Logic, Language and Legitimation in the History of Ideas: A Brief View and Survey of Bevir and Skinner

Abstract

Bevir's doctrine of ‘weak intentionalism’, developed in the course of his criticism of the work of Quentin Skinner, at once modifies and qualifies Skinner's approach by specifying the beliefs of individuals rather than their utterances as the loci of their intentions and the things that fix the meaning of their utterances. This has the effect of broadening the scope of meaning, by disengaging the meaning of utterances from their status as speech acts, of narrowing the relevance of linguistic contexts, by denying that historians are required to study those contexts in order to understand the intended meaning of texts, and of blurring the historicity of texts, by suggesting that the utterances of which they are comprised may mean different things to author and audience. The paper draws attention to ambivalences in Skinner's position that Bevir does not take into account, and draws out continuities in Skinner's thought that Bevir's narrative does not register.

Notes

¹ See J. Dunn, ‘The History of Political Theory’, in The History of Political Theory and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11–38 (19).

² Compare M. Bevir, ‘How to Be an Intentionalist’, History and Theory, 41:2 (2002), 209–17; ‘The Role of Contexts in Understanding and Explanation’, Human Studies, 23:4 (2000), 395–411; ‘Mind and Method in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, 36:2 (1997), 167–89; ‘Are There Perennial Problems in Political Theory?’, Political Studies, 17:4 (1994), 662–75; ‘The Errors of Linguistic Contextualism’, History and Theory, 31:3 (1992), 276–98; and R. Lamb, ‘Quentin Skinner's Revised Historical Contextualism: A Critique’, History of the Human Sciences, 22:3 (2009), 51–73l; ‘Recent Developments in the Thought of Quentin Skinner and the Ambitions of Contextualism’, Journal of the Philosophy of History, 3:3 (2009), 246–65.

³ M. Bevir, ‘Contextualism: From Modernist Method to Post‐analytic Historicism’, Journal of the Philosophy of History, 3:3 (2009), 211–24.

⁴ See, e.g., I. Hampsher‐Monk, ‘The History of Political Thought and the Political History of Thought’, in The History of Political Thought in National Context, edited by D. Castiglione and I. Hampsher‐Monk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 159–74 (172–3), which argues that Skinner's later writings reflect developments in approach that ‘cannot be – or at least have not been – reconciled with the philosophical foundations on which [the approach with which he is identified] was built, and I see no methodological revisions in train, let alone any of a comparable degree of technical sophistication to those which established the original position’.

⁵ M. Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 67–75.

⁶ Bevir, Logic, 54.

⁷ Bevir, ‘Role of Contexts’, 398.

⁸ Bevir, ‘Mind and Method’, 176.

⁹ Bevir, ‘Mind and Method’, 173n.

¹⁰ Bevir, ‘Mind and Method’, 185.

¹¹ Bevir, ‘Contextualism’, 216–22.

¹² Compare M. Goldie, ‘Obligations, Utopias, and Their Historical Context’, Historical Journal, 26:3 (1983), 727–46 (730–1), and idem., ‘The Context of The Foundations’, in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, edited by Annabel Brett and James Tully, with Holly‐Hamilton Bleakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 3–19.

¹³ Bevir, ‘Contextualism’, 216.

¹⁴ Bevir, ‘Contextualism’, 213.

¹⁵ J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, edited by Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 60.

¹⁷ Locke, Two Treatises, 16.

¹⁶ Locke, Two Treatises, 134.

¹⁸ Locke, Two Treatises, 51, 100. See also the ‘Foreword’ to the same work, x: ‘Locke did not write as a philosopher, applying to politics the implications of his view of reality as a whole.’

¹⁹ See the ‘Introduction’ to Politics, Philosophy and Society: First Series edited by Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), xii–xiii. For an illuminating discussion of this aspect of Laslett's thinking in relation to his wider views, see P. Koikkalainen, ‘Peter Laslett and the Contested Concept of Political Philosophy’, History of Political Thought, 30:2 (2009), 336–59.

²⁰ Locke, Two Treatises, 43. Laslett borrowed this description of Locke from the third earl of Shaftesbury's recollections of Locke's life, which represented him as the first earl's intellectual subordinate and lackey. See National Archives, PRO 30/24/22/2, printed in Anonymous, ‘Inedited Letter from the Earl of Shaftesbury, Author of the “Characteristics” to Le Clerc, respecting Locke’, Notes and Queries, 3:67 (1851), 97–99 (98).

