other similar efforts during the early part of the 20th century include Collingwood, The Idea of History and Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1965). 61 Michael Oakeshott, “The Activity of Being an Historian,” Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, rev. ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991) 151-183; Michael Oakeshott, On History (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1999) 1-128. Cited hereafter as EM, “ABH,” and OH respectively. These essays demonstrate a remarkable continuity and consistency of both interest and argument. Thus, I will treat them thematically, not chronologically. There are differences in emphases between the three essays. In the essay on history in Experience and Its Modes, Oakeshott is primarily interested in displaying the philosophical inadequacy of history as a mode of explanation, while in the two later essays he is more concerned with elucidating the logic of historical explanation. Nonetheless, like in Experience and Its Modes, Oakeshott insists in both “The Activity of Being an Historian” and in On History that historical explanation involves a modification of experience which is ultimately philosophically unsatisfactory. In “The Activity of Being an Historian,” he writes that history “imparts to the past, and so the world, a peculiarly tentative and intermediate kind of intelligibility,” while in On History he claims that “as a mode of enquiry and understanding history is…abstract and conditional.” “ABH,” 174 and OH, 105.

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According to Oakeshott, the term ‘history’ as it is currently used is inherently ambiguous.

It often refers to anything or everything that relates to the past. With reference to the academic

inquiry called ‘history,’ the term refers both to the practice of historical inquiry and to the set of

conclusions offered as the result of an historical inquiry. As mentioned above, Strauss does not

appear to make any firm distinction between different types of past, but instead uses the term

‘history’ to cover any reference to the past. However, Oakeshott claims that there is no

unmediated or undifferentiated ‘past’, and thus history, understood as a critical inquiry into the

past, must deal with a specific and unique kind of past. He distinguishes the historical past from

various other types of past such as the remembered past, the mythical/legendary/practical past,

the scientific past, and the contemplative past by claiming that the historical past is the only

version which takes the pastness of the past seriously.

The character of the remembered past is obvious, but he is also insistent that, like the

remembered past, the practical past is constituted by its concern with the past only with reference

to a future of preferred or desired outcomes. As Oakeshott writes, while the remembered past

consists of “a continuity of consciousness in which I recognize myself as a continuing identity

and my present experiences and engagements as my own,” the practical past “is a reputedly

already known past of itemized experiences recalled to mind for whatever it may contain of

guidance or use for the successful pursuit of our current practical engagements.”62 This ‘already

known past’ provides the details of mythical ‘histories’ which tell of the march of progress to our

present state, of a time of darkness which he have fortunately escaped in our enlightened present,

62 OH, 17. Oakeshott writes of the practical past that “it lies before us, a vast miscellany of recorded actions and utterances recognized as an almost inexhaustible source of analogies and resemblances in terms of which to express our understanding of ourselves or to interpret to others our purposes and actions. It…provid[es] a gallery of familiar persons and situations with whom we may identify ourselves or with which we may identify our current circumstances. It offers a collection of allegedly well-known exploits which in approving, reprobating or excusing we may disclose our current allegiances. It reveals customs and practices which we may view with horror, with admiration or with indulgence and thus express or protest our own virtue. It provides relics which in venerating, respecting, disparaging and ridiculing we declare our own dispositions.” OH, 20

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or, as in Strauss’s version, of a great decline from a golden age to the present age of mediocrity

and decadence. However, since the past in practical terms is always an already known gallery of

heroes and villains, it cannot be the object of an historical inquiry into a past that is not known.

Further, though social scientists often refer to the past as the source of their generalizations,

Oakeshott insists that “there can in fact be no ‘scientific’ attitude towards the past, for the world

as it appears in scientific theory is a timeless world, a world, not of actual events, but of

hypothetical situations.”63 Finally, and by implication, Oakeshott suggests that there is no such

thing as a philosophical reading of the past. Philosophy is an activity in which the

presuppositions of other practices are elucidated and questioned, not an activity of accepting the

conclusions of other thinkers. In appropriating the ideas of past thinkers, philosophers do not

treat them historically, but instead take what they want and make it their own. Thus, these other

approaches to the past are not interested in history, but in the conversion of a past into the

present-future of practical consideration or the hypothetically atemporal world of the natural

sciences.

