Inspired by the work of intellectual historian J. G. A. Pocock, this 1993 collection explores the political ideologies of early modern Britain.

The first of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important philosophical and methodological statements written over the past four decades, each carefully revised for publication in this form. In a series of seminal essays Professor Skinner sets forth the intellectual principles that inform his work. Writing as a practising historian, he considers the theoretical difficulties inherent in the pursuit of knowledge and (...) interpretation, and elucidates the methodology which finds its expression in his two successive volumes. All of Professor Skinner's work is characterised by philosophical power, limpid clarity, and elegance of exposition; these essays, many of which are now recognised classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. (shrink)

Since the late 1960s Quentin Skinner has defended a highly influential form of linguistic contextualism for the history of ideas, originally devised in opposition to established methodological orthodoxies like the `great text' tradition and a mainly Marxist epiphenomenalism. In 2002, he published Regarding Method, a collection of his revised methodological essays that provides a uniquely systematic expression of his contextualist philosophy of history. Skinner's most arresting theoretical contention in that work remains his well-known claim that past works (...) of political theory cannot be read as contributions to `perennial' debates but must instead be understood as particularistic, ideological speech acts. In this article I argue that he fails to justify these claims and that there is actually nothing wrong at all with (where appropriate) treating past works of political theory as engaged in perennial philosophical debates. Not only do Skinner's arguments not support the form of contextualism he defends, their flaws are actually akin to those he identified in his critique of previous methodological orthodoxies. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner is one of the leading thinkers in the social sciences and humanities today. Since the publication of his first important articles some two decades ago, debate has continued to develop over his distinctive contributions to contemporary political philosophy, the history of political theory, the philosophy of social science, and the discussion of interpretation and hermeneutics across the humanities and social sciences. Nevertheless, his most valuable essays and the best critical articles concerning his work have (...) been scattered in various journals and difficult to obtain. Meaning and Context includes five of the most widely discussed articles by Skinner, which present his approach to the study of political thought and the interpretation of texts. Following these are seven articles by his critics, five of these drawn from earlier publications and two, by John Keane and Charles Taylor, written especially for this volume. Finally, there appears a fifty-seven page reply by Skinner--a major new statement in which he defends and reformulates his method and lays out new lines of research. The editorial introduction provides a systematic overview of the evolution of Skinner's work and of the main reactions to it.Besides James Tully, John Keane, and Charles Taylor, the contributors include Joseph V. Femia, Keith Graham, Martin Hollis, Kenneth Minogue, and Nathan Tarcov. (shrink)

It must be admitted that there are some of us who “teach” Virginia Woolf and yet seem unable to learn from her. The secret of Virginia’s eminently readable prose style remains hidden from us. It is for this reason that I find it impossibly hard to read everything that Professor Marcus and some of her colleagues produce in such astounding abundance, and that, she may retort, is why she has found it impossible to read my biography of Virginia Woolf. (...) In a sense, she does not need to; she can imagine it and, thus, credit me with the statement that I considered my aunt “a minor British novelist, ranked somewhere below E. M. Forster as a writer of fiction” . Seeing that I made it clear from the outset of that biography that I would not attempt to assess the work of Virginia Woolf, seeing that I have been blamed for this abstention , and seeing that I have said absolutely nothing at any time that could possibly be construed in this sense, I think that we may well call this a master-stroke of the imagination.Also it is irrelevant. I accuse her of inaccuracy; she “replies” by asserting that I have bad taste. It seems a rather unconvincing form of defence. In fact, in her “reply,” which must be about as long as the article by which it was engendered, Professor Marcus can find so little in the way of evidence or argument with which to support those contentions which I have criticized that the reader must wade through page after page of completely otiose matter before coming to anything which seems to bear on the matter at hand. At last Professor Marcus tells us that she has written “two long essays in which I did at length and in detail exactly what he does here”; here, then, we come to her answer . The reader, who may be somewhat bewildered by so long a preface, may wish to be reminded what there is that needs to be answered. I maintain that Professor Marcus has neglected to notice that Margaret Llewelyn Davis was primarily Leonard Woolf’s friend rather than Virginia’s, that her relationship with Virginia was at times very uneasy, that Virginia was out of sympathy with politically minded women, and that Professor Marcus neglects to notice any of this because she fails to use the evidence of the diaries and the letters. When she does quote from a letter, she completely misunderstands it, just as she fails to understand Virginia’s use of the term “the woman’s republic” . Quentin Bell is the author of, among other works, Ruskin , Bloomsbury , Virginia Woolf: A Biography , and On Human Finery . His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “Art and the Elite” , “Bloomsbury and ‘the Vulgar Passions’” , and “A ‘Radiant’ Friendship”. (shrink)

