Oakeshott and Totalitarianism1

This essay explores Oakeshott’s view of totalitarianism through some of his earlier writings including an early essay which was published posthumously, ‘The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism’. Oakeshott saw the roots of totalitarianism as lying not in the fascist and communist movements of the twentieth century but much further back, in a disposition towards politics which he called the politics of faith. It arose in the early modern era, associated with thinkers such as Francis Bacon. The counter disposition was the politics of scepticism. Oakeshott favoured the politics of scepticism as an antidote to the politics of faith, but he recognised that without the politics of faith the modern world as we experience it could not have come about.