In contrast, the historical past is the past understood in its independence from both

contemporary practical concerns and from the methodological reductionism of natural science.

As Oakeshott writes, “history is the past for the sake of the past…, [it is] a dead past; a past

unlike the present.”64 Insofar as this disposition toward the past successfully excludes practical

concerns, the historical past is necessarily unconcerned with making moral or other practical

judgments on historical individuals, actions, or events. As Oakeshott notes, “this past is without

the moral, the political or the social structure which the practical man transfers from his present

63 “ABH,” 164. 64 EM, 106. In a similar fashion, Oakeshott claims that the historian maintains “an interest in past events for their own sake, or in respect of their independence of subsequent or present events.” “ABH,” 170.

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to his past.”65 This historical attitude toward the past is something which is exhibited only by

historians, and it is an achievement not a natural capacity, and thus is always susceptible to

slipping back into the idiom of the practical world.

Nonetheless, historians, like all who reflect upon the past, begin with an understanding of

the present. However, the present for the historian does not suggest a specific dissatisfaction

intimating a particular action both to remedy that dissatisfaction and to point to a more desirable

or acceptable future. Instead, Oakeshott suggests that “this present is exclusively composed of

objects recognized, identified, and understood as survivals from past.”66 Most of these survivals

of past human thoughts and actions are recognized as composing practical engagements on the

part of individuals in the past, but some can be identified as mathematical and scientific

formulations, philosophical reflections, musical compositions, or works of religious devotion.

All, however, evoke questions because, as Oakeshott notes, “for an historian, a survival from the

past is a not-yet-understood object.”67 These survivals of past actions and thoughts manifest

both distinct modal characteristics and a diversity of traditional or conventional languages which

allow the historian to impose a modicum of order upon the chaos of their mere surviving. Thus,

the first task of the historian is to identify the idiom of a particular survival in terms of both its

modal expression (i.e. is it a mathematical theorem, a philosophical argument, a religious hymn,

etc.?) and in terms of its language of performance (i.e. is it within the traditional language of

civic humanism or modern liberalism; is it within the language of medieval scholasticism or

nominalism, etc.?). As Oakeshott writes, “these surviving objects must be distinguished in terms

of the universes of discourse to which they belong and understood in terms of their appropriate

65 “ABH,” 169. Croce writes that historians passing moral “judgments somehow grate upon us: we feel their vanity and incongruity, almost as though we saw a boxer attacking a statue which, of course, would not move or change its expression.” Croce, History, 39. 66 OH, 30 67 OH, 39

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modal provenances,...[thus the historian must] "determine [the evidence's] character as a bygone

practical or philosophical or artistic etc. performance.”68 However, even this inquiry does not

account for the totality of the historical past because historians seek a past which has not

survived, and, thus, an inquiry into the meaning of survivals or evidence is only preliminary to a

further inquiry into the past which the evidence leads the historian to believe did not survive. It

is this inquiry into “a past which could not have survived because, not being composed of

bygone utterances and artifacts, it was never itself present” that constitutes the historical past.69

And it is with reference to this specific sort of inquiry that Oakeshott maintains that the historical

past does not refer to any notional course of events but instead is solely the creation of the

historian. He writes that “historical knowledge is not knowledge of ‘what has happened’, but of

the past in so far as it conforms to the categories of historical experience.”70 Of course,

historical creation, like creation of any sort, has a logic of its own and is disciplined by inference

from evidence which places limits on its creativity. History, as Oakeshott understands it, is not

made by individual actors in the past, but by historians after a specifically historical inquiry

which constitutes the historical past. Historical inquiry is:

an enquiry in which authenticated survivals from the past are dissolved into their component features in order to be used for what they are worth as circumstantial evidence from which to infer a past which has not survived,…a past…assembled as…answers to questions about the past formulated by an historian.71

Thus, it makes little sense to speak of ‘history teaching…’ or ‘history proving…’ as Strauss so

often does. Historical conclusions are the result of historical inquiries, and they are neither

68 OH, 34, 35. 69 OH, 36. 70 EM, 152. Or, as he writes in On History, “an historically understood past is, then, the conclusion of a critical enquiry of a certain sort; it is to be found nowhere but in a history book.” OH, 36. 71 OH, 36.

