Understanding Oakeshott: Civil Association and Liberal Education

    

Two of Michael Oakeshott's most important contributions as a philosopher were his concept of civil association and his understanding of the university as the locus of liberal education.  Serious exploration of them is to be welcomed.

In "Oakeshott, Liberal Education, and Civil Association", Elizabeth Corey proposes that "...the right way to think about universities is as civil associations, not enterprise associations."  Unfortunately, that thesis depends on an interpretation of civil association that neglects what makes it civil, and an understanding of enterprise association that depends on overlooking key possibilities.

Determining what Oakeshott means can be challenging.  His insightful analysis is sometimes obscured by the erudition and linguistic elegance for which he is renowned.  Employing language precisely, he turns common words into technical terms; their meaning can differ significantly from ordinary usage.  Frequently, however, Oakeshott does not specify what is necessary and sufficient uniquely to define his concepts.  Instead he just identifies a broad abstract category to which his term belongs, and then attempts to narrow the focus by eliminating alternative interpretations.  This method depends on the lists of exclusions being both clear and exhaustive.  But they are not. The method also involves frequent lengthy circumlocutions, whose variations can cloud what is essential.  Oakeshott's insistence that key phenomena lack definitive purposes can present yet another obstacle.

As a conscientious philosopher, Oakeshott tries very hard to make himself clear.  His project of 'theorizing' involves understanding an ideal type in terms of its postulates, and requires identifying something more fundamental than mere characteristics or features.  In exploring the civil condition, he explicitly confirms that he is seeking a mode of relationship that is "categorially distinct" and "cannot be reduced to any other" [OHC 112].

Oakeshott identifies civil association as "relationship in terms of conditions to be subscribed to in choosing and acting... 'moral', not instrumental, conditions—its postulates: civil law, adjudication, authority and obligation, legislation, politics...." [OHC ix]  Briefly, civil association is the relation of formally equal moral agents in a non-instrumental, non-purposive practice that is self-sufficient and wholly constituted by compulsory self-referential laws recognized as authoritative.  It is the locus of an activity—politics—which "has none but a distant analogue elsewhere than in civil association and may be counted unique to the civil condition." [OHC 161]

Elizabeth Corey supports linking the university with civil association by identifying civil association via a description rather than a definition.  Thus, "...in civil association people are free to choose their own purposes, to explore their individual interests, and to pursue the intimations suggested by their experience."  Further, she states that "In the university as civil association, the distinct good of liberal education can be recognized as at least equally valuable among all the goods that a university pursues." To the extent that such claims are true of civil association as understood by Oakeshott, they are hardly unique to it.  Moreover, as with several alternatives he explicitly dismisses, "the force and meaning of the adjective 'civil' is to seek.... we are left wondering why any of these [rejected interpretations] should be called civil association." [OHC 119; emphasis in text]  Civil association is a very particular kind of moral practice.  It "...is relationship in terms of the acknowledgement of the authority of the manifold of laws and law-like conditions which constitutes respublica" [OHC 158].  Both ideal and actual universities fail this test.

It is noteworthy that Oakeshott himself never linked the university and civil association.  His last work on education, "A Place of Learning" [VLL 1-34], was presented at around the same time as his elucidation of civil association was published in On Human Conduct. "The Place of Learning" discusses the university at some length, but never mentions civil association.  On Human Conduct does refer to the university, but cites it as an example of universitas [OHC 199]. "Properly speaking... a universitas is a many associated in the pursuit of a substantive enterprise.” [OHC 218]  As such, it is clearly unlike civil association, whose members, Oakeshott explicitly explains, "...are not partners or colleagues in an enterprise with a common purpose to pursue or a common interest to promote or protect" [OHC 122].  Universitas is instead similar to what Oakeshott calls 'enterprise association'.

According to Oakeshott, enterprise association "is agents related to one another in agreement upon a purpose to pursue, either as joint bargainers with others not thus related, or as associates intent upon a common enjoyment." [OHC 118]  Corey's characterization is more inclusive.  For her, it "occurs whenever there is something to be achieved that requires more than one person to do it".  But not every such objective requires cooperation;  her broad identification would even encompass civil association.  More plausibly, Corey states that in enterprise association "The end is clear, the roles of the associates are defined, and the association ends when the goal is attained."  As such, she claims, enterprise association can less readily accommodate Oakeshott's ideal of liberal education than can purposeless civil association.

Oakeshott's ideal of liberal education is distinguished by the extremely wide range of things from which it is supposed to liberate the learner.  According to Oakeshott, liberal learning is an "adventure in self-understanding" [VLL 17] in which the learner becomes free from "the distracting business of satisfying contingent wants [VLL 15]".  It is "an education in imagination" [VLL 30], which liberates the learner from "...the confused, cliché-ridden, generalized conditions of commonplace life" [VLL 23] and "the here and now... the urgencies of the local and the contemporary" [VLL 31].  As the ideal place of learning, the university affords the undergraduate the "gift of an interval" [VLL 148] for enjoying this liberation.

Corey argues for understanding universities as civil rather than enterprise associations by repudiating as purposes three frequently claimed objectives that Oakeshott also rejects.  Properly understood, universities are not organizations for promoting economically useful skills, transforming the world, or pursuing stated missions.  But these scarcely constitute the universe of possible purposes.  Corey herself suggests that "The university's aim is... to facilitate the self-understanding of individual persons."  Why is this relatively open-ended objective rejected as the purpose of the university understood as an enterprise association?

