Max Skjönsberg (Hamilton School, University of Florida): Oakeshott on Teleocracy and Nomocracy

Professor Max Skjönsberg will speak on the political theory of Michael Oakeshott. Here is a description of his planned lecture:

Michael Oakeshott theorized two competing ways of understanding the modern Western state: 1) as a civil association (or societas), in which those living under it are solely united by their recognition of the authority of the laws, and 2) as an enterprise or corporate association (oruniversitas), whose members are united by a common purpose. This meant that modern politics can be understood as a nomocracy or a teleocracy. But the point behind Oakeshott’s dichotomy was not to suggest that this is a choice that we are, or have been, faced with. His point was rather that even though they are to a degree mutually exclusive, at least theoretically, the experience of the European state since the Middle Ages has involved a mixture of both. Moreover, they correspond to two distinctive parts of modern human nature: the individualistic and the collectivist. In the West, voters, leaders, and political parties continued to feel the pull of these two poles, and move between them.