Habermas and Oakeshott on Rationalism,Morality and Democratic Politics

Rationality

Oakeshott is renowned for his critique of rationalism in politics, which he associates with the Enlightenment belief in the overarching ‘authority of reason’ (Oakeshott, 1991). The rationalist character of the Enlightenment – exemplified in the work of Francis Bacon and René Descartes – has given rise to deductive forms of rationality which emphasise the importance of abstract rules that are supposedly universally applicable in all cases (Oakeshott, 1991, pp. 19–21). For Oakeshott, the impact of this method on modern politics has been so profound that ‘almost all politics … have become rationalist’ (Oakeshott, 1991, p. 6). This is evident for example in many developments in modern politics from the French revolutionary desire for absolute uniformity to the highly bureaucratic nature of the post-war British welfare state. Oakeshott rejects the modern application of rationalism to political activity, and he is highly critical of the deep-felt modern conviction that there is an ideal or rational solution to every political problem. However, his critique of rationalism is not against ‘reason per se but a certain interpretation of reason’, which reduces reason to the ‘sovereignty of technique’ (Franco, 1990, pp. 120–1; Greenleaf, 1966, p. 89; Oakeshott, 1991, p. 6, p. 8). In order to challenge this one-sided understanding of reason Oakeshott emphasises that every concrete human activity involves at least two inseparable forms of knowledge. The first is ‘technical knowledge’, which is a set of rules, maxims, instructions or directions that can be learned and applied in a mechanical way, for example the rules of algebra (Oakeshott, 1991, p. 12, p. 14, pp. 20–1). The second is ‘practical knowledge’ or practices that can ‘neither be taught nor learnt, but only imparted and acquired’ through experience, for example the skills required in good cooking or riding a bicycle (Oakeshott, 1991, p. 12, p. 15). As he sees it, rationalists typically seek to insulate themselves from external influences by cutting themselves off ‘from the traditional knowledge’ of their society and abstracting from their own experience (Oakeshott, 1991, p. 7, p. 10, p. 15). By way of contrast, Oakeshott sees practical knowledge as inseparable from the behaviours and practices of concrete historical communities (Abel, 2005, pp. 37–61; Aristotle, 1976, pp. 97–8; Oakeshott, 1975, p. 89). ⁴ This knowledge resembles Aristotle's notion of phronesis, that is, the habits, customs and behaviours that citizens acquire over the course of their lifetime and that regulate their conduct on a daily basis.

By way of contrast, Habermas is often criticised for advancing the sort of abstract and cognitive rationalism that Oakeshott rejects (see, for example, Lyotard, 1984; Mouffe, 2000). However, these criticisms fail to acknowledge the depth of Habermas' notion of ‘communicative rationality’, which includes an emphasis on the contextual, practical and developmental dimensions of reason. This aspect of Habermas' theory is carried over from his earlier work – such as Theory and Practice, On the Logic of the Social Sciences and Knowledge and Human Interests– in which the Hegelian and contextual elements are clearly evident in Habermas' notion of practical rationality and his critique of technical rationality. ⁵ This is not surprising given that Habermas' work is rooted in the heritage of the Frankfurt School and he inherits the earlier critical theorists' critique of instrumental reason (as Max Weber invokes this term). For Habermas, this technocratic rationality expressed in scientism and objectivism and his critique of positivism shares important parallels with Oakeshott's criticism of rationalism in politics (see Franco, 1990, p. 121). ⁶ Like Oakeshott's analysis of Bacon and Descartes, Habermas criticises Auguste Comte's positivism for failing to address the metaphysical and contextual dimensions of knowledge (Habermas, 1972, p. 74, pp. 77–8). In Theory and Practice Habermas draws upon the contextualism of Aristotle's notion of praxis and Hegel's dialectical account of self-consciousness, and he embraces Hans Georg Gadamer's theory of Verstehen (understanding) with its emphasis on the significance of ‘prejudice’ or ‘fore-understanding’ (Habermas, 1974, p. 2, p. 81). Gadamer's approach emphasises the importance of context and tradition by stressing the socio-historical and cultural situatedness of practical reason (Gadamer, 2004, p. 272, p. 327; Habermas, 1988, pp. 143–70; see also Dilthey, 1986, p. 159; Heidegger, 1998 [1927], p. 40, pp. 60–1). Indeed, Habermas shares with Gadamer and Oakeshott the idea that cultural and symbolic experience necessarily conditions the practical rationality of the individual.

