Paper for Workshop on Quentin Skinner’s Historiography of
Political Thought
The Center for Political Thought
Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences
Academia Sinica
30 March 2013
Submitted by Liang Yu-Kang
Inspired by some historians in the late 1960s, notably Peter Laslett and J. G. A. Pocock, Quentin
Skinner has initiated a series of articles against the dominant forms of analysis for addressing issues
with reference to modern politics. Among these works the article ‘Meaning and Understanding in the
History of Ideas’ in 1969 deserves come attention, for it is in this article that Skinner firstly developed
his criticism against the traditional, both the available textual and contextual, ways of studying political
thought. This article was later reprinted in ‘Meaning and Context’ edited by James Tully in 1988(Tully
1988). Thirty years later, Skinner has recollected it in his ‘Visions and Politics’, with much
abbreviation and extensive revision(Skinner 2002(I), 51n). This paper focuses on discussing this latest
version and a summary of it will be given.
Rather than discussing the details of what a proper method should have, Skinner spent most of his
effort in demonstrating what is wrong with the traditional ways. In the very beginning Skinner tries to
show what assumptions he considers fundamentally wrong in traditional ways, such as Arthur
Lovejoy’s idea of ‘unit ideas’. He then introduces what these wrong assumptions may cause in the
studying of history of ideas. What Skinner really is doing is to establish a pathological taxonomy about
traditional method. In the final part, Skinner briefly mentions what elements a proper method should
take into account.
In the preface Skinner challenges the classical assumption that a determinate set of ‘fundamental
concepts’ is the key to the interpretation of classic texts. He contends that history of ideas is the history
1
of recognisable activities. However, since different activities share at least some family resemblances, it
is unlikely to recognise these activities with a set of unchanged vocabularies rather than with some
preconception about what we expect to find. By failing to do so historians risk to expect what someone
says determines how we perceive the agent to be doing which the agent would not have accepted as the
way of what they were doing. The main purpose of this article is to uncover how such modes of method
infect the classic study of history of ideas.
The Mythology of Anachronism: Lovejoy
Skinner contends that the classical approach generates several types of ‘mythology’. The first
problem, which he considers the most persistent one, is anachronism. The general feature of this fallacy
consists in the improper expectation that each classic writer holds some constitutive doctrine on the
topic of the subject. By committing this fallacy, historians compile an expected ‘doctrine’ through
converting some scattered or incidental remarks by a classic theorist into one piece. More specifically,
Skinner argues that anachronism takes two forms in this fallacy.
The first one focuses on the individual thinker and claims that this writer ‘may be ‘discovered’ to
have held a view about an argument to which they cannot in principle have meant to contribute(Skinner
2002(I), 60). By finding some familiar images in the works, historians credit the development of this
expected doctrine to the classic theorists, without taking into account whether the classic theorist is
acquainted with this idea.
Besides the former fallacy, the other seems more insidious and is about the development of some
‘unit idea’ itself. It asserts that some expected ‘doctrine’ may lie far apart in different theories in
different times. It traces the morphology of some given doctrine and tries to set out an ideal type of this
doctrine. The problem in this type of fallacy lies in the fact that the doctrine in question too readily
slides into some organic entity. It presuppose the expected doctrine grows and each classic theorist
nurtures its growth.
The search for approximation to the ideal type in anachronism sets out some anticipations for the
appearance of later doctrine, and consequently measures the achievement of the classic theorists by
how much they attribute to the establishment of such a doctrine. This criterion, however, leads to two
kinds of historical absurdity. Theorists will be praised if they are considered conducive to the the
doctrine the historian is set to expect, or be criticised if they fail to come up with it.
2
For Skinner, anachronism assumes the classic theorist intended, or even could have intended, to do
what they are censured for not having done. This is apparently begging the question, since all the
presumptions, which are supposed to be true, are only true hypothetically.
The Mythology of Coherence: Strauss
The second type of mythology Skinner mentions refers to the fact that some of the classic writers
are considered by historians not altogether consistent, or even failing to give any systematic account of
their beliefs. Historians who admit this mythology are set to believe that classic writers must hold some
coherent views on the themes they develop. It will then become easy for historians to give systematic
account too readily when paraphrasing their texts.
