human nature, emphasizing that, far from being Aristotle’s ‘political
animals’, most people are security-seeking, cautious and dependent
creatures. From this perspective, the inner core of human existence is a
‘private’ world of family, home, domesticity and personal relationships.
Oakeshott therefore regarded the rough-and-tumble of political life as
inhospitable, even intimidating.
From a liberal viewpoint, the maintenance of the ‘public/private’
distinction is vital to the preservation of individual liberty, typically
understood as a form of privacy or non-interference. If politics is regarded
as an essentially ‘public’ activity, centred upon the state, it will always have
a coercive character: the state has the power to compel the obedience of its
citizens. On the other hand, ‘private’ life is a realm of choice, freedom and
individual responsibility. Liberals therefore have a clear preference for
society rather than the state, for the ‘private’ rather than the ‘public’, and
have thus feared the encroachment of politics upon the rights and liberties
of the individual. Such a view is commonly expressed in the demand that
politics be ‘kept out of’ private activities or institutions, matters that can,
and should, be left to individuals themselves. For example, the call that
politics be ‘kept out of’ sport implies that sport is an entirely ‘private’
affair over which the state and other ‘public’ bodies exercise no rightful
responsibility. Indeed, such arguments invariably portray ‘politics’ in a
particularly unfavourable light. In this case, for example, politics represents
unwanted and unwarranted interference in an arena supposedly
characterized by fair competition, personal development and the pursuit
of excellence.