Political Philosophy: Discussing the Nature of Political Life or Articulating the Ideologies?-- A Look into Michael Oakeshott's Political Philosophy

區克夏的政治哲學及史學思想頗引入爭議，而本文則企圖從其思想之全貌來析釋其政治思想。由於區氏兼涉哲學、史學及社會思想，故對其詮釋允宜由宏觀之角度為之。但此顯然非易事，故本文祇係循此方式所嘗試之初探，希企首先能對其學說之全貌作一綜覽，進而深入其盤根錯節之處以期解開若干疑點。區氏先以「經驗」，後以「從事」，作為其哲學之分析單元，前者描述人與世界之主觀關連，而後者則關乎人之行為與社會組織之模式。此二概念代表他思想演變之前後二期，但卻未必不相接屬；作者所企圖說明者在於此二概念竟可巧妙連結、互補，而形成一支撐區氏本人的政治哲學之建構。另外，本文亦試析其「保守主義」、「傳統主義」之真貌，使其不沾染意識型態之色彩。Michael Oakshott had been controvertial as a political philosopher and as a historian. This passage is a study about his conception of the nature of political life against the overall philosophical system he had thought to adumbrate. Because Oakshott is such a versatile thinker that an accurate description of his ideas entails comprehensive survey of elements of philosophical, ethical, and historical thinking in his writing. This of course is no easy job and the study itself would thus appear no more than a seminal effort in this direction by, first, attempting a sketch of his “intellectual universe” and, then, going some depth into certain crucial issues which concern him most in his conceptualization of the political world. Experience was the concept he used of describing our modes of knowing and percepting the world, and practice was that of analyzing human actions and thus human associations. Not only did the two concepts represent Oakeshott’s academic interests in his different intellectual stages, but they pointed to differing perspectives in constructing civil philosophy. And it is the argument of this research that his earlier and later thoughts, as far as their intimations for political theorizing are concerned, should not be seen as incoherent; rather, together they appear as a delicate device persuasively explaining both the nature of civil association and that of political philosophy. Special cautions are also urged not to take Oakshott’s conservatism and traditionalism in a way that refers only to his ideological stance as a private citizen, for he might well have been deliberating most of the time as a philosopher