Why the History of Ideas Needs More than Just Ideas

Abstract

Bevir’s view that theories are prior to theorists, just in so far as they are prior to any observations which one might make and, by extension, any facts which one might invoke in support of any particular interpretative conclusions, is problematic when applied to intellectual history, for although it is in one sense true that all facts are ineluctably constituted by some or other underlying theory, it is also true that, in a vast number of important situations, all human beings share the same basic theory. The most important implication of this shared stock of concepts, observations and facts, is that we shall often be able to see numerous aspects of a long‐dead author’s world in much the same way as he or she saw it.

Notes

¹ M. Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). All further references to this text will be in the form LOTHOI, x.

² LOTHOI, 5, 8, 314. See also M. Bevir, ‘Notes Towards an Analysis of Conceptual Change’, Social Epistemology, 17 (2003), 56; M. Bevir and R. Rhodes, ‘Interpretation and Its Others’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 40 (2005), 183; M. Bevir, ‘Histories, Logics and Politics: An Interview with Mark Bevir’, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2 (2005), 204.

³ A point acknowledged by Bevir in the context of his defence of weak notions of commensurability and translatability: LOTHOI, 115, 160, 162, 197.

⁴ As noted by Ankersmit and Megill: F.R. Ankersmit, ‘Comments on Bevir’s The Logic of the History of Ideas’, Rethinking History, 4 (2000), 327–8; Megill, ‘Imagining the History of Ideas’, Rethinking History, 4 (2000), 336. Bevir defends his avoidance of concrete historical examples here: M. Bevir, ‘Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Power: A Response to My Critics’, Rethinking History, 4 (2000), 342; and M. Bevir, ‘Clarifications’, History of European Ideas, 28 (2002), 90.

⁵ LOTHOI, 128–9.

⁶ LOTHOI, 175.

⁷ LOTHOI, 219.

¹² Bevir, ‘Clarifications’, 93.

¹³ Bevir, ‘Clarifications’, 99.

⁸ LOTHOI, 29, 262, 304, 308, 312. See also M. Bevir, ‘Roundtable’, Rethinking History, 4 (2000), 299; M. Bevir, ‘Summary’, Philosophical Books, 42 (2001), 162; M. Bevir, ‘Clarifications’, History of European Ideas, 28 (2002), 92.

⁹ LOTHOI, 177, 221–2, 229.

¹⁰ LOTHOI, 177.

¹¹ LOTHOI, 313.

¹⁴ M. Bevir, R. Rhodes and P. Weller, ‘Traditions of Governance: Interpreting the Changing Role of the Public Sector’, Public Administration, 81 (2003), 12.

¹⁵ Bevir et al., ‘Traditions of Governance’, 11.

¹⁶ M. Bevir, ‘How Narratives Explain’, in Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn, edited by D. Yanow and P. Schwartz‐Shea (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006), 283.

¹⁷ Bevir et al., ‘Traditions of Governance’, 14. See also M. Bevir and R. Rhodes, ‘Interpretation and Its Others’, 178.

¹⁸ M. Bevir and R. Rhodes, ‘The Interpretive Approach in Political Science’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6 (2004), 135.

¹⁹ Bevir and Rhodes, ‘The Interpretive Approach in Political Science’, 135–6.

²⁰ Bevir and Rhodes, ‘The Interpretive Approach in Political Science’, 136.

²¹ Bevir and Rhodes, ‘Interpretation and Its Others’, 169.

²² M. Bevir and R. Rhodes, ‘Studying British Government: Reconstructing the Research Agenda’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1 (1999), 233.

²³ M. Bevir, ‘How Narratives Explain’, 284, 287.

²⁴ Bevir and Rhodes, ‘Interpretation and Its Others’, 171.

²⁸ T. Carver, ‘Review of The Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing’, History of Political Thought, 30 (2009), 382.

²⁵ K. Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by D. McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46–70.

²⁶ D. Leopold, The Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 106–7.

²⁷ Leopold, The Young Karl Marx, 106.

²⁹ See, for instance, P. Laslett, ‘Introduction’, in Two Treatises of Government, edited by P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

³⁰ K. Palonen, ‘Logic or Rhetoric in the History of Political Thought? Comments on Mark Bevir’, Rethinking History, 4 (2000), 308.

³¹ S. Stuurman, ‘On Intellectual Innovation and the Methodology of the History of Ideas’, Rethinking History, 4 (2000), 312.

³² As briefly noted by Stuurman, ‘On Intellectual Innovation’, 314.

³³ See, for instance, A.M. Clohesy, S. Isaacs and C. Sparks, Contemporary Political Theorists in Context (London: Routledge, 2009), 55.

³⁴ See, for instance, the excellent treatment of this particular context in E. Meiksins‐Wood and N. Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition: Political Theory and the Rise of Capitalism (London: Pluto Press, 1997), ix–5.

³⁵ N. Wood, Reflections on Political Theory: A Voice of Reason from the Past (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 74.

³⁶ Meiksins‐Wood and Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition, 7.

³⁷ Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 2: Hobbes and Civil Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 19–21.

³⁸ For a particularly succinct discussion of this wider context of Weber’s, see A.M. Clohesy et al., Contemporary Political Theorists in Context, 3, 10.

³⁹ For discussion to this effect, see D. Ciepley, Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); and Clohesy et al., Contemporary Political Theorists in Context, 1.

⁴⁰ As noted by, for instance, John Gray; see J. Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake (London: Routledge, 1995), 1–10.

⁴¹ B. Crick, The American Science of Politics (London: Routledge, 1998), xv.

⁴² For the classic treatment to this effect, see H. Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936), 19–20.

⁴³ E. Perreau‐Saussine, ‘Quentin Skinner in Context’, Review of Politics, 69 (2007), 106–22.

⁴⁴ Meiksins‐Wood and Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition, 13.

⁴⁵ Meiksins‐Wood and Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition, ix, 14–20.

⁴⁶ As noted by, for instance, A.M. Clohesy et al., Contemporary Political Theorists in Context, 1ff.

⁴⁷ As noted by, for instance, Wood, Reflections on Political Theory: A Voice of Reason from the Past, 74.

⁴⁸ Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism, 17.

⁴⁹ Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism, 9, 61.

⁵¹ Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society, 6.

⁵⁰ R. Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society: An Historical Argument (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), 3.

⁵² Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society, 7. See also Clohesy et al., Contemporary Political Theorists in Context, 10.

⁵³ Meiksins‐Wood and Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition, 17.

⁵⁴ Meiksins‐Wood and Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition, 5.

⁵⁵ See, for instance, B. Barry, Democracy, Power, and Justice: Essays in Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society, 238; and Clohesy et al., Contemporary Political Theorists in Context, 5.

⁵⁶ LOTHOI, 44.

⁵⁷ LOTHOI, 86.

⁵⁸ LOTHOI, 282, 287, 289.

⁵⁹ LOTHOI, 112–15.

⁶⁰ Invoking ‘pro‐attitudes’ (a term Bevir borrows from Donald Davidson) as explanations of particular theoretical distortions in an author’s work is something he describes at length here: LOTHOI, 266–80.

⁶¹ This constant attempt to find the middle ground has been noted by L. Kramer, ‘Intellectual History and Philosophy’, Modern Intellectual History, 1 (2004), 90.