ISSN 2291-5079 Vol 1 | Issue 3 2014 COSMOS + TAXIS Studies in Emergent Order and Organization COVER ART: Noonie Minogue http://www.isendyouthis.com/artistsportfolio. COSMOS + TAXIS aspx?contactid=821368 Studies in Emergent Order and Organization “The Sceptic” Dry point, chine colle and monotype VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 3 2014 49cm x 45cm Made available courtesy of Noonie Minogue IN THIS ISSUE Editorial Note . 1 The Critique of Rationalism and the Defense of Individuality: Oakeshott and Hayek . .3 Chor-Yung Cheung Jane Jacobs’ Critique of Rationalism in Urban Planning ................................................................10 Gene Callahan* and Sanford Ikeda Oakeshott on Modernity and the Crisis of Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Western Liberal Democracy . 20 Noël O’sullivan Oakeshott and the Complex Ecology of the Moral Life . 27 Kevin Williams Homo Ludens and Civil Association: The Sublime Nature of Michael Oakeshott’s Civil Condition ...........................35 Thomas J. Cheeseman The Instrumental Idiom in American Politics: The ‘City on the Hill’ as a Spontaneous Order ...............................48 Corey Abel Dogmatomachy: Ideological Warfare . 60 David D. Corey Oakeshott on the Rule of Law: A Defense ...........................................................................72 Stephen Turner Editorial Information ...............................................................................................83 EDITORIAL BOARDS HONORARY FOUNDING EDITORS EDITORS Joaquin Fuster David Emanuel Andersson* (editor-in-chief) Thomas Cheeseman (assistant managing University of California, Los Angeles, United States Nottingham University Business School, China editor) David F. Hardwick* Laurent Dobuzinskis* (deputy editor) Alexander Hamilton Institute University of British Columbia, Canada Simon Fraser University, Canada Dean Woodley Ball (assistant managing Lawrence Wai-Chung Lai Leslie Marsh* (managing editor) editor) University of Hong Kong University of British Columbia, Canada Alexander Hamilton Institute Frederick Turner University of Texas at Dallas, United States CONSULTING EDITORS Corey Abel Peter Gordon Edmund Neill Denver, United States University of Southern California, United States Oxford University, United Kingdom Thierry Aimar Lauren K. Hall Christian Onof Sciences Po Paris, France Rochester Institute of Technology, United States Imperial College London, United Kingdom Nurit Alfasi Sanford Ikeda Mark Pennington Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Purchase College, State University of New York, King’s College London, United Kingdom Theodore Burczak United States Jason Potts Denison University, United States Byron Kaldis Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Gene Callahan The Hellenic Open University, Greece Australia Purchase College, State University of New York, Paul Lewis Don Ross United States King’s College London, United Kingdom University of Cape Town, South Africa and Chor-Yung Cheung Ted G. Lewis Georgia State University, United States City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Technology Assessment Group, Salinas, CA, Virgil Storr Francesco Di Iorio United States George Mason University, United States Sorbonne-Paris IV, Paris, France Joseph Isaac Lifshitz Stephen Turner Gus diZerega* The Shalem College, Israel University of South Florida, United States Sebastopol, CA, United States Jacky Mallett Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo Péter Érdi Reykjavik University, Iceland Ashford University, United States Kalamazoo College, United States Stefano Moroni Evelyn Lechner Gick Milan Polytechnic, Italy *Executive committee Dartmouth College, United States www.sfu.ca/cosmosandtaxis.html COSMOS + TAXIS Editorial Note GENE CALLAHAN* AND LESLIE MARSH** GUEST EDITORS This, the first themed issue ofC OSMOS + TAXIS, is dedicated to the memory of Kenneth Minogue (1930-2013). Ken, as most will be aware, was a longtime colleague and friend of Michael Oakeshott and was the first President of the Michael Oakeshott Association. Moreover, following in the footsteps of Friedrich Hayek (the first President of the Mont Pelerin Society), Ken served as the Society’s 27th President. Hayek, of course, is very much part of the conceptual dna of this journal. Ken will be remembered as a most generous and con- genial person both professionally and privately. He had a twinkle in his eye and a quick and cultured wit. He was 1 never pompous and always showed a genuine interest in things beyond his (pardon the pun) ken. Much of what John O’Sullivan (2013) observed, namely Ken’s intellectual hon- esty and modesty, was borne out by many others’ experience. O’Sullivan recalls that: COSMOS + TAXIS + TAXIS COSMOS [H]e would delight in having his arguments caught, turned