[Download] "Kristol Vs. Oakeshott." by Modern Age ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Kristol Vs. Oakeshott.
- Author : Modern Age
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 173 KB
Description
In 1956, the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott published "On Being Conservative," (1) a statement of "the conservative disposition" as he conceived it. Although largely well received, Oakeshott's conception of conservatism was not without its critics. Among their number was the American intellectual and self-avowed "conservative" Irving Kristol, who, while admitting to "loving every line" of Oakeshott's essay, to admiring it "immensely," claimed that its "irredeemably secular" character repelled him. (2) Oakeshott's vision of conservatism, he charged, is insufficiently religious in two respects. First, Kristol imputes to it an obsession with the present that can't but be anathema to Jewish and Christian sensibilities by reason of its concomitant neglect of the past and the future. Jews and Christians can't but find "it is impossible. . . to have the kinds of attitudes toward the past and the future that Oakeshott's conservative disposition celebrates," for their traditions "link us to the past and to the future with an intensity lacking in Oakeshott's vision." (3) Second, the centrality of place Oakeshott allegedly assigns to the present not only renders his vision unpalatable to traditional religion but violates as well the spirit of the civic religion of America. Americans, Kristol explains, have an "emphatic and explicit" commitment to their past that is "ideological" (4); theirs is an "ideological patriotism" that is rooted in the United States' identity as "a 'creedal' nation," a nation to which anyone can belong irrespective of "ethnicity, or blood ties of any kind, or lineage, or length of residence even." The uniquely "ideological" character of American patriotism and the foundational "creed" from which it springs, Kristol contends, are both "suffused with a kind of religious sensibility" that constitutes what can legitimately be called a "civic religion." (5) Although there are indeed "tensions" between "American religiosity and the more secular 'civic religion,'" "both are, in general, future-oriented and 'progressive' in their political vision." (6)