However, Skinner argues that this assumption of coherence cannot sustain due to two
‘metaphysical’ reasons in a pejorative sense. Firstly, in the interest of extracting a message of maximum
coherence, historians are very likely to improperly trim statements of intention that authors make about
what they are doing, or even to discount whole works that may seem to impair the coherence of their
systems of ideas. Secondly, in searching for coherence, those incompatible messages or works will be
assumed preoccupiedly as ‘anomalies’ and are excluded from the supposed coherent system.
A good example of this mythology, according to Skinner, is Leo Strauss, who maintains that the key
to decoding these anomalies lies in understanding the threat of persecution. For Strauss, this threat may
alter the way classic theorists make their voice and therefore historians have to read between the lines
in order to recover the real meaning of these passages. However Skinner contends this approach
commits at least two logical fallacy. One is that theorists are not always dissidents. They are not always
getting away from persecution. The other, similar to the former, is that it seems to presuppose there
must exist some hidden meanings which await to be recovered. Historians who are unable to see this
fail their job. But if we ask a further question that how we can be so sure of the existence of the hidden
meanings, the answer will be circular: because the theorists are heterodox to the regime. Skinner thus
concludes that this approach cannot sustain.
The Mythology of Prolepsis
The aforementioned two mythologies arise from the fact that historians of ideas are set by some
pre-judgement in evaluating the defining characteristics of the discipline to which the writer is
supposed to have contributed. Alongside of the abstract level in the writer’s theory, Skinner finds that a
3
similar problem may also occur in describing some individual work. This fallacy Skinner names the
mythology of prolepsis. As the former two mythologies, this fallacy presumes the asymmetric relation
between the significance a historian may claim to find in a given episode, and the real meaning of the
episode itself. Nevertheless, what is special in this fallacy is that the historian spontaneously assumes
the given text should bear the supposed significance, rather than the real meaning, of the episode, even
if no direct or indirect evidence can be found in this text. Skinner summarises the common feature of
this fallacy in the form that the significance of the episode hidden in the text is to be learnt sometime
later. He labels historians who commits this fallacy ‘parochial’ as they are haunted by some given
vantage points.
More specifically, Skinner claims, such parochialism includes two forms. First historians usually
take some statement in a classic text as reference to support their vantage point. But Skinner argues
some requirements have to be bet if this form of parochialism stands. To see whether writer A has
influence on writer B, the following conditions should be fulfilled: (I) that B is known to have studied
A’s work; (ii) that B could not have found the relevant doctrines in any writer other than A; (iii) that B
could not have arrived at the relevant doctrines independently. Skinner claims this mythology cannot
bear the test. The other form stems from the fact that historians usually use their vantage points to
describe the sense of a classic text. Here historians risk to immerse the given text in some alien
elements.
From these mythologies Skinner concludes some methodological lessons.
1. One cannot say or mean something which he or she is unable to say or mean. It may be possible
for one to know others better than themselves, but to say that one can know something out of
his or her cognition is quite a different thing.
2. Consequently, to criticise a classic theorist failing to enunciate some allegedly doctrine is
begging the question, since the allegedly doctrine does not exist in the time of that theorist.
3. The activity of thinking is never a patterned or purposive activity of uniformity. It closely links
to the operation of words and meaning, which varies tremendously in different times.
What is said versus What is meant
After analysing specific issues in the traditional approach, Skinner turns to discuss the general
features of it. Proponents of the traditional approach believe such dangers are not fundamentally
4
subversive and thus can be avoided with care. But this Skinner puts in doubt. For him, this approach
treats the classic texts in the history of ideas as ‘self-sufficient objects of enquiry’, namely
‘concentrating on what each writer says about each of the canonical doctrines and thereby seeking to
recover the meaning and significance of their works’(Skinner 2002(I), 79). This cannot give any proper
account of the texts. The fundamental reason lies in that
if we wish to understand any such text, we must be able to give an account not merely of
the meaning of what was said, but also of what the writer in question may have meant by
saying what was said(Skinner 2002(I), 79).
Skinner spells out some reasons why focusing on what is said is insufficient. First and the most
obvious one is the meanings of the terms often change overtime. It would be absurd to apply the
meaning of some term only available in some time to the same term in different times.
