Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought

Late Medieval ◽

History Of ◽

Multiple Languages ◽

In The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner has three aims: creating a sort of reference book for hundreds of primary texts in multiple languages, illuminating a more general historical theme using late medieval and early modern political texts, and giving us a history of political thought with a genuinely historical character. Skinner allows us to see political theorists creatively wrestling with difficult political problems of their day, and attempting to solve them through their writing. Skinner’s critics, however, cannot shake the sense that placing these texts in historical contexts robs them of some of their profundity and value as works of political theory. This chapter examines some of Skinner’s treatments of particular authors, notes some difficulties with the book’s methods, and situates the debate around Foundations within the emergence of a self-conscious Cambridge School.

The Cambridge School and Kripke: Bug Detecting with the History of Political Thought

The Review of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0034670519000512 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 81 (4) ◽

pp. 621-642 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

William Bosworth ◽

Keith Dowding

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Political Thought ◽

Philosophy Of Language ◽

Step Method ◽

New Developments ◽

History Of ◽

Political Opinions ◽

Theories Of Meaning ◽

AbstractWe propose a two-step method for studying the history of political thought roughly in line with the contextualism of the Cambridge School. It reframes the early Cambridge School as a bug-detecting program for the outdated conceptual baggage we unknowingly accommodate with our political terminology. Such accommodation often entails propositions that are inconsistent with even our most cherished political opinions. These bugs can cause political arguments to crash. This reframing takes seriously the importance of theories of meaning in the formative methodological arguments of the Cambridge School and updates the argument in light of new developments. We argue the new orthodoxy of Saul Kripke's causal theory of meaning in the philosophy of language better demonstrates the importance of contextual analysis to modern political theory.

A Virtue for Courageous Minds

10.23943/princeton/9780691146768.001.0001 ◽

2012 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Aurelian Craiutu

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

French Revolution ◽

Political Thought ◽

Moral Virtue ◽

Individual Liberty ◽

Common Notion ◽

History Of ◽

Benjamin Constant ◽

Intellectual Foundations

Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, this book examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. The book begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. It then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. The book looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Germaine de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. It traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. The book demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and it challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, the book reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.

How Should We Categorize Approaches to the History of Political Thought?

The Review of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0034670520000704 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 83 (1) ◽

pp. 91-114

Author(s):

Adrian Blau

Keyword(s):

Theoretical Analysis ◽

Political Theory ◽

Political Thought ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

One Dimensional ◽

History Of ◽

New Framework

AbstractThis paper proposes a new framework for categorizing approaches to the history of political thought. Previous categorizations exclude much research; political theory, if included, is often caricatured. And previous categorizations are one-dimensional, presenting different approaches as alternatives. My framework is two-dimensional, distinguishing six kinds of end (two empirical, four theoretical) and six kinds of means. Importantly, these choices are not alternatives: studies may have more than one end and typically use several means. Studies with different ends often use some of the same means. And all studies straddle the supposed empirical/theoretical “divide.” Quentin Skinner himself expertly combines empirical and theoretical analysis—yet the latter is often overlooked, not least because of Skinner's own methodological pronouncements. This highlights a curious disjuncture in methodological writings, between what they say we do, and what we should do. What we should do is much broader than existing categorizations imply.

Roger Boesche: The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville

The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville ◽

10.3138/ttr.9.1.419 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 419-422

Author(s):

James Schleifer

Keyword(s):

Los Angeles ◽

Political Theory ◽

Political Science ◽

Political Thought ◽

History Of Ideas ◽

Alexis De Tocqueville ◽

History Of

Roger Boesche, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, lias already written several thoughtful articles about Tocqueville, each marked by clarity of thought and expression: ’The Prison: Tocqueville’s Model for Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (December 1980):550-63; “The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville,” History of Political Thought 2 (Winter 1981): 495-524; “Why Could Tocqueville Predict So Well?” Political Theory 11 (February 1983): 79-104; “Tocqueville and Le Commerce’. A Newspaper Expressing His Unusual Liberalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (April-June 1983): 277-92; and “Hedonism and Nihilism: The Predictions of Tocqueville and Nietzsche,” The Tocqueville Review 8 (1986/87): 165-84.

Ein Modell Politischer Diskursanalyse

European Journal of Sociology ◽

10.1017/s0003975602001091 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 241-269 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

RAIMUND OTTOW

Keyword(s):

Intellectual History ◽

Political Thought ◽

General Model ◽

Discourse Theory ◽

History Of ◽

Alternative Approaches ◽

Conceptual Problems ◽

The author discusses the discourse-theory of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ (Quentin Skinner, John Pocock), which is favorably compared to alternative approaches in the field of the intellectual history of political thought. Some conceptual problems of this kind of discoursetheory are discussed and some remedies proposed, resulting in the formulation of a general model, which could be applied to contemporary debates, exemplified by a short analysis of the discursive situation of modern liberalism.

