A Discussion on the Oakeshott’s Political View of Intimation

A Discussion on the Oakeshott’s Political View of Intimation

Purpose: The contribution of this paper lies in that Oakeshott (1901∼1990) proposes a new view of political thought: the politics is the pursuit of an intimation. Method: To do this, this paper analyzed Oakeshott’s political thought and his criticism on Rationalist politics. Results: This new political view can be seen as a paradigm instead of the traditional views of rationalist politics. And the traditional political view of rationalism of the West has experienced the process from “the pursuit of good politics” of ancient Greece to “the pursuit of utilitarian politics” of modern times (that is to say, virtue is no longer to be the “king” of the political philosophy, rationality has occupied its position), the dilemma of this political view lies in the confusing of the problems of “fact-value distinction”. For this reason, Oakeshott believes that politics is a sort of practical activity for the participation in an arrangements. On one hand, the tradition of behavior is an arrangement, on the other hand, it is also unfinished. Conclusion: In this sense, the theory of politics is a kind of theory about the intimations of a tradition of behavior. Beginning from the interpretation of the political activity itself, this paper examines the political view of rationalism through the analysis of the theory of intimation and its implications.