Oakeshott és Hayek. A modern konzervativizmus Janus-arca
Oakeshott and Hayek. The Janus-Face of Modern Conservatism

Summary/Abstract: Michael Oakeshott, who wrote a famous essay on “Being Conservative”, was nevertheless considered to be a Liberal by some, and, according to his friends, was not particularly fond of the conservatism of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party. Friedrich Hayek, on the other hand, while writing about why he was not a conservative, came to be regarded as one by most, and his work is known to be referred to by Mrs. Thatcher as “what we believe.” Oakeshott and Hayek built on very similar epistemological foundations: the existence of a kind of knowledge (called “practical” by Oakeshott, “dispersed” at first by Hayek, and, perhaps most appropriately, “tacit” by Michael Polanyi) that cannot be obtained from books (indeed, cannot be put into books), and which causes the reigning intellectual fashion of “rationalism” to be hopelessly inadequate. From this shared starting point, the two authors reach what at first sight seem to be strikingly different conclusions. Oakeshott thinks that politics can rely on nothing else but the “intimations of tradition”, while Hayek goes into the battle of ideas armed with an “ideology of freedom”. This gave reason to Oakeshott to note about Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom that “it belongs to the same style of politics” (that is, rationalism), which it intends to resist. However, a close reading of their works reveals intriguing parallels not only in Oakshott’s and Hayek’s presuppositions about human knowledge, but in their political outlook as well. Both consider the “rule of law” – governing by the establishment of general rules of conduct instead of the setting of specific purposes – the sine qua non of a healthy polity, and believe in the separation of powers to ensure that principle. Oakeshott accepts some uses of ideology after all – the defence of tradition figuring prominently among them –, while Hayek works hard to base his ideology in “the political tradition of the English-speaking peoples”. In the end it seems that Friedrich Hayek and Michael Oakeshott, far from being on the opposite sides of an argument, represent between them the inherent predicament of modern conservatism (which Edmund Burke already had to face): that of trying to reject the claims of rationalism in an age profoundly influenced by it.

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