The second reason seems more delicate both in terms of philosophy and literature. Skinner argues
that focus on what is said can only reveal the literal meaning of a sentence or a work. However, if the
writers deliberately employ some oblique rhetorical strategies, notably irony, in their works, the literal
meaning could be misleading since it may be quite different from what the writers really mean by
saying so.
The third is more intractable than the second since a more oblique strategy may be applied. It is
said what is written directly reflects and correspond to what a given writer means, even the written
messages seem quite incompatible to other evidences. In this case what is said bears and exhausts all
the meanings and no other information is left. The meaning of a text is considered strictly adherent to
what is said and thus the writer says what is said with sincerity. Nevertheless this contention seems
oversimplified. Bearing in mind John Austin’s speech-act theory, which develops out of latter Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s conception of language, Skinner argues that the meaning in any serious utterance
consists in the intended force issued by the speaker. In order to grasp the meaning of an utterance, not
only do we need to know what is said but also what the speaker is doing in saying it.
Although Skinner does not give a detailed analysis about the implication of speech-act theory in the
application to the history of ideas in this article, he does give some terse remarks which suffice to the
demonstrate the insufficiency in the traditional approach. Intentional force is so important to the
meaning of any utterance that any enunciation of a utterance is deficient without it. This is perhaps one
of the most prominent feature in Skinner’s methodology which distinguishes his approach from the
5
prevalent contextual analysis. As he expounds that
[w]e cannot even hope that a sense of context of utterance will necessarily resolve the
difficulty (in deciding the meaning of an utterance), for the context itself may be
ambiguous. Rather we shall have to study all the various contexts in which the words were
used—all the functions they served, all the various things that could be done with
them(Skinner 2002(I), 84).
For Skinner, even the usual contextual analysis is far from enough since it ignores the intention of
the writer in writing these words, which is the key to catch the functions the words.
This goes with a further problem that by neglecting the intentional force, not only every statement
is taken to find its meaning independently, but so is the writer. The writer is thought to earn his or her
importance due to his or her contribution to a long-lasting and persistent doctrine. This, in Skinner’s
point of view, would be a mistake, since every utterance is issued in some particular occasion, for some
particular purpose, and with some particular reason, if the meaning of the utterance is (at least partly)
determined by the intentional force in it. To summarise. There could be no ‘perennial issues’ in history
of ideas. The mistake of it lies in supposing that there is only one set of questions which every theorist
engages in.
Concluding Remarks
After criticising the traditional approach, Skinner leaves two short positive conclusions indicating
what an appropriate method should consist of. The first is his reminder of the need for context. As
aforementioned, it is true context is vital in deciding the meaning of an utterance. However what counts
as context is still in question. Skinner contends that the importance of context lies in the fact that it is
conducive to decide what an utterance is intended to mean, and how that meaning is intended to be
taken. To put this briefly, every text is a form of utterance (in a broad sense), and every utterance
happens in the occasion of communication. If it is the case, the proper definition of context conflates
three levels in the activity of communication: (I) the full range of communications, which is
conventionally performed on the given occasion by the issuing of the given utterance; (II) the linguistic
context, which concerned with the recovery of intentions; (III) the social context, that is, the ultimate
framework for helping to decide what conventionally recognisable meanings it might in principle have
been possible for someone to have intended to communicate.
6
The other conclusion concentrates on the philosophical value of studying the history of ideas. Since
the traditional approach presupposes the very existence of ‘perennial issues’, one (perhaps the major)
purpose in the study of history of ideas is the find the relevance between classics and the current issues.
It is assumed that some useful lessons, which is conducive to solve our problems, can be learnt from
history, since the relevant doctrine is highly evolved. Skinner totally discards such a presumption.
Following his previous analysis, ‘perennial issues’ does not exist but only diverse moral assumptions
and political commitments available to various issues in different times. This indicates the fact that the
significance in studying history of ideas consists not in revealing the sameness but rather in comparing
the differences. More importantly, this does not deny the philosophical value of studying history of
ideas. Contrary to this, this is the vantage point, in Skinner’s opinion, the reveal the differences
between us. By learning why these differences happen, we are disposed to know the limitation and
contingency in our thinking, and to understand why different thinking, either in different times or in
different cultures, deserves our appreciation.
7
References
Skinner, Quentin. 2002. Visions of Politics. 3 vols. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tully, James, ed. 1988. Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics. Cambridge, U.K:
Polity Press.
8