Quentin Skinners Approach to the History of Ideas - Assignment Example

Quentin Skinner’s Approach to the History of Ideas 2007 The history science we’ve been taught has been accustomed to charge the ics from the point of contemporary views and beliefs. However, people who lived and created earlier had other perceptions, other universal truths. As Professor André Van de Putte put it: we make history “a mirror and a confirmation of our convictions and questions”. The historians of political thought usually select only those texts “that are of enduring importance for the eternal questions of philosophy”, while “the historian has to have an eye for discontinuities and conceptual change” and “to excavate values we no longer endorse, questions we no longer ask” (Van De Putte 2004). Professor Skinner’s work is an attempt to break through this conventional approach to the history of ideas. He offers a really historical approach to intellectual history, stating that the works and ideas of the classics must be studied in the aspect of historical intellectual context. It is impossible to understand the author’s message without understanding what the author wanted to do with the help of the text. Skinner suggests a holistic approach to the textual studies, with intertextualtiy and author’s intentions taken into account. In his article “Meaning and Understanding in History of Ideas”, initially published in 1969, Professor Skinner laid out the major mistakes of the traditional approach to the history of ideas as he saw it. There are several factors in human nature, leading to the misinterpretation of the history. First, our perceptions and thoughts act as determinants of what we perceive and think. Second, we may understand notions and learn the world only on the bases of classification, classifying the unfamiliar in terms of familiar. As a result, we usually tend to enlarge our historical perception due to expectations about what the author must have thought, said and done, though he could not think, mean or do it (Skinner 2002, pp.58-59). As a result of this ‘unconscious application of paradigms of the familiarity’ we get not histories but sooner mythologies. There are two major mythologies characteristic with the modern historical science: the mythology of doctrines and the mythology of coherence. The first of the mythologies is born due to the expectation of the scholars that any classical theorist must have had some fit-and-finish doctrine. This mythology takes several dangerous forms. A rather common one is the deduction of a finished doctrine and the logic of its development out of incidental, scattered remarks of the author. It results in anachronism: a classical author is prescribed thoughts and ideas he could never have and scholars easily find the expected doctrines in his texts (pp.59-60). Further, such an approach gives rise to two kinds of ‘historical absurdity’: prescription of anticipations of later doctrines and genius clairvoyance to the classical theorist or its converse - criticism for incompetence and ‘falling short of their proper task’ (pp.62-63). So “Marsilius of Padua is notable for his remarkable anticipation of Machiavelli. Machiavelli is notable because he lays the foundation for Marx. John Lockes theory of signs is notable as an anticipation of Berkeleys metaphysics, - with numerous other examples to be provided (p.63). The second type of mistake also has several forms. The first is ‘supplying of a classical theorist’ with some ‘proper’ doctrine and further adjustment of his saying to make them ‘suitable’. Another strategy starts the same way but results in criticism of the author for his inability to ‘constitute the most systematic contribution’ to the discipline (pp.65-66). The mythology of coherence is one of the consequences of those ‘demonological’ mistakes. Being ‘set in approaching the ideas of the past’, the scholar would rather read the historical text over and over looking for coherence in argumentation instead of accepting that the author lacked consistency and failed to provide a systematic account of his views (p.67). Sometimes, however it is impossible to find any coherence, then the second type of historical absurdity – reproach –takes place. Skinner offers a simple solution. “To understand any serious utterance, - he concludes, - we need to grasp not merely the meaning of what is said, but at the same time the intended force with which the utterance is issued. We need, that is, to grasp not merely what people are saying but also what they are doing in saying it” (p.82). Considering that “any statement is inescapably the embodiment of a particular intention on a particular occasion, addressed to the solution of a particular problem, and is thus specific to its context in a way that it can only be naive to try to transcend” (p.88), Skinner actually equates the meaning of a historical text with the author’s intention in writing the text. At that any utterance contains of locutionary (or semantic) meaning and the intended illocutionary force (what you DO saying what you say, e.g. drawing attention, promising, warning). Focus on illocutionary meaning provides us with a chance to understand the utterance properly. Skinner’s approach to the language is based on Wittgenstein’s understanding of the nature of linguistic interactions. The meanings of words cannot be taken in isolation. They appear in ‘specific language-games’ ‘within particular forms of life’ (p.90). An individual’s statements make sense only in some context. This context is holistic, containing hypertextual factors. Any linguistic changes may take place only within this context, which requires ‘retailoring a body of conventions’. While author wants to be understood, his illocutionary intentions “must be conventional intentions”. Therefore, ”to understand what any given writer may have been doing in using some particular concept or argument, we need first of all to grasp the nature and range of things that could recognizably have been done by using that particular concept, in the treatment of that particular theme, at that particular time” (Skinner in Tully 1988, p.77, in Bevir 1997) A political text is always an adjustment or restatement of a “body of conventions” and it is always “an ideological manoeuvre’. But a political text is also a ‘political manoeuvre’ having its point, which is the author’s intention. “The political theorist is responding to the political problems of the age”, wrote Skinner, “Theories are about contemporary legitimating crises caused by shifting political relations” (Tully 1988, p.10, 13, in Hensbroe 1998). The understanding of a text means understanding of both locutionary and illocutionary aspects of a speech-act. To grasp the author’s intention in writing the text, we should examine all the linguistic and extra