Hungarian Conservative

Oakshott’s individualism differed from the individualism of liberalism, which rejects traditions. Oakeshott assumed that individuality can only be created in some context, and that freedom can only be enjoyed in order. It is not the acceptance of authority, but the absolutization of reason that destroys individuality, as he explained in his preface to Hobbes’s Leviathan.

‘The disappearance of the aesthetical representation of power from politics parallels the egalitarian rhetoric of the rationalists. The representatives of power often emphasise today the ‘non-existence of differences’ with their own clothing and behaviour, although anyone who is not completely naïve knows in their heart—or at least from Aristotle—that the real differences can never be eradicated between the governor and the governed.’