The importance of induction …

… The University Bookman: Can Rationalism Make it in the Long Run? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The Rationalist inverts the order of practical thought and action: he thinks abstract principles, which Oakeshott argues can only arise out of reflection on practice, stand at the beginning and give guidance and clarity to practical affairs. The typical Rationalist move, then, is down-market Cartesianism: couple a zealous skepticism against what is old with a credulous devotion to what is “unprejudiced” and new. The typical quality of Rationalist politics is that political discourse turns more and more to the articulation of principles, also called “ideals,” which will be said to lead deductively to certain policies. These deductive schema relating principles to political conclusions are ideologies. Opponents do not merely hold different opinions, they are, demonstrably, wrong. Would that it were hard to find examples of this political style in America today.