Recent Developments in the Thought of Quentin Skinner and the Ambitions of Contextualism

Abstract

IntroductionThere have been few more influential figures in the Anglophone study of political thought in recent years than Quentin Skinner. Among the many features that characterised his energetic initial writings-in the late 1960s and early 1970s-was his comfort in writing both as a historian of philosophy and as a philosopher of history. As well as offering path-breaking interpretations of the intellectual context of seventeenth century writers like Hobbes, Skinner also offered a distinct, often controversial, methodological programme rooted in claims about the nature of historical understanding. His unique strand of linguistic contextualism-which he suggested was indebted to Collingwood, Wittgenstein and Austin-has undeniably had a transformative effect on how intellectual historians conceive of their craft. In the early 1980s, he began to speak in another scholarly voice: that of political theorist, as he engaged in a project of 'excavating' and defending a neo-classical understanding of human liberty, which, he argued, was popular among early-modern republicans but then usurped by a modern liberal alternative. 2His excavation of republican liberty-and the fusion of historical enquiry and abstract philosophical analysis it involves-has continued to dominate his recent work

Quentin Skinner, contextual method and Machiavelli's understanding of liberty

“…Indeed, the ‘much abbreviated and extensively revised version’ of his methodological manifesto, published in Visions of Politics , retained the core of his argument, including the ‘perpetual danger’ passage quoted above (2002d: 59). 27 The most active more recent critic of Skinner's methodology emphasised that ‘Skinner has not dropped the strong methodological claims that characterised his early work’ (Lamb, 2009b: 250), and offered a critique of ‘his well-known claim that past works of political theory cannot be read as contributions to “perennial” debates but must instead be understood as particularistic, ideological speech acts’ in its revised form (Lamb, 2009a: 51). 28 Skinner himself, in an interview given in 2006, simultaneously confirmed both his strong, continuous commitment to the methodological ideas he had developed, and his enthusiasm for republicanism and the ideal of liberty which he tried to recover from the past republican authors – pace the internal inconsistencies.…”

The Mythologies of Contextualism: Method and Judgment in Skinner's Visions of Politics

“…For the view that Skinner's revisions amount to a significant alteration of his original arguments, see Martinich (2003) and Ball (2007). An excellent discussion of Skinner's intellectual trajectory since the publication of Visions can be found in Lamb (2009b).…”

Skinner og Hobbes’ kunstige suverene person som velordnet suverenitet

“…2002a: 87-88). Selv om Skinner hele tiden har fokusert på kontekst som en strategi for å analysere politisk tenkning og intellektuell historie (Lamb 2009), har det også vaert en viss utvikling i arbeidet hans. Dette gjelder saerlig en stadig tydeligere kritikk av Hobbes og bidrag til normative refl eksjoner i tilknytning til debatten om republikansk teori.…”