However, Habermas moves beyond hermeneutics by making the case that Gadamer's notion of ‘prejudgements (or prejudices)’ is conservative unless accompanied by an account of the importance of social criticism. Habermas argues that Gadamer's approach is unable to distinguish between progressive and oppressive practices, and Gadamer underestimates the ‘power of reflection’ that enables individuals to challenge, criticise and transform the authority of certain norms and practices embedded in their everyday lifeworld (Habermas, 1988, pp. 168–70). Indeed, unlike Gadamer and Oakeshott, Habermas has always retained an explicitly emancipatory dimension to his work. In Knowledge and Human Interests he makes the case that knowledge is an inherently interested activity and he distinguishes between technical, practical and emancipatory interests as underpinning all human knowledge production (Habermas, 1972). Habermas' distinction between technical and practical interests mirrors Oakeshott's distinction between technical and practical rationality. ⁷ In each case, technical reason refers to the mechanical application of a formula, technique or set of rules. By way of contrast, practical reason refers to the interpretative nature of practices, and both Habermas and Oakeshott emphasise the way in which these two forms of knowledge are intrinsically linked. However, there is no counterpart to Habermas' notion of emancipatory interests in Oakeshott's work. Habermas' critique of Gadamerian hermeneutics is comparable to those who have criticised Oakeshott for ‘absolutizing tradition and denying the power of critical reflection’ (see Franco, 1990, p. 138). I explore the political implications of this difference in the final section of the article. For now, however, I continue to focus on the proximity between the two thinkers, and show that Habermas retains his emphasis on the importance of contextual rationality in his later work.

In The Theory of Communicative Action Habermas argued that every speech act is underpinned by ‘presuppositions of argumentation’ (the rules of reciprocity and inclusion governing communication) that every speaker implicitly invokes when they engage in linguistic exchange. Habermas invests these presuppositions with a context-transcending dimension, stating that they are necessary and inescapable (Habermas, 1984, p. 28; 1987a, p. 95; 1990, pp. 86–9). Later I explore the tension between this aspect of Habermas' theory and Oakeshott's claims that we can never transcend our tradition. However, it is important to note at this stage that Habermas never entirely rejects the embedded element of practical knowledge because his ‘Kantian reconstructivism’ also includes constant references to the importance of embedded forms of knowledge (Habermas, 1990, pp. 21–42; 1996, p. 9). Even in his more Kantian work on ‘discourse ethics’ Habermas acknowledges the inherent context-bound character of communicative rationality. He says we always ‘find ourselves already situated in our linguistically structured forms of life’ (Habermas, 1996, p. xli). For Habermas, participants acquire communicative rationality through engagement with their everyday lifeworlds and ‘reasons only count against the backdrop of context dependent standards of rationality’, which in many respects is comparable to Oakeshott's notion of practical knowledge (Habermas, 1984, p. 15, p. 82; 1990, pp. 32–3; 1996, p. 36). ⁸ In other words, Habermas' later work retains the Hegelian emphasis on the context-dependent nature of communicative action. In Between Facts and Norms he claims that communicative reason ‘reformulates the practical reason of classical political philosophy’ and has the ‘advantage of not cutting social theory off from the issues and answers developed in practical philosophy from Aristotle to Hegel’ (Habermas, 1996, pp. 3–4, p. 9). He is clear that communicative rationality is not a ‘subjective capacity that would tell actors what they ought to do’ in the manner of a deductive formula (Habermas, 1996, p. 4). On the contrary, it is something citizens must learn through their everyday communication. In other words, Habermas' concept of communicative rationality – although orientated towards universality and shared understanding – is a practice that retains the contextualist elements of phronesis and practical rationality. It is not a fixed body of knowledge (or episteme) or a simple technique (techne) that can be learned as a set of rules (Aristotle, 1976, p. 209; Habermas, 1993, p. 21).

In this respect, there is an important proximity between Habermas and Oakeshott. However, this is not to say that there are no difficulties with Habermas' approach, when viewed from an Oakeshottean perspective. For example, Habermas distinguishes between instrumental, strategic and communicative rationality. ⁹ Unlike instrumental and strategic action, communicative action is coordinated through ‘acts of reaching understanding’ and not through egocentric calculations of success (Habermas, 1984, pp. 285–6). Habermas is critical of those theories of politics that rely exclusively on the calculating kind of strategic activity – for example in game theory and rational choice theory – because they present politics as an entirely calculated and self-interested activity. ¹⁰ From Habermas' perspective, these theories cannot account for the way in which citizens transform their private concerns into more generalisable interests and collective projects through processes of deliberation (Habermas, 1984, p. 285). Indeed, Habermas recognises communicative and strategic action as ‘two equally fundamental elements of social interaction’ (Habermas, 1982, p. 237). However, his approach is problematic because Habermas draws an intrinsic connection between illocutionary utterances and communicative action and between perlocutionary utterances and strategic or means—end rationality where he equates all strategic action with calculated forms of activity (Habermas, 1984, p. 290). This has sweeping implications for forms of speech such as rhetoric, considered by Habermas as subordinate forms of communication, which should not disrupt the illocutionary aims of reaching understanding (Habermas, 1984, p. 295). This significantly narrows the scope of Habermas' conception of progressive politics to the pursuit of illocutionary speech acts, orientated towards rational agreement. Indeed, Iris Marion Young has argued that Habermas' communicative conception of democracy needs to be supplemented with other modes of communication such as greeting, rhetoric and storytelling for it to be genuinely pluralistic and inclusive (Young, 1996, p. 129). By way of contrast, Oakeshott's conception of practical rationality embraces rhetoric as a crucial component of political activity understood as the art of persuasion and an ongoing ‘conversation’ (Oakeshott, 1991, p. 71). In this respect, Oakeshott's position helps to reveal the limits in Habermas' approach.

