The History of Political Philosophy and the Myth of the Tradition

In a discussion of methodological problems in the study of the history of ideas in which the focus is primarily on literature dealing with the history of political theory or philosophy, Quentin Skinner has addressed himself to what he contends are a number of conceptual difficulties related to various mythologies, mental sets, paradigms, and other types of preconceptions which have informed interpretations of writings from the past and explanations of the development of ideas.1 He argues that these difficulties, which are the product of the often opposed but equally mistaken beliefs that it is possible to rely exclusively either on an analysis of a text itself or on an investigation of its social context to determine its meaning, suggest a need for establishing adequate procedures of inquiry and criteria for determining the meaning of such works. Skinner's thesis is provocative and has drawn considerable critical comment.2 But despite the importance of the issues he raises about the recovery of historical meaning and knowledge of the past as well as the possible merits of his positive arguments about textual interpretation, he tends to treat the history of ideas as if it were a concrete activity distinguished by a common goal, i.e., a search for meaning and understanding, and to assume that the history of political philosophy may be differentiated principally in terms of the particular subject matter to which it addresses itself, i.e., political ideas. Not only does he assume that it is possible, and valid, to discuss methodological problems in the history of ideas in general in terms of examples elicited from the research of a variety of individuals concerned with the history of political philosophy but that it is feasible, and legitimate, to analyze and categorize the work of historians of political philosophy in terms of methodological commitments to either textual or contextual modes of interpretation. To treat the history of ideas and the history of political philosophy as a discipline and sub-field respectively and to employ such a textual/contextual typology violates one of Skinner’s own principal methodological prescriptions, i.e., the need to attend to the actual intentions of an author and the particular character of his argument in order to understand the meaning of his work.