The History of British Political Thought: The Creation of a Center

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1086/385836 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 283-310 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

J. G. A. Pocock

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Political Thought ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Dominant Culture ◽

Before And After ◽

History Of ◽

English Hegemony ◽

Open Question ◽

Comprehensive History

A Center for the History of British Political Thought has been established at the Folger Shakespeare Library and will be conducting a series of seminars aimed at covering what is conventionally demarcated as the early modern period: the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. No comprehensive history of British political thought in this period has to our knowledge been written, and it is an open question of what it should consist and what its organizing themes should be. The purpose of this article is to present a speculative inquiry into its conceptual scope.The scope and meaning of the word “British” is fundamental to our inquiry. The core component is surely England, and both the weight of literature and the tradition of study render it inescapable that English will be the language and the dominant culture with which most of our program will be concerned. It will be necessary nonetheless to recognize the autonomy of Scottish political culture and its literature and of the cultures formed by English hegemony, whose political thought must be studied both before and after their assertions of independence.We must further examine what is to be meant by the term “political thought.” A considerable methodological literature has marked the rise in the last two decades of what has been called the “new history” of political thought. This inquiry has become less an adjunct to the practice of political theory and more a history of the terms of discourse in which debate about politics has been carried on.

Review: Jeremy Waldron’s Political Political Theory

European Journal of Political Theory ◽

10.1177/1474885116671137 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 437-446

Author(s):

David Runciman

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Conceptual Understanding ◽

Political Thought ◽

Contemporary Politics ◽

History Of

This collection seeks to ground political theory in the study of institutions, particularly the constitutional relationship between different branches of government. It makes the case that ‘constitutionalism’ has become a thin doctrine of political restraint. Waldron wants to identify a fuller conceptual understanding of how the functions of government can be empowered and articulated. In doing so, he sets out a position that is distinct from both moralism and realism in contemporary political theory. I explore how well the later distinction holds up: how successfully does Waldron’s approach marry realist concerns with the rigour of analytical political theory? I also discuss the role it leaves for the history of political thought and whether it can deal with the populist strain in contemporary politics.

Michael Oakeshott and the Cambridge School on the History of Political Thought

10.4324/9781315443768 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Martyn P. Thompson

Keyword(s):

Political Thought ◽

History Of ◽

Michael Oakeshott ◽

STRATEGY AS INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Modern Intellectual History ◽

10.1017/s1479244318000094 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 1007-1021 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

JOEL ISAAC

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

International Relations ◽

Early Modern ◽

Intellectual History ◽

Political Thought ◽

Economic Competition ◽

Conceptual Frame ◽

History Of ◽

Strategic Thought

The world of grand strategy is not one to which intellectual historians have devoted a great deal of attention. Matters of interstate economic competition and imperial rivalry have, of course, long been at the center of histories of early modern political thought. Yet, when these currents in the history of political thought narrow into nineteenth-centuryrealpolitik, and then turn toward the professionalized contemporary discourses of international relations and war studies, intellectual historians have, for the most part, left the matter to the experts. The strategic maxims of Clausewitz and Liddell Hart may fascinate IR theorists, political scientists, and military historians, but they seldom fire the imaginations of tender-minded historians of ideas. The two books under review challenge such preconceptions. They ask us to consider the history of Cold War strategic thought in a wider conceptual frame. Buried in the history of strategy, they suggest, are some of the central themes of postwar social and political thought.

The Opinion of Mankind

10.23943/princeton/9780691178882.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Paul Sagar

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Political Thought ◽

David Hume ◽

State Theory ◽

The State ◽

Political Organization ◽

Scottish Enlightenment ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

History Of

What is the modern state? Conspicuously undertheorized in recent political theory, this question persistently animated the best minds of the Enlightenment. Recovering David Hume and Adam Smith's underappreciated contributions to the history of political thought, this book considers how, following Thomas Hobbes's epochal intervention in the mid-seventeenth century, subsequent thinkers grappled with explaining how the state came into being, what it fundamentally might be, and how it could claim rightful authority over those subject to its power. Hobbes has cast a long shadow over Western political thought, particularly regarding the theory of the state. This book shows how Hume and Smith, the two leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment, forged an alternative way of thinking about the organization of modern politics. They did this in part by going back to the foundations: rejecting Hobbes's vision of human nature and his arguments about our capacity to form stable societies over time. In turn, this was harnessed to a deep reconceptualization of how to think philosophically about politics in a secular world. The result was an emphasis on the “opinion of mankind,” the necessary psychological basis of all political organization. Demonstrating how Hume and Smith broke away from Hobbesian state theory, the book suggests ways in which these thinkers might shape how we think about politics today, and in turn how we might construct better political theory.