Leviathan as Myth: Michael Oakeshott and Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and the Critique of Rationalism
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Feature Article: Political Theory Revisited
Leviathan as Myth: Michael Oakeshott and Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and the Critique of Rationalism1 Ian Tregenza School of Politics and International Relations, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Michael Oakeshott and Carl Schmitt are two of the most prominent critics of rationalism in politics. They also both draw heavily on the work of Thomas Hobbes. This paper connects these themes and indicates that Oakeshott’s and Schmitt’s concerns about rationalism are reflected in their writings on Hobbes, especially in their use of the idea of myth. Notwithstanding certain connections between their understanding of, and concerns about, modern rationalism, comparing Oakeshott and Schmitt through their readings of Hobbes helps to elucidate the more important differences between their political theories as a whole. Using Oakeshott’s own terminology, this paper suggests that the differences between the two theorists can be understood as a difference between a ‘politics of faith’ (Schmitt) and a ‘political of scepticism’ (Oakeshott). Where Schmitt turned to Hobbes to find a political theology to combat the forces of liberal scepticism and ground the practice of modern authority, Oakeshott drew from Hobbes the idea F often associated with liberalism F that authority arises from a scepticism about the possibility of finding such a foundation. The paper concludes with the observation that the risks attending the politics of faith, as Schmitt’s experience attests, are more severe than those of scepticism. Contemporary Political Theory (2002) 1, 349–369. doi: 10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300042 Keywords: Oakeshott, Schmitt, Hobbes, rationalism, science, myth, authority
To us he is thus the true teacher of a great political experience; lonely as every pioneer; misunderstood as is everyone whose political thought does not gain acceptance among his own people; unrewarded, as one who opened a gate through which others marched on; and yet in the immortal community of the great scholars of the ages, ‘a sole retriever of an ancient prudence.’ Across the centuries we reach out to him: Non jam frustra doces, Thomas Hobbes! [Thomas Hobbes, now you do not teach in vain!] Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes (1938)
Ian Tregenza Hobbes and the Critique of Rationalism
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It may be said, then, that Hobbes is not an absolutist precisely because he is an authoritarian. His scepticism about the power of reasoning, which applied no less to the ‘artificial reason’ of the Sovereign than to the reasoning of the natural man, together with the rest of his individualism, separate him from the rationalist dictators of his or any age. Indeed, Hobbes, without being himself a liberal, had in him more of the philosophy of liberalism than most of its professed defenders. He perceived the folly of his age to lie in the distraction of mankind between those who claimed too much for Authority and those who claimed too much for Libertyy Autres te
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