Quentin Skinner’s Methodology on Intellectual History and its Practice
Quentin Skinner is one of the pivots of the “Cambridge School” in intellectual history. Like other members of Cambridge School, such as J.G.A. Pocock and John Dunn, besides his marvelous research achievements on many topics in the history of political thoughts, he also made a profound contribution to the developments of the methodology of the history of political thoughts.
The reason that I chose to research on this topic was that, since I entered the department of history, I had shown special interests on intellectual history, and meanwhile I had kept considering on the meaning of intellectual history. There were people believing the existence of absolute value and truth. They studied history to search for the ultimate truth. On the other side, there were relativists who researched the intellectual history. For them, what was the significance of the study of intellectual history? If there were no absolute value, why we study the predecessors’ experiences? What should we expect to learn out of them? Occasionally, I read Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. The arrangement of chapters and the way he discussed intellectual history were quite different from what I read before. Therefore, from this starting point, I decided to study materials on his life and his texts so far, and figured out his methodology.
Quentin Skinner was born on November 12th 1940. In his early years, he was deeply influenced by John Eyre, the principal of Bedford middle school. He encouraged young Skinner to read the classics of English political thoughts, such as Utopia of Thomas More and Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, which built a firm foundation on his research on the history of political thoughts afterward. After he entered Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge University, he met a lot of scholars who influenced him a lot. Peter Laslett edited a new version of Two Treaties of Government of John Locke, which steered the study of political thoughts to a new direction, also had great influence on his methodology. After his graduation in 1962, he got a teaching position in Gonville and Caius College, and then he transferred to Christ’s College until 2008. The pinnacle of his academic career was his being appointed Regius Professor of Modern History in 1996.
In 1969, he published an essay, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, on History and Theory. Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke said it was his declaration of methodology, and Skinner agreed with this comment in an interview with Mrs. Burke. He viewed it as a declaration on a new way of research. He published his representative work, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, in 1978. This two-volume work demonstrated the achievements of his methodology on the history of political thoughts.
According to the research of his student James Tully, we knew that the main concern of Quentin Skinner lay in the roles which language played in interpretation, and the relation between thoughts and actions. He was against traditional ways of doing the research on the history of ideas. Since many historians expected that each classic writer would be found to enunciate some doctrine on each of the topics regarded as constitutive of the subject, he thought it is dangerous to do so. He also thought that many historians emphasize the continuity of ideas excessively. He insisted that these mistakes would lead them to the danger either of anachronism, or distorting the authors’ mind, or too readily finding expected doctrines in classic texts. He believed that we should not only grasp the meaning of what is said, but also the intended force with which the utterance was issued. The other feature of his works was that he tended to use materials other than classical texts. So he often focused on the minor works, and expected these minor works could help us to have better understanding on the classics.
As what Skinner said in the preface of The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, he had three main aims in this book. The first was simply to offer an outline account if the principal texts of late medieval and early modern political thought. The second was to use the texts of late medieval and early modern political theory in order to illuminate a more general historical theme. The third was to exemplify a particular way of approaching the study and interpretation of historical texts. According to his claim, he intended to write this book as an example of the practice of his methodology. He was tired of the old methodology which he thought focused too much on the classic works. He attempted to study the society at that time, in order to understand the intellectual context, so that he might consider the context of these texts more effectively. He had tried to write a history centered less on the classic texts and more on the history of ideologies. The title of this work made people feel that Skinner seemed trying to resolve this question: “what was the foundation of modern political thought?” I think the actual question he wanted to resolve was that, “how was the foundation of modern political thoughts built up?” Kari Palonen pointed out that the word “foundation” meant a process of history. Alan Ryan thought Skinner wanted to proclaim the process of modern political thoughts. In other words, what he sought was a course, through which came forth the ways we reasoned about modern politics.
