In 1948 Karl Popper sent a copy of his paper, 'Utopia and Violence', to Michael Oakeshott. Popper had recently read Oakeshott's essay 'Rationalism in Politics', appreciating its relevance to views he had expressed in The Open Society. Oakeshott wrote to Popper at some length, explaining his thoughts about reason, tradition and kindred matters, to which Popper responded. This paper reproduces these letters and discusses them with reference to pertinent writings of Popper and Oakeshott. While showing there was much common ground between the two men and that they significantly influenced each other, the writings reveal important differences over the role of reason and tradition in social and political life.

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This article makes the case that politics, understood as a particular kind of public action, presupposes a notion of time marked by the three temporal states of past, present, and future. Political deliberation and judgment are future-oriented activities that, more or less explicitly, draw on the past for guidance. Aristotle's discussion of deliberative rhetoric in the Art of Rhetoric, which recognizes the inherent contingency of political decision making, is the classic treatment of the topic and is given some attention. Throughout western political theory this view of politics has been contested, most notably by figures such as Plato and Marx, whose respective attempts to transcend the contingency and unpredictability of politics, it will be argued, is connected to the endeavour to overcome the imperfections and conflicts bound up with the temporal order itself. Finally, the article examines two modern expressions of the desire to transcend politics in a timeless world of pure model building or universal morality. The first of these can be found in much contemporary neo-classical economic theory, and the second in the a-political politics of the international human rights movement.

process of capital contraction and consolidation to start the economic cycle afresh within the capital-producing economy," 27). Politically, the metaphor of the lion accounts for liberal tendencies, that of the fox for conservative tendencies.To test the utility of the theory, Marshall conducted a very elaborate two-stage study. First, he developed a scale measuring personality traits, using data from questionnaires to undergraduates. Then, after refining the scale, he applied the findings to a questionnaire which he circulated among Labor, Conservative, and Liberal MPs. The scale essentially groups attitudes along a continuum from lion to fox but simultaneously allows for a great deal of differentiation by age, rank, and so on. Drawing upon numerous previous studies, it measures attitudes regarding value relativism, openness, tolerance toward opponents, nonconformism, postmaterialism, caution and innovation, distrust, and sensationseeking. The findings were that "Pareto's model appeared validated by the general contrast found between the risk-averse, uncreative conservative and the risk tolerant innovative liberal" (155). Marshall quickly adds, however, that "a great deal of caution" is advisable in interpreting the findings. For one thing, the student study "disconfirmed" Pareto's idea that force and fraud are alternatives rather than presumably complementary tactics. For another, the findings were also probably influenced by the political fortunes of the various political parties at the time the survey was taken.These meager and hardly counterintuitive results invite more than just caution. Like so many survey questionnaires, those addressed to the politicians often pose vacuous statements open to myriad interpretations. (One example: "Politicians should be motivated by a desire to uphold traditional moral values.") The simple idea that liberals are innovators and conservatives defenders of the status quo is appealing in some respects but hardly in all: liberals sometimes cling to established practices, such as public programs, whereas modern conservatives are all for bold new experiments in privatization. James MacGregor Burns suggested plausibly that FDR was such a successful politician because he combined the traits of lion and fox. Since Marshall teaches at Glasgow University, he will not be altogether shocked to learn that in assessing this effort to show the strength and utility of Pareto's psychology, at least one reader arrives at a Scottish verdict: Not Proven.-Sanford Lakoff

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