Despite these differences, Oakeshott and Habermas both challenge technocratic forms of reason and strategic accounts of politics. They both emphasise the inherently practical and context-bound nature of political reason. Although they do not put it in these terms, their theories imply a conception of liberty as non-domination or freedom from dependency (Habermas, 1974, p. 5; 1996, p. 78, p. 188). The republican notion of liberty as non-domination goes beyond the liberal conception of negative liberty understood as a space free from interference. ¹¹ Liberalism pays insufficient attention to relations of dependency and domination that exist within the social and public space. From a republican perspective one might be formally free to pursue one's interests without interference but nonetheless remain dependent upon sovereign or arbitrary forms of power and authority (Skinner, 2002). Indeed, the republican conception of liberty insists on the importance of self-governance and independence from arbitrary forms of power, and it is my contention that this republican understanding of liberty is implicit in both Habermas' and Oakeshott's critiques of rationalism in politics. Habermas' ‘colonisation of the Lebenswelt’ thesis and his critique of scientism and objectivism point to how technical rationality has perverted the self-reflexive and communicative aspects of modern life. According to Habermas, in late modern society the Lebenswelt – the realm of social and communicative interaction – has become increasingly dominated by the imperatives of money and power and so politics has become ‘technicised’ or subject to the rationale of administration rather than communicative action (Franco, 1990, p. 159; Habermas, 1974, p. 5; 1987a, p. 183; Oakeshott, 1942, pp. xvii—xx). In other words, social and political life is subject to the rationale of efficiency and profit maximising and is therefore bureaucratically administered. This undermines the force of those non-instrumental practices (Sittlichkeit) that ought to be the basis of collective action in the public sphere (see also Oakeshott, 1991, p. 41). This connects with Oakeshott's critique of the sovereignty of reason, which – in part – was a critique of the central planning and collectivism of post-war Britain and the formation of the welfare state (Habermas, 1972; 1984; Oakeshott, 1947/48a; 1947/48b). For Oakeshott, the national planning of the post-war British government stifled individuality, because centralised administration took autonomy away from individual self-chosen aims and created what he called the ‘individual manqué’– the anti-individual – who looks to government to direct his or her actions (Oakeshott, 1991, pp. 371–3). Habermas' critique of state paternalism as taking autonomy away from the Lebenswelt and his defence of individualism and pluralism clearly resonate with Oakeshott's critique of centralisation, which he says endangers freedom, because power is concentrated in the hands of the government (Oakeshott, 1947/48a, pp. 474–90).

For Habermas, the increasing centrality of market logics is detrimental to the continuance of democracy and this generates a crisis of legitimacy (Habermas, 1974, p. 5; 1990, p. 257). As we will see in the final section, he emphasises the importance of participation in the formal and informal public sphere so that citizens can challenge various oppressive, exclusionary and domineering practices and thereby regenerate the democratic order. We will see the similarities and differences between this and Oakeshott's conception of politics. However, the purpose of this section has been to problematise overly simplistic readings of Habermas, which see in his theory of communicative rationality the kind of abstract technical rationality associated with the Enlightenment. By way of contrast, I have demonstrated that Habermas' conception of communicative rationality incorporates strong elements of practical rationality, which modern citizens both acquire and reproduce through their everyday socio-cultural interactions. These more embedded forms of reason, which are often overlooked by critics, are brought to the fore through the juxtaposition of Habermas' notion of communicative rationality with Oakeshott's reading of practical rationality. For Habermas and Oakeshott, modern societies have a tendency towards the instrumentalisation of the social and political realm, which undermines the autonomy of citizens. Both thinkers are concerned to find ways to challenge technical and instrumental forms of rationality. My contention is that both of these approaches need to be understood in relation to the republican tradition and its emphasis on the importance of self-determination. In the following section, I further develop this republican reading of Habermas and Oakeshott with an analysis of their respective understandings of morality. Once again, we will see that by reading Habermas and Oakeshott together we can challenge the predominant reading of Habermas as a straightforwardly Kantian thinker, and we will see that his conception of morality incorporates substantive and contextual dimensions of the ethical life of citizens.

