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I propose to offer a few critical remarks on Mark Be vir' s thoughtprovoking account of the logic of the history of ideas. I shall do so from a very different perspective from that explored in Bevir's book. That is to say, the understanding of the nature of the philosophy of history that I shall pursue will be drawn from Michael Oakeshott and the tradition of philosophical idealism and not from Ludwig Wittgenstein and the tradition of analytic or post-analytic philosophy. The broad challenge I face, then, is to say something coherent about a possible relationship between these very different philosophical traditions. And just to make matters more difficult, I shall begin by answering negatively the key question which Be vir asks at the end of his book. He asks whether his philosophical analysis of the logic of the history of ideas can directly benefit the practice of historians in the field.1 The most that can be said from Oakeshott' s perspective, for reasons that will become apparent, is "certainly not directly, but perhaps it might help a little in a very roundabout sort of a way."
So let me try to duck and weave my way out of the corner I have just boxed myself into. First, there need be nothing especially startling about a proposal to link Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy with Oakeshott' s skeptical idealism. Long ago, Peter Winch did exactly this in his once muchquoted The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (1958). To be sure, Winch thought Wittgenstein preferable to Oakeshott but his point involved showing the considerable agreement between the two on the nature and explanation of meaningful behavior.2 In his book, Winch had very little to say about questions of historical explanation and historical understanding. Oakeshott, on the other hand, devoted much time and effort to such questions. Not only that, but he presented the final formulation of his philosophy of history as the outcome of a concern with "what may, perhaps, be called the logic of historical enquiry."3 So to juxtapose Oakeshott' s logic of historical enquiry with Be vir' s logic of the history of ideas may be expected to yield at least some interesting results.4
In bare outline, Oakeshott' s ideas which...