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detachable from the specifically historical presuppositions of their constitutions nor translucently

transferrable to the demands of contemporary practical life.72

Oakeshott’s account of the differentia of the historical past leads him to a further

consideration of the connection between historical explanation and historical identity. Historical

explanation is concerned with understanding survivals of past performances each undertaken in a

primary voice (e.g. a political argument, a philosophical reflections, a scientific hypothesis, a

work of art) and transforming these survivals into an account of a past which has not survived.

The first task of the historian, as noted above, is to identify the modal language of the survival

and the second is to identify its particular idiom in terms of its subscription to the rules of a

particular practice. Thus, for example, a manuscript of The Waste Land might be profitably

identified as a work of aesthetic expression in the idiom of literary high modernism, or A Theory

of Justice might be identified as an essay in the philosophy of politics written in the language of

contemporary analytic philosophy. However, since a performance is never merely a subscription

to the rules of a particular practice and since any description of a practice tends to be a static

abstraction, the particular performance and its context need to be widened considerably. As

Oakeshott notes of this preliminary activity in assigning meaning to evidence:

an historical enquiry thus oriented will be disposed to seek situations of almost structural immobility, and to find them either in situations so brief that they may be represented as in fact changeless, or else (like Fernand Braudel) in situations so extended and anatomized on so large a scale (la longue durée) that they display almost ‘geological’ stability.73

Further, since the historian is not merely repeating the practical, aesthetic, or scientific

expression of past actors, historical explanation cannot be understood as understanding the past

72 Mink writes that, in history, “conclusions are exhibited rather than demonstrated,” and, thus, the conclusions of historians cannot be detached from the arguments they make to support them. Mink, Historical Understanding, 79. 73 OH, 66. Lewis Namier’s work exhibits the same kind of ‘structural immobility.’ See, for example, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd Ed. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1963).

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as it understood itself. Oakeshott claims that “the task of the ‘historian’ is…to create by a

process of translation; to understand past conduct and happening in a manner in which they were

never understood at the time; to translate action and event from their practical idiom into an

historical one.”74 What is sought is not mere idiomatic duplication, but a specifically historical

explanation. Finally, historians are not concerned primarily with reproducing the mental states

of intentionality as such for two reasons. First, intentions cannot be understood in abstraction

from the particular practices which provided the conditions of their emergence.75 Second, as

Oakeshott writes, “an historical event…is not an assignable performance, and therefore it cannot

be understood in terms of the intentions of a performer, his disposition, his beliefs, his reasons

for acting or its so-called appropriateness as a response to his circumstances.”76 Thus, although

the writing of the text which we identify as Aristotle’s Politics can be conceived as an assignable

performance (i.e. some individual or individuals wrote it or collected it), any historical

explanation of it as an event points beyond itself in a way which renders the intentions, whatever

the term might mean, of Aristotle or of whomever else was involved as ultimately a peripheral

matter. From Oakeshott’s understanding of historical explanation, Strauss’s insistence upon the

reproduction of authorial intention, or ‘understanding the author as he understood himself’, is not

merely epistemologically questionable, but, more importantly, irrelevant to historical

explanation.

The historical event must be connected with other historical events in order to explain its

occurrence, and this relation is of the character of temporal antecedence and consequence. The

74 “ABH,” 180. 75 For a discussion of the embededness in practices of intentionality, see Michael Oakeshott, “Rational Conduct,” Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1991) 99-131. For a similar discussion of the tacit element of knowledge and, by implication, intention see Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 76 OH, 70.