The reason may be the meaning of 'common purpose' that has been presumed, and the  particular and partial understandings of 'common' and ‘purpose' that underlie it.  The sense of 'purpose' that Oakeshott typically presupposes in On Human Conduct is specific:  it is "...a substantive satisfaction to be procured in co-operative performances, and it must be chosen by each agent related in seeking it." [OHC 61]  This is, however, not the only way in which purpose can be understood.

In teleological[1] explanation, a thing's end or purpose is often its characteristic function or use.  Thus, eyes are understood by reference to their role in enabling sight, pens by their use in facilitating writing, and elections by their operation in selecting office holders.  Purposive function is quite distinct from mechanical or mathematical function, in which an output necessarily depends on and automatically results from a rule or process operating on an input.  A circle's circumference is a function of and is necessarily related to its radius; the momentum of an item always reflects the product of its mass and velocity.  Such necessary, automatic function was rejected by Oakeshott as not being "an understood relation of intelligent agents" [OHC 112].  Unlike it, purposive function does essentially involve human understanding. It is also conspicuously absent from Oakeshott's lists of excluded interpretations.  It even seems to be acknowledged in, for example, Oakeshott's explanation that for Marsilius, "...a realm has no 'end' other than the satisfaction of the common need of a compulsory order..." [OHC 217].

Another problem that critically affects Oakeshott's understanding of purpose is an unduly narrow interpretation of 'common'. He ignores an ordinary sense in which X can be regarded as common if it is independently pursued or used by multiple individuals without their intending any joint or cooperative action. This is the sense of 'common' in which living humans have a common need for oxygen, and that language and the village green are common.  Significantly, like functional purpose, this distributive rather than collective understanding of 'common' is one that Oakeshott never explicitly considers or rejects.  It does, however, seem to be presupposed by Oakeshott's elucidation of 'human nature' as "...our common and inescapable engagement to become by learning" [VLL 6], and by his acknowledging that our inherited practices constitute a "'collected' but not a 'collective' achievement" [OHC 87].

There seems no reason, therefore, to reject something like, for example, 'facilitating the self-understanding of individual persons' as the legitimate purpose of the university understood as an enterprise association.  It might be objected that this would fail to be a substantive purpose.  But that is arguable.  For Oakeshott, a substantive purpose is not necessarily concrete.  It is instead "...a purpose which an agent might choose to pursue in preference to the satisfaction of some other want or in terms of which he might or might not choose to be related with others in achieving." [OHC 61] Though Oakeshott rejects 'human good', 'human excellence' and 'common good' as not being substantive ends, that is because they "... are not, properly speaking, purposes at all" [OHC 62]; they are too indeterminate.  In contrast, 'facilitating self-understanding' does seem to satisfy Oakeshott's criterion.  It not only can be, but sadly too often is, rejected in favor of the alternative university purposes of professional training, etc., that he and Corey both deplore.

Overcoming Oakeshott's insistence that key phenomena lack purpose might eliminate one of the reasons why his philosophy has so frequently confounded commentators.  Even non-Aristotelians tend to rely on objectives in identifying activities and institutions, but understand purpose more inclusively than Oakeshott typically does. Recognizing functional purpose and the distributive concept of 'common' might provide a way of attributing common purposes while retaining many of Oakeshott's key insights.

Consider:  whereas the purpose of an enterprise association is typically the achievement of a particular, often static condition, the purpose of a moral practice might be the performance of a designated function, that of specifying particular conditions for multiple other diverse practices.  Providing a framework for them, moral practice would be a kind of mixed meta‑practice: recall Oakeshott's reference to morality as the "practice of all practices" [OHC 60]  So understood, moral practice would still be differentiated from prudential practice in not being directly "concerned with the satisfaction of wants and with substantive outcomes but with the terms upon which the satisfaction of wants may be sought." [OHC 174]

Similarly, civil association could continue to be a very special kind of moral practice, differentiated from the others by being authoritative.  Roughly, its purpose might be to specify the conditions that compulsorily condition those of all other practices, "... conditions cives should be authoritatively required to subscribe to and be constrained to observe." [OHC 173]  On this understanding, civil association might be regarded as authoritative meta-association.

Formulating more precise definitions, and investigating their implications, is a task far beyond the scope of this essay.  But it is perhaps one worth pursuing.  Recognizing functional purpose and the distributive sense of 'common' might suggest other ways in which exploring Oakeshott's philosophy could help illuminate modes of association suitable for free and responsible individuals.

[1] 'Teleology' here refers not to a process, but to a method of analysis that seeks to explain things (objects, actions, associations, activities) by reference to their distinctive ends, typically their aims/ objectives/ purposes/ goals.  It does not presuppose either deliberate design or the "erroneous belief that all human relationship must be in terms of purposes pursued and actions performed" [OHC 318]; it requires no exceptional metaphysical commitment.

Oakeshott, Michael (1991 [1975]). On Human Conduct ('OHC'). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

----------- (2001 [1989]). The Voice of Liberal Learning ('VLL').  Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.