around, and sent whirling back by an opponent. Hearing this mix of logic and wit was rather like listen- ing to a Platonic dialogue re-written by Noel Coward or Tom Stoppard. Moreover, as O’Sullivan puts it: [Ken] knew that being a good teacher meant being a good learner. He was always ready to listen to other views, however out of the way, and to debate them “po- litely.” On one occasion he accepted an invitation from Arianna Huffington to the Café Royal to meet her guru of the moment. In the formal informal manner of such events the guests had to introduce themselves. Ken’s opening gambit was “My name is Ken. I am a teacher. But I am here to learn rather than to teach.” Ken was always responsive to the many requests that came his way—indeed, in retirement he seemed to be busier than he ever was while at the LSE. Ken had time for students EDITORIAL NOTE even if they weren’t his students. I** for one first wrote to Anderson ran an occasional discussion group that included him (pre-email) and within a few days he phoned me and Anthony O’Hear and several others. Knowing my penchant invited me into have lunch with him in the senior common for literature, Ken invited me to a Liberty conference held at room. This began a series of meals over the next twenty-five the glorious Royal Wells Hotel in Tunbridge Wells, despite or so years. Even after I relocated to the US, we always made our divergence over the value of The Catcher in the Rye, one a point of meeting up when both of us were in London. Ken, of the discussion pieces. the most widely traveled person I knew, was always on the One of the things that made Ken so appealing was, as go as his son Nick attests. Our last London meetings in- O’Sullivan says, that he was “an equal enemy both to the po- cluded a Laphroaig session in his small transitional flat in litical demagogue and to the academic mystagogue.” In this Baron’s Court followed by a Thai dinner and a similar lunch day and age, in which the university has become a refuge for in Fulham. I* once had the pleasure, as a lowly Master’s the illiberal ideologue, Ken was the sceptic par excellence. Degree student, of being seated next to Minogue at a din- On this note, there is a nice symmetry to this issue in that ner at LSE. He seriously wondered what sorts of things I was Ken’s daughter, Noonie, has kindly provided the artwork, ap- working on (I was already publishing at the time), and took propriately entitled “The Sceptic.” the time to give me advice on sorting out my work priorities. The last time a few of us saw Ken was for a lovely half-week in April of 2013 in upstate New York at an event held under the auspices of the Alexander Hamilton Institute. Despite a At first sight it might seem odd that Oakeshott is the special most grueling travel itinerary, Ken, ever the trooper, was on subject of a journal that has complexity, broadly conceived, sparkling form both in the conference hall and at the dinner as part and parcel of its scope. But as Ken in one of his last 2 table and the bar. pieces observed: “. the more Oakeshott developed his COSMOS + TAXIS COSMOS Outside of academe, Ken and his late wife Bev (Cohen), thought, the more he became a kind of rhapsodist of com- threw the most wonderfully convivial house parties at their plexity . .” (Minogue, 2012, p. 232). Regarding this piece, Fulham home (not very far from where one of us** lived). In the editors (Franco and Marsh) were somewhat hesitant to the tradition of the salon, these instantiated the recognizably ask Ken to write “yet another” essay on rationalism; after all, Oakeshottian virtues of conversation—politesse, civilité and he’d been writing on the issue for fifty years (Minogue, 1963). honnêteté. The food was superb, the wine flowed, and the ci- Ken’s response was that there was always something fresh to gars were alight (by the men and the women). Once again, say on the topic and, accordingly, he subsumed Oakeshott’s John O’Sullivan: lifelong concern with abstraction under the umbrella of complexity. Unsurprisingly, rationalism features strongly Bev and he gave an apparently limitless series of lunch across the papers in this collection. and dinner parties at which visiting conservative fire- men from abroad, local Tory intellectuals, sporting left-wingers fond of debate, next-door neighbors, ac- REFERENCES tors, painters, novelists, journalists and the couple’s extended families—very much including Val—would Minogue, Kenneth (1963). The Liberal Mind. Indianapolis: Liberty gather at a long table in the conservatory to be fed Fund Press. Minogue, Kenneth (2012). The Fate of Rationalism in Oakeshott’s delicious food, drinkable wines, and provocative ar- Thought. A Companion to Michael Oakeshott (eds.) P. Franco and gument. Ken was a generous host, champagne bottle L. Marsh. University Park: Penn State