linguistic conventions of his time, and discover the ideological context he lived in. For this we should uncover the relationship between political thought and political action. To understand these conventions we should read a variety of literature, written by both major and minor authors of the period on study, containing similar assumptions, vocabulary and principles. Only then it is possible to really understand the author’s intentions and emotions when he wrote a text, to see whether he was serious, or perhaps ironic (See Tully 1988, p.7, 23, 69, in Martin 2005). Focus on illocutionary intentions provides bases for the explanation of the incoherence in historical works. The coherence constraints that can be applied to illocutionary intentions are weaker then those applied to beliefs. Intensions are treated as desires and beliefs upon which people act. While illocutionary intentions are rather intentions in acting, they do not stand prior to an action but are embodied in it, constituting its point. Illocutionary intensions are beliefs and desires that constitute the point of action (Tully, p.40, In Bevir 1997, p.9). Briefly, the coherence constraints on illocutionary intensions can be described as following: two actions may embody different illocutionary intentions cohering to the extent of desires, while two separate illocutionary intentions in one action should cohere strongly. Thus there can be ‘only a weak concern with the coherence of two or more utterances of a single author’ (In Bevir, p.10). The same author obviously has different desires, intentions and illocutionary intentions at different stages of his life. So focusing on the study of desires and illocutionary intentions, we perhaps, won’t be able to find unity in separate works of one author, while the author “contributed over several decades to several quite different fields of enquiry” (Tully, p.39, In Bevir p.10). Skinner was much criticized for his approach. In this criticism we can trace that very anachronism and absurdity he condemns. Each author treats Skinner’s works from the positions of his own beliefs. For instance, Mark Bevir reproaches Skinner for the diminishing of the importance of coherence (p.11). Yet, Skinner’s aim seems to be a bit other. What he wanted is to show that a historian should not even interpret a classical author, but rather see with the classics’ eyes and speak with his own words. Certainly, this task is almost unachievable. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand even contemporaries. However, this is the only way to write the real history. Skinner implemented his methodology in practice analysing the works of the political philosopher and the way other scholars analyzed them. Thomas Hobbes has been the one largely preoccupying Skinner’s attention. Starting with the earliest articles (1964), Skinner turned his critique against scholars like F.C.Hood, who tried to make sense of the classical works treating them as a whole. The argumentation has been connected with Hobbes’ attitude towards religion, the interpretation of his theory and the appropriateness of treating Leviathan and other works in the same manner. Mark Bevir remarks that Skinner mixes the notions of illocutionary intentions and belief here (p.12). Yet, don’t our beliefs determine our intentions? As a result of the attempts to treat Hobbes’ works as one whole, the scholar denied noticing even explicit statements of the classic. For instance, Hobbes, informs us in the Review and Conclusion to his Leviathan about the intended character of his political theory: without other design than to show that the Civil Right of Sovereigns, and both the Duty and Liberty of Subjects can be grounded upon the known natural Inclinations of Mankind, and that a theory so grounded must centre on the mutual Relation between Protection and Obedience (In Skinner 2002, p.69). Hood interpreted this part as “nothing more than a rather ineptly detached aspect of a transcendent religious whole”, indignantly writes Skinner. While “Hobbes himself appeared unaware of this higher order of coherence” in his works, he “merely fails to make clear that his discussion of human nature in fact subserves a religious purpose. It would have been clearer if Hobbes had written in terms of moral and civil obligations and thus brought out the real unity and the basically religious character of his whole system’” (Hoods 1964 in Skinner, 2002, p.70) In his later works, Skinner offers us his own analysis of Hobbes’ life and works. There are two books dedicated to the detailed description of the development of Hobbes’ ideas: Reason and Rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes and Visions of Politics: Hobbes and Civil Science Vol3, published by the Cambridge University Press. In this fundamental works Skinner traces all the stages of Hobbes’s philosophical views formation, evidently showing how the classic’s views must have changed during his life. Skinner’s “considerations on the role that ideas play in behaviour, his observations about intentionality; his attention for the rhetorical strategies and for the relations between language and power in the social construction of reality’ and his ability to apply ‘his principles in a magisterial and exemplary manner’ changed the direction of philosophical debate, confronting the scientists with the ‘unfamiliar’ and ‘forgotten’ and making us aware of the way we think and choose terms. Skinner’s approach to the history of political thought has been criticized as ‘irrelevant, merely scholarly antiquarianism’. “The above demonstrates that nothing is less true” – concludes, Professor André Van de Putte (2004). References: Bevir, Mark (1997). Mind and Method in the History of Ideas. History and Theory, Vol.36, Post printed available free at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3159&context=postprints. Retrieved: August 23, 2007. Hensbroe, P. Boele, Van, (1998). The Interpretation of Political Discourses. Chapter II of Dissertation. Retrieved August 23, 3007 from http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/fil/1998/p.boele.van.hensbroe/c2.pdf Martin, Emma (2005). Feminist Research: Disclosure of Route. Graduate Journal of Social Science, Vol.2, Issue 1, pp. 148-161. Retrieved August 23, 2007 from http://www.gjss.org/documents/vol2/issue1/Martin.pdf Putte, Andre, Van de (2004). Laudatio for Prof. Dr. Quentin Skinner, Pronounced in Leuven on February 2. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Retrieved August 23, 2007 from http://www.kuleuven.be/patroonsfeest/ Skinner, Quentin (1964). Hobbes Leviathan. Historical Journal, Vol. 7, pp.321-33 Skinner, Quentin (2002). Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas. In Visions of Politics: Regarding Method. Vol.1. Cambridge University Press, 209 pgs. Read More