The Cambridge School and Leo Strauss: Texts and Context of American Political Science

Abstract

Over the past quarter century, the Cambridge School of Intellectual History has had a profound influence on the study of political theory in the U.S. The scholarship of historians such as John Dunn, Quentin Skinner, and John Pocock has almost single-handedly defined the terms with which political scientists understand early modern thought, and consequently liberalism and its alternatives. In this essay I analyze Quentin Skinner's “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” as the seminal argument for the Cambridge School's interpretive strategy. In particular, I note the degree to which Skinner attacked the scholarship of Leo Strauss in order to establish the Cambridge approach. Contrary to Skinner, I argue Strauss too has a concern for genuine historical understanding. I conclude with a re-reading of Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing in order to show that Strauss' interpretive strategy ultimately comes much closer to the “historicity” claimed by Skinner and others.

How historical analysis can enrich scenario planning

“…It is noteworthy that even the millennia old field of history still has many streams [i], such as the French Annales school (Burke, 1990), Linguistic Turn (Rorty, 1992), Rankean School (Liebel‐Weckowicz, (1988), Cliometrics (Fogel & Engerman, 1995) and the Cambridge school (Major, 2005) among others. The much younger field of scenario planning likewise distinguishes a variety of schools, including Shell's Intuitive Logics, Cross Impact Analysis in the USA, and Godet's La Prospective in France plus some German variants (see Bradfield et al., 2005).…”

İslam Felsefesi Çalışmalarında Yöntem ve Düşünce Tarihi Yazımı: Tashihçi Gazzâlî Araştırmalarından Hareketle Bir Değerlendirme

“…Bununla birlikte bazı çalışmalar Skinner'ın önerdiği yöntemin aslında Strauss'un yaklaşımıyla uyumlu olduğunu ileri sürer. 55 Bu kabul edilecek olursa entelektüel tarih yaklaşımının, incelediğimiz yaklaşımlar içerisinde İslam felsefesi çalışmaları bağlamında farklı bir kimlik altında da olsa açıktan temsilcisi -hatta belki de geleneği-bulunan tek yaklaşım olduğu düşünülebilir.…”

“…58 Garden,İslam'ın İlk Müceddidi,[214][215][216][217][218][219][220][221][222][223][224][225]İslam'ın İlk Müceddidi,242 vd. 60 Garden,İslam'ın İlk Müceddidi,55. İslam Felsefesi Çalışmalarında Yöntem ve Düşünce Tarihi Yazımı ile alakalıdır. Garden'a göre Gazzâlî önceleri bunu yukarıdan siyasi ilişkilerle yapabileceğini düşünmektedir.…”

What's Driving the Public? A Cross-Country Analysis of Political Attitudes, Human Values and Political Articulation

“…In fact, public opinion, seen as a complex system of attitudes, rarely mirrors the rhetoric of political elites. Still, the influence of elite framing on public opinion has been well documented in relation to a wide range of specific issues and across many contexts (Jacoby 2000; Schneider and Jacoby 2005). According to Jacoby (2000), framing effects appear mainly indirectly rather than as immediate responses to an articulated issue, triggering different sets of influences on citizens’ attitudes.…”

“…This is reflected, for instance, in substantial cross-national variation in the articulation of sociopolitical issues in party manifestos (see, e.g., Klingemann et al 2006; for a substantive application, see Kumlin and Svallfors 2007). Previous research demonstrates that political elites often evoke fundamental values when promoting political issues (Sears 1980; Sears and Funk 1991) and that citizens are disposed to take their cues from political elites (Jacoby 2000; Schneider and Jacoby 2005). Therefore, the public's ability to connect specific political issues to underlying values very likely depends on the articulation of political issues.…”