Michael Oakeshott's Views on Emerging of ' Individual' and 'Mass Man'


Creative Commons License

AKKURT M.

BEYTULHIKME-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, cilt.8, sa.1, ss.233-250, 2018 (ESCI) identifier

Özet

One of the most complicated problems of political philosophy is the emerging of the individual. Questions such as when, where or in what way "individual" or "mass man" emerged; what type of character he has; whether he developed a moral understanding, political understanding, governing and being governed types suitable for himself or not; in case he developed what the basic characteristics of this morality and governing and being governed types are; whether he is the crownless king of our era or not; whether he needs leaders or administrators or not; how he finds a place for himself in human relations; what sort of effect he has on our civilization or on the new gained rights, liabilities and the whole life style are some of the basic questions which political philosophy tries to find answers. The objective of this paper is to reveal how Michael Oakeshott who asserts that the emerge of "individual" is the most important event in Modern European history and "mass man" is completely a derivation eliminates the basic fallacies in political philosophy with the answers he gave to above questions, based on his essay of "The Masses in Representative Democracy.