Morality and Ethical Life

Here I examine parallels between Habermas' project of discourse ethics and Oakeshott's notion of societas, and show that Habermas' notion of morality is best understood as a ‘non-instrumental practice’ of collective conduct. I argue that this understanding of moral conduct is crucial for contemporary pluralistic societies because it can provide the basis for social cohesion, without undermining the diverse ethical life of contemporary citizens. The term ‘morality’ is conventionally used in political theory in relation to Kant's deontological conception of personal or individual morality, which deems an individual action moral if the motive or will behind it is in line with the categorical imperative to treat others as ends in themselves (Kant, 1999, p. 31, p. 34). Morality is also a key term in Oakeshott's mature works, but he steers away from the Kantian understanding of the term and towards a conception of morality understood as the norms and values embedded in a particular community (see Franco, 2005, p. 127). ¹² In other words, he uses this term more like a Hegelian sittlich relation, which is a general mode of behaviour or common way of life that appears as custom and is embedded in concrete historical practices (Hegel, 1991, p. 195). In this section, I demonstrate that Habermas also uses the term ‘moral’ as a common mode of association and as a form of collective conduct, rather than as a categorical imperative for deciding individual moral duty. We will see that Habermas' theory shares with Kant's deontological approach an emphasis on the importance of universal rules for moral conduct, but these are always manifest in the generalised norms characteristic of particular communities. Once again, it is important to challenge the predominant interpretations of Habermas as a straightforwardly Kantian thinker, and reading Habermas with Oakeshott can help us achieve this.

In ‘Rule of Law’, Oakeshott distinguishes his notion of morality from the activities of the ‘moral philosopher’ (Oakeshott, 1982, p. 133). He says the moral philosopher is typically concerned with the conduct of the individual and ‘with the motives in which actions are performed’ (Oakeshott, 1982, p. 133). Clearly Kant's account of the categorical imperative elaborated in The Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals is paradigmatic of this approach to morality (Kant, 1999, p. 31). Using Oakeshott's words, we can say that Kant treats the notion of morality as ‘the self-conscious pursuit of moral ideals’ and this is a rationalist understanding of morality where an individual abstracts from his or her personal experience to derive universal principles or ideals of conduct (Oakeshott, 1991, p. 40). Given his critique of rationalism, Oakeshott claims that the moral philosopher typically reduces morality to technical knowledge rather than something embedded in a particular context or tradition. By way of contrast, Oakeshott says that morality is better understood as a collective practice (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 79). It is a ‘vernacular language of colloquial intercourse’, that is, a ‘relationship of human beings’ in the ‘mutual recognition of certain conditions’ that act as ‘prescriptions of obligations’ to be observed when choosing performances (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 63, p. 161). On his reading, the rules of a moral practice ‘enunciate obligations’ on those who recognise them, but they are not commands to be obeyed or a device for formulating judgements about conduct or for solving so-called moral problems (Oakeshott, 1975; 1991, p. 134).

Indeed, Oakeshott sees morality as inseparable from the practices of concrete historical communities and this shares important similarities with Hegel's notion of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 89). ¹³ The distinction between a moral and a purposive association is evident in Oakeshott's distinction between societas and universitas, understood as two alternative forms of association. Universitas specifies ‘an enterprise to pursue a common purpose or promote a common interest’, such as church or trade union, whereas societas is a moral association – not directed to the pursuit of a substantive goal – which binds citizens together through the acknowledgement of being in a ‘relation of loyalty to one another’ (Oakeshott, 1975, pp. 201–3). Oakeshott uses the term lex to differentiate the rules of a moral association from other forms of associations. He says lex aims to end ‘an unconditional state of affairs’ by ‘prescribing obligatory conditions upon its enjoyment’ (Oakeshott, 1982, p. 158). Lex refers to the terms of the relationships between individuals (cives) and prescribes their common responsibilities (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 108). Individuals recognise themselves as formal equals through the acknowledgment of lex and Oakeshott calls the ‘comprehensive conditions’ characteristic of the civil association respublica (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 128). For Oakeshott, a respublica represents a deliberately alterable system of law, and specifies the norms of civil conduct to be taken account of and subscribed to in choosing performances (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 176, p. 182). In other words, agents related to each other in a civil association acknowledge the moral ‘authority of respublica’ and in doing so they accept that they have to ‘subscribe to its conditions as an obligation’ (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 112, pp. 147–9).

