The Nature of Political Theory

148 The Nature of Political Theory

and 11). Theory belongs to either of two idioms of inquiry, equivalent to the older
ideas ofGeisteswissenschaftandNaturwissenschaft. He thus insists on a firm dis-
tinction between the ‘engagement’ with the natural world, as against the intelligible
world of human conduct. This distinction has been a mainstay of the humanistic
disciplines and interpretative social sciences during the whole twentieth century.
Oakeshott is thus insistent that an intelligible belief is and remains a belief and cannot
be explained outside itself. Psychology, biology, or sociology are legitimate idioms of
inquiry, but they express a profound immaturity when they suggest that all beliefs
can be explained through, for example, biological or psychological mechanisms.^4 For
Oakeshott, ‘psychological mechanisms cannot be the motives of actions or the reason
for beliefs’ (Oakeshott 1975: 22).
An idiom of inquiry is constituted by a ‘system of theorems’, which aspires to be a
‘science’. It springs from a patient engagement with its postulates. Ethics, jurisprud-
ence, or aesthetics, for example, would be considered intelligible idioms of human
inquiry. To theorize within an idiom, for Oakeshott, involves the identification of,
what he calls, ‘ideal characters’, which are, in effect, the essential conditions, or deep
‘formal’ assumptions, or postulates, of a practice. Theorizingisthe identification
of the postulates of ideal characters. These ideal characters are, in turn, the channels
through which we understand the world. Ideal characters can be either crude or soph-
isticated. However, every form of theoretical understanding is necessarily a creature
of an ‘ideal character’.
All forms of conduct begin with a ‘historic’ reflective consciousness (see Oakeshott
1975: 37). As mentioned, intelligible conduct cannot be reduced to anything else
outside itself. To understand conduct is not to grasp it causally. For Oakeshott, all
human conduct,per se, therefore embodies ‘ideal characters’, embedded within its
postulates. Thus, all human conduct is, as Oakeshott puts it, an enactment or disclos-
ure in a performance ‘whose imagined and wished-for outcomes are performances
of other agents or other performances of himself’ (Oakeshott 1975: 36). The pos-
tulates of conduct can, however, be used creatively by the agent in different ways.
However, conduct, in the final analysis, is what the agent ‘enacts for himself in a
diurnal engagement, the unceasing articulation of understood responses to endlessly
emergent understood situations’ (Oakeshott 1975: 41).^5 In sum, all human conduct
is essentially a learned conventional activity, which is assimilated by the agents and
then used reflectively and creatively, as she matures, for both self-exploration and
investigation of her relation with others.
Conventional meanings, roles, obligations, expectations, which are rooted in
historic communities and civilizations, form the substance of human conduct. Prac-
tices within a community therefore embody meanings. Oakeshott refers to this virtual
role-playing aspect of many practices aspersonae. When we participate in a practice
we take onpersonae, which, in turn, embody the roles, obligations, and expectations
of the practice.^6 For example, the practices of being a neighbour or voting entail
personae, which are implied in the postulates of neighbourly conduct or the practice
of voting. Presumably, for Oakeshott, thepersonaetherefore embody the ‘ideal char-
acters’. Thepersonaedo not structurally determine activity, conversely, they embody