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relationship between historical events is not one of logical necessity but of tangential

contingency: an antecedent series of events which because of their temporal proximity,

circumstantial contiguity, and contributory effectiveness produce a difference which can be

called a new historical identity. As Oakeshott suggests:

an enquiry designed to assemble a passage of antecedent events in terms of which to compose and to understand a subsequent is concerned to distinguish among these contiguous antecedents those which may be recognized to be significantly related to it because, in touching, they impart not themselves but a difference, to discern the difference they made, and thus to characterize the subsequent as a circumstantial confluence of antecedent historical events.77

Thus, Oakeshott’s conception of historical explanation necessarily involves the examination of

historical change and historical identity. According to Oakeshott, change is a paradoxical idea

because it involves the claim that some particular thing must be altered in some way while

remaining the same in some way. Otherwise, there would be mere sameness or absolute

alteration. The most common way to account for change has been to attribute an unchanging

essence to a particular thing and then offer a descriptive report of the ‘accidents’ which have

accrued to that thing over time. Strauss’s claim that a history of political philosophy is a history

of ever-changing and decadent versions of an essential concept is an example of this sort of

claim. However, historical identities are inherently unstable and historical change is related to

the coherence of continuity, not mere sameness. As Oakeshott writes, “the notion of historical

change is not that of difference attributed to some changeless item in the situation[;]…where an

historical past is understood to be composed of historical events (that is, differences) assembled

in answer to an historical question there is no room for an identity which is not itself a

difference.”78 Thus, historical identity is a matter of contingent degree and not a question of

logical coherence or efficacy. For example, when writing a history of the Vietnam War, where

77 OH, 102. 78 OH, 108, 110.

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does the historian find its beginning or its end? Does it make any historical sense to ask ‘which

of Auden’s many versions of his poem “Spain 1937” is the ‘real’ poem’; or to ask ‘is ‘James

Madison the Federalist’ or ‘James Madison the Jeffersonian Republican’ or ‘James Madison the

undergraduate’ or ‘James Madison the president’ the true James Madison’? No, none of these

‘facts’ are non-contibutory and all are constitutive of the historical identity ‘Spain 1937’ or

‘James Madison.’ Oakeshott insists that the historical past is “an assembled passage of

antecedent differences which, in virtue of its continuity, constitutes a passage of historical

change the outcome of which is a subsequent difference.”79 Thus, historical identity is

necessarily contingent upon a coherent temporal continuity, but the coherence is not conceptual

but circumstantial and is itself composed of a circumstantial series of differences which

distinguish it from both antecedent and subsequent identities. Historical explanation, then,

involves an inference from evidence about a circumstantial relationship between an antecedent

and subsequent event in the past, neither of which having survived into the present but related to

one another in terms of the significant alteration of an historical identity.

Oakeshott’s account of the logic of historical explanation is systematic and persuasive.

Nonetheless, his philosophy of history often displays serious internal tensions which are

connected with his particular elaboration of modality in general and with his specific

understanding of each of the modes or languages of experience.80 According to Oakeshott,

history needs neither assistance nor guidance from philosophy, and indeed the worlds are

distinct. Nonetheless, he appears insistent upon importing his own theoretical distinctions

concerning the characteristic qualities of the various modes of experience into the past.

79 OH, 125. 80 Oakeshott does not believe that historical explanation is philosophically satisfactory. His critique of historicism is not relevant here, but an examination of it can be found in Kenneth B. McIntyre, The Limits of Political Theory: Oakeshott’s Philosophy of Civil Association (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004) 102-110.

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Oakeshott maintains that the historian needs to understand the kind of performance that he is

investigating in terms of its modal language (i.e. aesthetic, historical, practical, scientific, or

philosophical). However, these are precisely the philosophical categories elucidated by

Oakeshott, and, for the historian, by presupposition, they will not have the firmness and

unchangeable character of a philosophical concept.

For example, it is quite clear that, according to Oakeshott’s understanding of historical

explanation, there could be a history of philosophy, but it would not be a history of an

unchanging essence surrounded by subsequent accidents. Indeed, over the course of 2500 years,

the practice of philosophy is quite likely to have changed so completely that any claim that there

is one continuous practice called philosophy would involve such a tenuous and exiguous

historical identity as to be utterly unconvincing. That is, it is probable that one would have a

series of histories of philosophy based upon common conceptions of what the practice meant at

the time. Or, consider a further example. What would a history of history or a history of art look

like? Oakeshott’s understanding of both modes is that they are human achievements of very

recent vintage. Does it make much sense then in calling a history of Greek and Roman literature

about the past ‘a history of history’, or a history of medieval church decoration and liturgy ‘a

history of medieval art’, or is this once again a case of importing philosophical categories? In

the context of Oakeshott’s understanding of historical explanation, the historian is almost always

a nominalist, and must work within the limits of the evidence and what it suggests about a past

which has not survived. In importing his own philosophical concepts to his account of historical

explanation, Oakeshott undermines the autonomy of history in the same way that Hegel does and

renders it more susceptible to the always imperialistic claims of philosophy.