Habermas, by way of contrast, sees his project of discourse ethics as a reconstruction of Kantian ‘moral theory’ which takes its orientation from the formal, abstract and universal nature of the categorical imperative (Habermas, 1990, p. 120). Discourse ethics establishes a criterion by which to judge the validity of contested norms, to regulate the interaction of groups and individuals, and thus provides a mechanism through which moral norms or ‘normative obligations’ can be decided and agreed upon. For Habermas, participants can arrive at a position of agreement or a ‘rationally motivated consensus’ by accepting those norms that ought to coordinate their interaction under conditions of fairness and reciprocity. This is despite the fact that an agreed norm may be contrary to an individual participant's own expectations (Habermas, 1996, p. 14). He puts forward the principle of universalisation (the moral principle) to establish the conditions a contested norm has to fulfil before attaining legitimacy. The principle of universalisation states that a ‘norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion’ (Habermas, 1998, p. 42, emphasis added). However, in his attempt to address Hegel's critique of Kantian transcendentalism, Habermas' discourse ethics also incorporates a Hegelian sittlich relation, where universal morality is understood as embedded in concrete contextual practices, but not tied to a traditional or homogeneous community. ¹⁴ There is a tendency among some deliberative democrats and post-structuralists to read Habermas' conception of morality as concerned with the moral conduct of the individual and with the individual duty to conform to the moral law (see Benhabib, 1990, pp. 346–7; Gutmann and Thompson, 1996). There is also a tendency in the secondary literature to read Habermas' discourse ethics as straightforwardly Kantian and to underestimate the significance of his more Hegelian emphasis on the embedded nature of the universal in particular contexts. ¹⁵ Indeed, it is my contention that on closer examination Habermas theorises morality as a form of non-purposive association that resembles Oakeshott's notion of societas.

Habermas makes an analytical distinction between moral, ethical and pragmatic uses of practical reason, with moral questions having priority over the other two so that ethical and pragmatic activities have to adhere to moral norms (Habermas, 1993, p. 2). Moral questions are concerned with the ‘just’ understood in terms of non-partisan rules or norms that all participants accept and enact in their public affairs (Habermas, 1990, pp. 198–9; 1993, p. 10). Ethical questions, on the other hand, are concerned with the good life of the individual or a particular community and they necessarily entail egocentric concerns because ‘they take their orientation from the telos of one's own life’. In other words, in the case of ethical questions ‘what is being asked is whether a maxim is good for me’ (Habermas, 1993, p. 6, p. 7, emphasis added). Habermas recognises that the ‘me’ is not an isolated individual. Rather, this ‘me’ is an identity that ‘unfolds against a background of traditions’ shared with other people which is embedded in a socio-historical cultural form of life (Habermas, 1993, p. 6). Pragmatic discourses entail purposive concerns and relate to goal determination and individual preferences (Habermas, 1993, pp. 10–1). However, it is necessary to recognise that the principle of universalisation is never a strictly formal principle, but necessarily invokes intuitions that are of an ethical or a ‘substantive kind’ (Habermas, 1993, p. 199). ¹⁶ As Thomas McCarthy has pointed out, for Habermas the ‘universal need not be based on a priori reasoning or pretend to infallibility’ (McCarthy, 1990, p. xiii, fn. 8). Instead, the universal refers to the generalisation of a moral norm in a particular context and under conditions of fairness, inclusion and reciprocity.

Indeed, like Oakeshott, Habermas theorises morality as a just practice that seeks to establish the conditions of civil association. For Habermas, a moral procedure is a form of association that is ‘not based on a shared conception of the good, but on a more abstract form of recognition contained in the idea of free and equal consociates under law’ (Baynes, 1995, p. 221). He says that this procedure is ‘just’ because citizens relate to one another in a formal relationship in terms of rules. Indeed, the structure implied by discourse ethics is a formal non-instrumental association, which involves the maintenance of a shared mode of conduct, and the recognition of this conduct preserves the necessary space for citizens to pursue their own purposes and is comparable to the way Oakeshott theorises the political community as societas. For Habermas the rules that govern the political community are not only understood in an abstract manner, but they must also find expression in a ‘practical discourse’, understood as a ‘public affair, practised intersubjectively by all involved’ (Habermas, 1990, p. 198, pp. 121–2). Indeed, ‘moral norms’ are the outcome of Habermas' principle of universalisation and they are a form of conduct that citizens adhere to in their self-chosen pursuits. He recognises that a norm is valid as long it has been agreed and validated by all participants involved in a practical discourse and people continue to enact it in their daily practices (Habermas, 1990, p. 66). In other words, the norms that govern the conduct of participants in practical discourse take the form of a sittlich relation or integrative force, and he uses the term ‘moral’ to refer to those practices that are not the customs of a particular form of life but are civic norms that are universally applicable to all affected.

