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Michael Oakeshott, "Experience and its Modes"

This classic work is here published for the first time in paperback in recognition of its enduring importance. Its theme is Modality: human experience recognized as a variety of independent, self-consistent worlds of discourse, each the invention of human intelligence, but each also to be understood as abstract and an arrest in human experience. The theme is pursued in a consideration of the practical, the historical and the scientific modes of understanding.

Summary: Experience, difference and modality.

Rating: 5

If there is a valid reason for reading this clearly written and explicit text, to the surprise of some, it is for its contribution to the philosophy of difference - without downplaying its contribution to the debates surrounding "experience" among others.

In particular, Oakeshott seems to be highlighting two sets of differences.

First, that between "experience" and a "mode" of experience - developed in sections 1, 2 and 6 of the text, which seem to be the most important. "Experience" is a `world of ideas', and that `the world of experience is the real world' (p. 69): it is self-existent. In contrast, a "mode" of experience is an `arrest in experience' (p. 71): it is a homogeneous world of abstract ideas that contributes to the `totality of experience' (p. 78). Simply put, a "mode" of experience (as experience) falls short of "experience" (as a totality) - a differential relation that seems to characterize Being, as ground, in its ontological difference from being, as grounded, discussed by Heidegger.

And this brings in the second a difference, which seems to be a feature characterizing each mode of experience, be it, "historical", "scientific" or "practical" - developed in (the less exciting) sections 3, 4 and 5 of the text respectively. It is a difference that arises from the way a mode of experience appears to us: on the one hand, `in virtue of its character as a world of ideas, comes before us as that which is satisfactory in experience, a coherent world of ideas' (p. 328). On the other hand, `in virtue of its modality, it must fall short of a fully coherent world of ideas' (ibid.). This is because, as an arrest in experience, it is a divergency, and thus the cause for the coming about of the above noted difference - a point that is unfortunately obscure and merely taken for granted.

It is with these two main differences in mind that I see this important text to take a rightful place within the debates over "difference" - in addition to those over the notion of "experience", thus it is a text to have read!

Summary: A iant book - well worth the effort

Rating: 5

The only other review (see below?) of this book has an excellent synopsis - although Oakeshott characterised himself as a 'political' thinker/commentator, and would certainly have denied the idea that there could be distilled from his total output an underpinning philosophy, this book comes closest to that.

Furthermore, in today's world, the main thesis of this book is both relevant and, arguably, a better way of drawing some sense from the political arguments which "rage" around us.

Finally, it is elegantly written (though, like all good books, you'll need to concentrate!).

Summary: Hard going, but highly rewarding.

Rating: 5

Michael Oakeshott propounds a startling thesis in this dense but rewarding work. Before I tell you what it is, let me explain how he sets it up.

After a short introduction, Oakeshott devotes his second chapter to the title topic: "Experience and its Modes." Here he carefully and solidly expounds the Idealist contention that experience is coextensive with judgment/thought; that the principle of coherence gives the meaning of "truth" and that the principle of "correspondence" fails for want of an answer to the question, "Correspondence to _what_?"; that the aim of philosophy is experience without presupposition or "arrest."

That's the setup. Now, in his next three chapters, Oakeshott considers the "worlds" of history, science, and practical life, showing in detail that each is _almost_ a complete world unto itself that must be criticized, if at all, on its own terms -- and yet that taking any of these as a _fully_ complete world would be what he has called an "arrest" in experience, in effect the mistaking of incompleteness for completeness.

The first side of this double-edged blade is crucial for one of Oakeshott's aims. He is at great pains to avoid, and to argue against, "irrelevance" or "ignoratio elenchi," and in order to do so he must show that criticism of a "world" can be offered only on that "world's" own terms. There is no shortcut; in order to "refute" a system of life or thought, it is necessary to enter into it and show, in Oakeshott's words, both the half-truth in the error and the error in the half-truth. None of the "worlds" he examines, in his view, is wholly false; each represents an important partial truth.

But neither is any of them wholly true, and here is where the other side of his blade comes into play. To take the worlds of history, science, and practical life as _complete_ worlds would be to defeat the aim of philosophy, which aims at experience without such arrests. And it is here that he is at his most striking; sympathetically and accurately entering into each of these "worlds" in turn, he deftly demonstrates that each is incomplete and therefore, in the final analysis (well, synthesis), philosophically unsatisfactory.

That, at any rate, is what I take Oakeshott to have done in this volume. But of course he has much more to say than I can possibly summarize here; interested readers should study the book for themselves. It is not _easy_ reading by any means, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

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Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123