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but that it should be recreated.” Those whose geniuses lie in refining the idioms of thought which
compose a civilization — “and among them, I believe, are those whose genius and interest lies in
literature, in art, and in philosophy” — perform the most “essential” social functions (Rg 95).
Thus Oakeshott agrees with Bosanquet about sociality’s character. He too resists the
“social realist” impulse to view all worthwhile endeavors in terms of power and material well-
being. However, his equating “society” with civilization, rather than with a self-sufficient totality
of groups, changes his argument’s moral implications. In Oakeshott’s account nothing we do is
unrelated to social reconstruction, because everything we do employs the idioms that compose
our civilization: “No activity is private in the sense of being without its place or context in the
corporate social life” (Rg 92). Indeed, the life of the studious recluse is “a thousand times more
social than the common life of the majority of people who pass their time in closest proximity
with their kind” (Rg 54).
For Oakeshott, then, we fulfill our social duties by enriching the idioms of activity which
compose our selves. Society creates us, and we repay the favor by observing its customs.
Moreover, in doing so we live well. Oakeshott’s definition of social obligation is coterminous
with his ethical ideal. We best enrich social idioms by setting out on “adventures” in civilized
understanding; and in giving an idiom new integrity, we enhance our own integrity.
IV. GENTLEMEN PREFER NOMOCRACY
What kind of state correlates with this conception of the self and society? Oakeshott
implicitly answers this question in a series of essays beginning in the 1950s and leading to
1975’s “On Civil Association” and 1983’s “The Rule of Law” In these last two works, civility is
defined as a condition where individual agents are related only through their mutually
Convention