Conclusion

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Oakeshott and Strauss are often considered together as representative contemporary

conservative political philosophers. The inherent ambiguity of the term ‘conservative’ makes it

less than useful in most cases and completely inappropriate as an adjective to modify the term

‘philosopher’. Nonetheless, this attribution of conservatism is related to the central place of the

past in both writers’ reflections on politics. In this paper, I have suggested that, whatever

political opinions they may have shared, their differences concerning the nature and logic of

historical explanation are profound and that these differences suggest that there is actually much

less in common between the two than is often supposed.

Strauss’s work offers very little to those who are interested in the logic of historical

explanation, other than a series of unsupported assertions concerning intentionality and an

obscure and poorly constructed argument about the connection between philosophy, politics, and

esoteric writing. The latter argument about the necessarily esoteric character of true philosophy

implicitly suggests that his own philosophical work is both insincere and duplicitous, two

characteristics which are sufficiently foreign to the current practice of philosophy to merit the

neglect that his work has received from contemporary philosophers.81

In contrast, Oakeshott’s essays on history constitute a consistent, coherent, and for the

most part compelling account of the logic of historical explanation. Though weakened by his

own importation of non-historical concepts, Oakeshott’s writings on history provide a defense of

the autonomy of historical inquiry by elaborating a distinctive conception of the historical past,

historical events, and historical identity. One of the most important implications of Oakeshott’s

conception of the logic of historical explanation is that it calls into question the fundamental

character of most academic work in the field of the history of political theory and the history of

81 Strauss’s description of esoteric writing is reminiscent of an old joke. A man arrives home late from work looking quite disheveled and having visible lipstick stains on his collar. He tells his wife, ‘Honey, I’m not going to lie to you, I’m going to lie to you.’

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philosophy. As they are currently practiced, both the history of political theory and the history of

philosophy consist largely of highly sophisticated or stylized practical treatments of the past, and

Strauss’s work is typical of this genre. These are ‘friend-or-foe’ histories, using ‘scissors-and-

paste’ methodologies in order to appropriate ‘authorities’ from the past to support the present

practical or theoretical arguments of their authors.

If most contemporary intellectual history is just a refined sort of myth-making, then how

might a more historically rigorous history of political thought look? There are several types of

inquiry that Oakeshott’s work suggests would be appropriate to the practice of intellectual

history. First, one might examine the history of a particular concept in a particular period.82

Second, one might investigate the history of a particular text.83 Or, third, one might explore the

history of the creation of a particular political mythology.84 This is certainly not meant to be an

exhaustive or exclusive listing. In fact, Oakeshott’s argument about the historical past is not

meant to be exclusive, either.

It is perfectly appropriate that other modally distinctive treatments of the past, especially

the practical understanding of the past, will persist alongside the historical treatment of the past.

In fact, practical or legendary pasts seem inherently constitutive of both political communities

and political discourse. However, such pasts are to be treated with different modes of appraisal,

and as suggested the primary mode will usually be practical. The relevant questions concerning

such legendary pasts are: do I find this argument relevant to my/our current political situation?;

does it address particular problems that I find important?; are its arguments likely to be

82 See, for example, Martyn Thompson, Ideas of contract in English political thought in the age of John Locke (London: Taylor and Francis, 1986). 83 See, for example, Peter Laslett, “Introduction,” John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 84 See, for example, J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century, A Reissue with a Retrospect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

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convincing to others whom I want to convince?; does it fit with the way that I think people act or

the way I think the world works?; will expounding some version of it advance my purposes or

my career?; etc. None of these are unimportant considerations, but, at the same time, none have

anything whatsoever to do with historical explanation.