Habermas' project of discourse ethics and Oakeshott's notions of societas are ways of theorising the modern political community as a non-purposive moral association, and these can be very productive for addressing the problematic of social cohesion that is characteristic of Western societies. The function of moral norms in Habermas' work resonates with Oakeshott's notion of lex as bringing to an end ‘an unconditional state of affairs’ by ‘prescribing obligatory conditions upon its enjoyment’ (Oakeshott, 1982, p. 158). Individuals relate to one another in the acknowledgement of formal rules, which create a civic identity. Their respective notions of morality and Oakeshott's conception of respublica reinforce this civic identity as individuals maintain a shared mode of conduct in performing self-chosen actions. Indeed, this broadly republican conception of the need for concord on the acknowledgement of rules of conduct between the diverse constituents of a political community has much to offer contemporary pluralistic societies. This also resonates with the republican emphasis on the transcendence of civic discord through a revival of civic community understood as a precondition of the engagement of individual liberty (Skinner, 2002, p. 24). Furthermore, Habermas' and Oakeshott's response to the challenges of pluralism is preferable to both liberal and multiculturalist approaches. Unlike contemporary liberals, Habermas and Oakeshott do not insist on the relegation of differences and the pursuit of individual and group conceptions of the good life to the private sphere (see, for example, Rawls, 1971). ¹⁷ By way of contrast, both of them insist on the importance of the public sphere as a rule-governed discourse over competing norms and values. Their approach is also preferable to those theories of multiculturalism that advocate legal pluralism or a system of group-differentiated citizenship. In many respects these proposals have exacerbated social conflict in pluralist societies, and from a critical republican perspective which draws upon Habermas and Oakeshott citizens are better advised to cultivate a relationship of loyalty to one another in their common recognition of conditions of acting in the pursuit of their individual and group-specific conceptions of the good. In the final section, I further explore the political implications of Habermas' and Oakeshott's respective understandings of rationality and morality by looking at their alternative conceptions of politics understood as the mechanism by which social norms and values can be contested. Here we will see significant differences between the two thinkers.

Democratic Politics

In this section, I suggest that Oakeshott's work can be seen in some ways as pre-empting the concerns of contemporary deliberative democracy. It is important to keep this in mind when we examine the nature of Oakeshott's conservatism. For Oakeshott, politics is a deliberative mechanism for directing societal norms towards conditions that are not tied to specific interests. This is similar to Habermas' emphasis on the importance of generalisable norms. In addition, for both Habermas and Oakeshott, politics is the mechanism through which dissent can be expressed and citizens can challenge the rules prescribed in the civil association (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 148). However, I also argue that Oakeshott's work does need to be supplemented with the more progressive dimension of Habermas' theory, with its emphasis on emancipatory forms of knowledge, in order to provide an adequate account of democratic politics and the crucial role of civil disobedience in contemporary Western societies.

Throughout his career Habermas has been concerned with questions of democratic legitimacy. In line with the republican emphasis on the importance of self-government, Habermas has insisted that citizens need to participate in the decisions that affect their lives, otherwise they find themselves subject to the paternalism of administrative agencies imposing decisions upon them (Habermas, 1996, p. 78, p. 188). In other words, from Habermas' perspective the exercise of public autonomy is necessary to ensure private autonomy. Indeed, active participation in civil society enables citizens to generate collective will and solidarity through communicative action, which ought to be brought to bear in a steering capacity on the decision making of parliaments and other governmental agencies. In Habermas' view, participation is essential for securing the legitimacy and authority of political institutions by generating generalisable norms of conduct that do not simply represent the interests of dominant groups (Habermas, 1996, p. 448). Similarly for Oakeshott, politics is an ‘open-ended activity’ that is concerned with the determination of desirable or wished-for norms of civil conduct (Oakeshott, 1975; 1991, p. 45, p. 56). Indeed, Oakeshott sees politics as a ‘deliberative and persuasive or argumentative’ set of practices concerned with promoting deliberate changes in the conditions of the public space or respublica. He says that in order to be ‘recognizably “political”, a proposal together with the reasons for it must relate to a possible condition of respublica and to nothing else’ (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 168). In other words, from Oakeshott's perspective a given proposal is considered political if it prescribes a ‘condition [to be] imposed upon conduct’ that is ‘indifferent to the advantage or disadvantage it may have for any interest’ and this strongly resonates with Habermas' notion of legitimacy through the creation of generalised norms (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 170). Again, this deliberative concern with a politics of the common good contrasts with liberal accounts of politics in terms of aggregated self-interest.