Skinner said he was a relativist. In his essay in 1969, he held that these texts were telling us the problems of their time, but not ours, and that showed the unquestionable value of the study of the history of ideas. These texts demonstrated the great variety of moral and politics. Skinner asserted that the reason we study the history of ideas was not because crude lessons could be picked out of it, but because the history itself can provide a lesson in self-knowledge.
The reason that I chose to research on this topic was that, since I entered the department of history, I had shown special interests on intellectual history, and meanwhile I had kept considering on the meaning of intellectual history. There were people believing the existence of absolute value and truth. They studied history to search for the ultimate truth. On the other side, there were relativists who researched the intellectual history. For them, what was the significance of the study of intellectual history? If there were no absolute value, why we study the predecessors’ experiences? What should we expect to learn out of them? Occasionally, I read Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. The arrangement of chapters and the way he discussed intellectual history were quite different from what I read before. Therefore, from this starting point, I decided to study materials on his life and his texts so far, and figured out his methodology.
Quentin Skinner was born on November 12th 1940. In his early years, he was deeply influenced by John Eyre, the principal of Bedford middle school. He encouraged young Skinner to read the classics of English political thoughts, such as Utopia of Thomas More and Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, which built a firm foundation on his research on the history of political thoughts afterward. After he entered Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge University, he met a lot of scholars who influenced him a lot. Peter Laslett edited a new version of Two Treaties of Government of John Locke, which steered the study of political thoughts to a new direction, also had great influence on his methodology. After his graduation in 1962, he got a teaching position in Gonville and Caius College, and then he transferred to Christ’s College until 2008. The pinnacle of his academic career was his being appointed Regius Professor of Modern History in 1996.
In 1969, he published an essay, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, on History and Theory. Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke said it was his declaration of methodology, and Skinner agreed with this comment in an interview with Mrs. Burke. He viewed it as a declaration on a new way of research. He published his representative work, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, in 1978. This two-volume work demonstrated the achievements of his methodology on the history of political thoughts.
According to the research of his student James Tully, we knew that the main concern of Quentin Skinner lay in the roles which language played in interpretation, and the relation between thoughts and actions. He was against traditional ways of doing the research on the history of ideas. Since many historians expected that each classic writer would be found to enunciate some doctrine on each of the topics regarded as constitutive of the subject, he thought it is dangerous to do so. He also thought that many historians emphasize the continuity of ideas excessively. He insisted that these mistakes would lead them to the danger either of anachronism, or distorting the authors’ mind, or too readily finding expected doctrines in classic texts. He believed that we should not only grasp the meaning of what is said, but also the intended force with which the utterance was issued. The other feature of his works was that he tended to use materials other than classical texts. So he often focused on the minor works, and expected these minor works could help us to have better understanding on the classics.
As what Skinner said in the preface of The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, he had three main aims in this book. The first was simply to offer an outline account if the principal texts of late medieval and early modern political thought. The second was to use the texts of late medieval and early modern political theory in order to illuminate a more general historical theme. The third was to exemplify a particular way of approaching the study and interpretation of historical texts. According to his claim, he intended to write this book as an example of the practice of his methodology. He was tired of the old methodology which he thought focused too much on the classic works. He attempted to study the society at that time, in order to understand the intellectual context, so that he might consider the context of these texts more effectively. He had tried to write a history centered less on the classic texts and more on the history of ideologies. The title of this work made people feel that Skinner seemed trying to resolve this question: “what was the foundation of modern political thought?” I think the actual question he wanted to resolve was that, “how was the foundation of modern political thoughts built up?” Kari Palonen pointed out that the word “foundation” meant a process of history. Alan Ryan thought Skinner wanted to proclaim the process of modern political thoughts. In other words, what he sought was a course, through which came forth the ways we reasoned about modern politics.
Skinner said he was a relativist. In his essay in 1969, he held that these texts were telling us the problems of their time, but not ours, and that showed the unquestionable value of the study of the history of ideas. These texts demonstrated the great variety of moral and politics. Skinner asserted that the reason we study the history of ideas was not because crude lessons could be picked out of it, but because the history itself can provide a lesson in self-knowledge.
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