  For Oakeshott, philosophy is distinctive because it questions rather than uses other kinds of knowledge. Theorizing politics is therefore not the same as engaging in politics, and to the extent that theorizing is itself political it loses its distinctive character. The irony of critical theory is that there must be things of which it is uncritical in order to do what it purports to do: one cannot question and act at the same time. The contribution of political philosophy, for Oakeshott, is not to generate ideologies or recommend policies but to understand political activity in terms of its assumptions. The knowledge it generates, moreover,  is always provisional. Because scientific or historical knowledge is also provisional, this might seem to blur the distinction between philosophy and other kinds of inquiry. But philosophy is distinguished by its relentlessness in questioning presuppositions: it is an inquiry 