Numerous contemporary theorists of democracy have drawn on Oakeshott's conception of civil association (see Mapel, 1990;Mouffe, 2000). Nevertheless, Steven Gerencser has convincingly argued that Oakeshott's notion of authority is inadequate for a contemporary theory of democracy because it fails to account adequately for a politics of dissent (Gerencser, 2000). He argues that Oakeshott's emphasis on authority – which is the central concept in his political theory – represents both the strength and limitation in his approach. The strength of Oakeshott's theory lies in his recognition that civil rules derive their authority from the desirability of the conditions they promote. Indeed, Oakeshott recognises that a particular respublica is never an entirely harmonious relation, and that political conflict results in the ‘disturbance of the tensions which hold it together and is liable to bring hitherto concealed discrepancies to the surface’ (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 180). However, Gerencser also argues that Oakeshott tends to present dissent and civil disobedience as acts of ‘civil war’ rather than as legitimate forms of political activity (Gerencser, 2000, p. 163). Indeed, Gerencser argues that while Oakeshott rejects the idea of consensus on a substantive notion of the good, his model of civil association requires consensus about ‘what ought to be recognised or acknowledged as authoritative’ (Gerencser, 2000, p. 140). In the current climate of multiculturalism where there is a proliferation of value differences in Western societies, potential for conflict over fundamental beliefs, and where the ‘neutrality’ of secular liberal institutions is sometimes called into question, it is vital that citizens have legitimate areas for dissent and for challenging the authority of existing practices and laws. In Oakeshott's theory there is insufficient scope for this kind of legitimate dissent (Gerencser, 2000, p. 162).

By way of contrast, for Habermas activities such as direct action, demonstrations and other forms of civil disobedience are fundamental if we are to ensure the legitimacy of democratic institutions and practices. We have seen that Habermas shares Oakeshott's emphasis on the need for consensus on certain conditions of acting. Like Oakeshott, he understands this consensus as a form of authority understood in terms of acknowledging the validity of the rules that preside over the civil association (Habermas, 1990, pp. 88–9; 1993, p. 31; Oakeshott, 1975, p. 149). Again, like Oakeshott, Habermas recognises the importance of parliamentary sovereignty and the authority of common law. However, he also insists that the expression of civil disobedience is a necessary aspect of the political culture of a mature democratic polity (Habermas, 1985). Moreover, this political difference between the two thinkers relates to Habermas' critique of Gadamerian hermeneutics, which he says fails to draw an adequate distinction between tradition and the capacity for reflexivity characteristic of modern subjectivity. This relates to Habermas' understanding of modernity as a project, which is intrinsic to his understanding of the politics of emancipation. Gadamer, Oakeshott and Habermas all understand Hegel's principle of reflexive subjectivity as associated with the emergence of pluralism that is constitutive of modernity. However, for both Gadamer and Oakeshott modernity is a tradition, whereas for Habermas modernity is an incomplete project that needs to be actualised (see Podoksik, 2003, p. 33). While Oakeshott recognises the self-reflexive character of modernity, he emphasises the authority of the civil space and the manifold rules that have emerged with the development of modern liberal democratic institutions. Habermas, on the other hand, stresses the potential for modern subjects to realise post-traditional forms of collective authority where legitimacy is grounded solely in communicative action. This focus on the potential for emancipation in Habermas' critical theory – absent in Oakeshott and Gadamer – represents his distinctive contribution to modern democratic theory, and this appears to be a fundamental point of tension between the two thinkers.

Habermas' understanding of modernity entails a conception of politics that requires an active citizenry to bring forth changes that are latent in modernity. He says that the project of modernity cannot be left to the unfolding of history but needs to be actualised and carried forward by active socio-political movements (Habermas, 1990, p. 208). In addition, an active citizenry challenges the relations of domination, paternalism and elite rule, which Habermas associates with what he calls neo-conservatism (Habermas, 1996, p. 318; 1989b). Furthermore, for Habermas participation in political action, deliberation and social conflict makes citizens aware of their ‘remote and indirect connection with others’ (Habermas, 1996, p. 280). It allows citizens to get a sense of their commonalities and differences, which is a central component of their self-understanding and self-realisation. By way of contrast, Oakeshott's emphasis on directing societal norms towards generalisable interests and his antipathy towards administration are undermined by his narrow concept of politics as a polite or gentlemanly affair and his contempt for the role of the masses in ‘representative democracy’ (Oakeshott, 1991, pp. 363–83; Podoksik, 2003, p. 33). Indeed, we might describe his as a theory of deliberative aristocracy that undervalues the significance of widespread participation, which is crucial for achieving politics as a genuinely ‘open-ended’ activity.