²¹ For positivist hankerings, see especially P. Laslett, ‘The Face to Face Society’, in Politics, Philosophy and Society: First Series, 157–84 (180, 184), which speaks of an ‘objective sociology’ and the knowledge to be gleaned from ‘the psychologist, the social anthropologist, and the sociologist’. For flights of fancy, see Laslett's remarks about Leo Strauss and C.B. Macpherson, in Locke, Two Treatises, 118–19.

²² Laslett, ‘The Face to Face Society’, 180. See Koikkalainen, ‘Peter Laslett’, 353–5.

²³ Locke, Two Treatises, 57.

²⁴ Locke, Two Treatises, xi.

²⁵ Q. Skinner, ‘The Limits of Historical Explanations’, Philosophy, 41:157 (1966), 199–215.

²⁶ Skinner, ‘Limits of Historical Explanations’, 214.

²⁷ Skinner, ‘Limits of Historical Explanations’, 214–15.

²⁸ Skinner, ‘Limits of Historical Explanations’, 214–15.

²⁹ J. Dunn, ‘The Identity of the History of Ideas’, Philosophy, 43:164 (1968), 85–104 (102–4).

³⁰ Q. Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, 8:1 (1969), 3–53 (7, 50–1).

³¹ R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 36–7. For a sympathetic account of Skinner's use of Collingwood, see H. Hamilton‐Bleakley, ‘Linguistic Philosophy and The Foundations’, in Rethinking the Foundations, edited by Brett et al., 20–33 (21–3).

³² See J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962) and, for discussion, M. Furberg, Saying and Meaning: A Main Theme in J.L. Austin's Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), 107–15, 192–255.

³³ Austin, How To Do Things, 132.

³⁴ For the place of Weber in Skinner's thinking, compare K. Palonen, Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric (Oxford: Polity Press, 2003), 2–4, 45–60, and Goldie, ‘Context of The Foundations’, 7–9.

³⁵ Here if anywhere it is worth adding that such a view might well deceive the unwary into thinking that intentions and motives are indistinguishable, which no doubt helps to explain why Skinner took pains to distinguish the two. See Q. Skinner, ‘Motives, Intentions and the Interpretations of Texts’, New Literary History, 3:2 (1972), 393–408.

³⁶ Compare Q. Skinner, ‘Hobbes's Leviathan’, Historical Journal, 7:3 (1964), 321–33; ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’, Historical Journal, 8:2 (1965), 151–78; ‘The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought’, Historical Journal, 9:3 (1966), 286–317.

³⁷ Q. Skinner, ‘Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy’, in The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660, edited by G.E. Aylmer (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1972), 79–98 (97).

³⁸ See ‘An Interview with Quentin Skinner’, Cogito, 11:2 (1997), 69–76 (70). It may be worth adding that, pace Laslett, Skinner seems to have believed that the keenest minds were political, not philosophic, and so that in writing politically Hobbes was not writing against his own inclinations so much as indulging them.

³⁹ Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, passim.

⁴⁰ A representative selection of critical reactions is available in Meaning & Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, edited by James Tully (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

⁴¹ Bevir, ‘Errors’, 276.

⁴² Bevir, ‘Role of Contexts’, 398.

⁴³ Bevir, ‘Contextualism’, 220.

⁴⁴ Bevir, Logic, 85.

⁴⁵ See, e.g., R. Stern, ‘History, Meaning and Interpretation: A Critical Response to Bevir’, History of European Ideas, 28:1 (2002), 1–12 (8).

⁴⁶ See Skinner, ‘A Reply to My Critics’, in Meaning & Context, edited by Tully, 231–88 (280–1).

⁴⁷ Stern, ‘History, Meaning and Interpretation’, 9.

⁴⁸ A point made by Skinner – though not (we need hardly add) in precisely these terms. See Skinner, ‘Reply to My Critics’, 231–5.

⁴⁹ Bevir, ‘Contextualism’, 215–16. Since the charge is predicated on accepting Bevir's characterization of Skinner's position, it is not clear how its successful prosecution could count as clinching evidence of that characterization.

