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I. THE GOOD LIFE AND ITS ENEMIES
In Experience and its Modes, Oakeshott dismisses “ethics” or “moral philosophy” as an
incoherent, pseudo-philosophical abstraction (E 332-346). His writings nevertheless evince and
advance a moral ideal. They present a life devoted to self-cultivation and adventurous inquiry as
the best and most appropriate life for human beings.
Oakeshott and his father shared an interest in Montaigne, John Stuart Mill, and liberal
studies. This suggests a familial devotion to introspection and free self-cultivation.
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In “Religion
and the World” (1929), Oakeshott defines this romantic individualist devotion as “religion” and
its alleged antagonist as “secularism.” He argues that what distinguishes these two ways of life is
not worldly activity versus other-worldly resignation, but rather the opposed ideals of “self-
realization” and “careerism.” The worldly man devotes himself to “steady acquisition for some
ulterior end in which, perhaps, he can never share.” He prudently directs his activities for the
comfort or reputation of “an hypothetical old man, who may bear his name thirty years hence.”
The religious man on the other hand values activity “solely by its worth to present insight.” He
pursues self-cultivation rather than the “illusive immortality” of exterior achievement. He is “not
among those who are ready to live at any price…. He has a horror of vileness, not of death, and
to make a living without making something of his life is vile. Life, for him, is well lost in an
adventurous cause” (Rg 27-38).
In later writings, Oakeshott assimilates this understanding of the good life first to
“culture”
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and then more specifically to poetry and the great “explanatory adventures” of
philosophy, science, and history. He subordinates religion’s role in the good life by describing
religion as a merely practical cessation of worldly activity, a resignation from the “treadmill
Convention