Habermas appreciates the role of civil disobedience as a means through which minority groups and individuals in civil society can challenge majoritarian decision making and seek to overturn existing law, gain exceptions from the law or generate new laws (Habermas, 1985). Indeed, Habermas' recognition that the socio-historical development of particular liberal democratic constitutions is never ethically neutral strengthens the case for civil disobedience (Habermas, 2004, p. 14). He says that modern states lose their legitimacy if the substantive values of one ethical life come to dominate the moral and political norms of the community (Habermas, 2004, p. 10). Habermas' distinction between legal and moral norms also helps to make sense of how citizens can challenge these forms of domination. For Habermas, legal norms are institutionally anchored through the ‘democratic principle’ in the legal and political system and they bestow formal rights and individual liberties (Habermas, 2001, p. 114, p. 119, p. 121). Moral norms, on the other hand, are ‘naturally emergent rules’ that materialise in the day-to-day interactions of citizens and they prescribe ‘normative obligations’ or ‘reciprocal duties’ to the wider community that are not legally binding in any formal sense. Unlike legal norms they cannot be revised explicitly because there is no formal procedure to do so except through the majority of the public ceasing to reproduce these norms in their daily practices (Habermas, 2001, p. 122). This distinction reinforces Habermas' justification of civil disobedience, understood as a legitimate political activity, because it enables the perpetual renegotiation of the norms of the majority culture as legal norms can be transgressed through non-compliance, and new moral norms are respectively regenerated.

As we have seen, Habermas' notion of moral norms resonates with Oakeshott's notion of lex and respublica (see Grant, 1990, pp. 81–2). Both Habermas and Oakeshott accept the authority of law and morality as dependent upon the continual acknowledgement and re-enactment of that authority in the daily practices of citizens. They both recognise a dialectical relationship between law and morality, and the ways in which the specific norms of individuals and groups can enter into dialogue with each other. Indeed, they accept that law and morality are not static entities but fluid practices that are subject to constant change and modification. Oakeshott's understanding of politics as ‘recommending and promoting deliberate changes’ in the conditions of the respublica suggests that he is not a straightforward conservative in the Burkean sense, where tradition is seen as a homogeneous and organic whole (see Franco, 1990, pp. 139–40). However, Oakeshott's idea of politics as a ‘polite affair’ hinders the potential for change inherent in his conception of politics (Podoksik, 2003, p. 33). If anything, Oakeshott is what Habermas calls a ‘young conservative’, that is, someone who recognises the plurality constitutive of modernity, but who fails to recognise the emancipatory potential of modernity – that modernity is an incomplete political project to be actualised through democratic politics (Habermas, 1987b; 1989b). By way of contrast, the emancipatory dimension of Habermas' notion of communicative rationality, and his emphasis on participation in the public sphere, provide the foundations for a progressive politics. Habermas sees a central role for societal pressures or extra-parliamentary forces to challenge the existing system, inequitable social norms, and relations of domination. His endorsement of civil disobedience as a necessary aspect of liberal democratic societies confirms this progressive dimension of his theory, which is crucial under contemporary conditions of pluralism and multiculturalism.

Conclusion

In this article I have compared the work of two key political theorists who would not normally be associated with one another. By reading Habermas with Oakeshott, I have been able to identify important points of commonality between them and to challenge those readings of Habermas that identify him exclusively with the Kantian tradition of German Idealism. As we have seen, from his early work to his most recent, Habermas has retained an intrinsically Hegelian concern with the embeddedness of universal principles within the everyday lifeworld of citizens. More specifically, this has been shown in relation to Habermas' conceptions of rationalism and morality. Like Oakeshott, Habermas endorses a complex layered form of rationalism in politics; one that is opposed to both overly instrumentalised conceptions of politics and abstract a priori conceptions of reason. Both Habermas and Oakeshott understand the importance of practical rationality as an embedded and learned practice, which needs to be situated within a tradition of practical philosophy that reaches back to Aristotle. Moreover, the ultimate point of reference in Habermas' discourse ethics is not the a priori conditions of individual duty or the categorical imperative. On the contrary, Habermas locates moral conduct in the shared principles of intersubjective citizens. Like Oakeshott's emphasis on societas, Habermas' conception of morality needs to be recognised as a republican theory concerned with the collective recognition of the rules of civil association.

By reading these two thinkers together we have also seen that they both provide significant practical insights for addressing the challenges characteristic of contemporary Western societies, which are increasingly defined by the issues of pluralism and multiculturalism. The work of Habermas and Oakeshott reveals the limitations of the predominant responses to multiculturalism in the form of liberalism and theories of group recognition. What both of these theories fail to take account of is the importance of citizenship and collective identification as prerequisites for legal definitions of rights, whether they are understood as uniform individual rights or particular exemptions granted to cultural groups. In both liberal and multicultural approaches rights as entitlements come prior to any mode of collective identification or any mode of loyalty to one another. By way of contrast, in Habermas' and Oakeshott's republican theories these legal forms of entitlement are ultimately grounded in collective forms of identification and the self-government of the citizens. Western societies would do well to take on these republican insights if they are going to address the challenges of cultural diversity.