⁵⁰ Compare Q. Skinner, ‘“Social Meaning” and the Explanation of Social Action’, in Philosophy, Politics and Society: Fourth Series, edited by Peter Laslett, W.G. Runciman and Quentin Skinner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), 136–57 (154) and ‘Reply to My Critics’, 275.

⁵¹ See G. d'Oro, ‘Robin George Collingwood’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta (2006), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood/

⁵² Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 3.

⁵³ See R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), 34–57, and compare Q. Skinner, ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 20:79 (1970), 118–38. It is important to underline that this is a claim about function, not content – conventions do for Skinner the conceptual work done by absolute presuppositions for Collingwood.

⁵⁴ Unlike Collingwood. See, e.g., Collingwood, Metaphysics, 48n.

⁵⁵ Skinner, ‘Reply to My Critics’, 275.

⁵⁶ Collingwood, Autobiography, 37–39, 66.

⁵⁷ See C. Nederman, ‘Quentin Skinner's State: Historical Method and Traditions of Discourse’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 18:2 (1985), 339–52 (343), and compare J. Femia, ‘An Historicist Critique of “Revisionist” Methods for Studying the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, 20:2 (1981), 113–34, together with Q. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 111.

⁵⁸ Bevir, ‘Role of Contexts’, 395. See also Lamb, ‘Recent Developments’, for an attempt to settle matters in the opposite direction.

⁵⁹ R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, edited by T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 213.

⁶⁰ See d'Oro, ‘Robin George Collingwood’.

⁶¹ Collingwood, Autobiography, 111–12.

⁶² Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 28–9.

⁶³ Skinner, ‘Reply to My Critics’, 274–5; idem., ‘The Rise of, Challenge to, and Prospects for a Collingwoodian Approach to the History of Political Thought’, in Political Thought in National Context, edited by Castiglione and Hampsher‐Monk, 175–88 (185).

⁶⁴ Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 6–7; idem., ‘Ideological Context’, 317.

⁶⁵ Compare J.G. Gunnell, ‘Interpretation and the History of Political Theory: Apology and Epistemology’, American Political Science Review, 76:2 (1982), 317–27; H. Warrender, ‘Political Theory and Historiography: A Reply to Professor Skinner on Hobbes’, Historical Journal, 22:4 (1979), 931–40 (939).

⁶⁶ Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 108–9.

⁶⁷ See G. d'Oro, ‘Collingwood on Re‐enactment and the Identity of Thought’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 38:1 (2000), 87–101 (98–9).

⁶⁸ L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951, 1958), 88^e, 242.

⁶⁹ R.G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan: or Man, Society, Civilization and Barbarism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), 280. For a lucid comparison of Collingwood and Wittgenstein in this connection, see M. Hughes‐Warrington, ‘How Good an Historian Shall I Be’: R.G. Collingwood, The Historical Imagination, and Education (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004), 61–71.

⁷⁰ Collingwood, New Leviathan, 79.

⁷¹ Collingwood, New Leviathan, 280.

⁷² As John Dunn, for one, recognized. See Dunn, ‘The History of Political Theory’, 20.

⁷³ Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 49.

⁷⁴ Pace Bevir, ‘Mind and Method’, 175. See also M. Lane, ‘Why History of Ideas at All?’, History of European Ideas, 28:1 (2002), 33–41 (37).

⁷⁵ Bevir, ‘Contextualism’, 222.

⁷⁶ Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’, 155.

⁷⁷ Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 53.

⁷⁹ R.G. Collingwood, ‘The Nature and Aims of a Philosophy of History’, in Essays in the Philosophy of History, edited by Lionel Rubinoff (New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1966), 34–56 (53–4). Compare Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 52: ‘we must learn to do our own thinking for ourselves’ and idem., ‘Collingwoodian Approach’, 187, for the belated acknowledgement of the wider implications of this point.

⁷⁸ Collingwood, Idea of History, 244–5.

⁸⁰ Bevir, ‘Mind and Method’, 174.

⁸¹ R.G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis, or the Map of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), [15].

⁸² See Goldie, ‘Context of The Foundations’, 8.

⁸³ Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 8–9.

⁸⁴ See Lamb, ‘Recent Developments’ for one illuminating recent offering.