This was to have been a confutation. My intention was to rebut and for the record’s sake to correct certain fashionable errors concerning the life of Virginia Woolf. What could be more proper, and what, it has to be said, more tedious? If the defence of truth had remained my only objet, I should have left these words unwritten, or at least should have addressed them to a very small audience. But the pursuit of truth sent me back to my (...) sources, and there I found a story, in many ways sad, but also funny and certainly instructive. It seemed worth extracting this record of a friendship from the great mass of evidence in which it is embedded. I hope that the reader will agree with me in finding it interesting in itself but, just as Prince’s Hal’s “plain tale” is made livelier by being contrasted with Falstaff’s “eleven buckram men,” so too the simple facts are made more striking by the intentions of Virginia’s recent interpreters. Let me therefore begin with a quotation from one of them.Volume I [of Virginia Woolf’s Letters] has a rarely preserved portrait of a female artist in the making, love and work intensely intertwined in her relations with women who encouraged her to write, read, and think, and gave her the nourishment of womanly love and literary criticism, which she was to seek and find in female friendship all her life. Bloomsbury fades into insignificance as an “influence” next to the radiance of Woolf’s relationships with Margaret Llewelyn Davies, head of the Cooperative Working Women’s Guild, Janet Case, her Greek teacher, violet Dickinson, Madge Vaughan, and her aunt Caroline Stephen, the Quaker whom she called “Nun.”1These words were written by Professor Jane Marcus, a person of great charm and ability, whose opinions are, I understand, accepted by a multitude of admirers. In those articles by her which I have read, she hardly disguises her contempt for me as a biographer. But, painful though it is to have incurred the disdain of so influential a personage, it much be allowed that, if the influence of Virginia Woolf’s husband, her sister, and her closest friends “fades into insignificance” when compared with that of Miss Caroline Stephen and Mrs. W. W. Vaughan, then indeed I have gone sadly astray. Quentin Bell is the author of, among other works, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Bloomsbury, Ruskin, and On Human Finery. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “Art and the Elite” and “Bloomsbury and ‘the Vulgar Passions’ ”. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli taught that political leaders must be prepared to do evil deeds in order to ensure the general good of the state, and ever since his name has signified duplicity and immorality. But is his sinister reputation deserved? To answer this question, Quentin Skinner focuses on three of Machiavelli’s major works- The Prince , Discourses , and The History of Florence . His analyses and distillation of these texts provide an introduction of exemplary clarity to Machiavelli’s doctrines.

A memoir of J. G. A. Pocock derived from his correspondence with Quentin Skinner between 1965 and 2020. The letters follow the development of Pocock’s career from his early years in New Zealand to his move to the United States in 1966 and his long period of teaching at Johns Hopkins University. Among the topics covered are the gestation and publication of Pocock’s most famous book, The Machiavellian Moment, and the evolution of his six-volume study of Gibbon’s history, (...) Barbarism and Religion. Much new light is also cast on Pocock’s personality, family life, relations with colleagues, and political beliefs. (shrink)

Cogent, engaged, accessible, and indeed exhilarating, this new book will appeal to readers of history, politics, and philosophy at all levels from upper-undergraduate upwards, and provides an excellent introduction to the work of one of the ...

This major new work from Quentin Skinner presents a fundamental reappraisal of the political theory of Hobbes. Using, for the first time, the full range of manuscript as well as printed sources, it documents an entirely new view of Hobbes 's intellectual development, and re-examines the shift from a humanist to a scientific culture in European moral and political thought. By examining Hobbes 's philosophy against the background of his humanist education, Professor Skinner rescues this most (...) difficult and challenging of political philosophers from the intellectual isolation in which he is so often discussed. This book presents a splendid exemplification of the 'Cambridge' contextual approach to the study of intellectual history with which Professor Skinner himself is especially associated. It will be of interest and importance to a wide range of scholars in history, philosophy, politics, and literary theory. (shrink)

This book is an inter-disciplinary volume based on collaborative research in the humanities and social sciences that explores the benefits of historical understanding in leading disciplines, including History, Politics, Literature, Economics, Anthropology, Law, Sociology, and Philosophy.

The aim of this collection is to illustrate the pervasive influence of humanist rhetoric on early-modern literature and philosophy. The first half of the book focuses on the classical rules of judicial rhetoric. One chapter considers the place of these rules in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, while two others concentrate on the technique of rhetorical redescription, pointing to its use in Machiavelli's The Prince as well as in several of Shakespeare's plays, notably Coriolanus. The second half of the book (...) examines the humanist background to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. A major new essay discusses his typically humanist preoccupation with the visual presentation of his political ideas, while other chapters explore the rhetorical sources of his theory of persons and personation, thereby offering new insights into his views about citizenship, political representation, rights and obligations and the concept of the state. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner focuses on three major works, The Prince, the Discourses, and The History of Florence, and distils from them an introduction to Machiavelli's doctrines of exemplary clarity.

Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 1 examines debates about religious and constitutional liberties, as well as exploring the tensions between free will and divine omnipotence across a continent of proliferating religious denominations. Volume 2 considers free persons and free states, (...) examining differing views about freedom of thought and action and their relations to conceptions of citizenship. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time. (shrink)

This book contains studies of four of the most influential political theorists in the Western tradition: Machiavelli, whose name is a byword for duplicity, Hobbes, the first great English political philosopher, Mill, liberal thinker and champion of individual liberty, and Marx, whose legacy has affected the lives of millions.

This Reply first defends the claim that the 'neo-Roman' writers I discuss in my book held shared views about the nature of liberty. They all believe that freedom is taken away not merely by acts of interference but also by relations of domination and dependence. I argue that this commitment leads them to treat diminutions of the security with which we enjoy our liberty as diminutions of liberty itself. I take Hobbes to be opposing this position when he defines freedom (...) as an absence of the kinds of external impediments that render actions within our powers impossible of performance. I question the suggestion that Hobbes has a more extended view of the conditions that undermine liberty. I reaffirm that Hobbes's definition makes freedom an all-or-nothing matter, not a matter of degree. Finally, I restate my central contention that Hobbes's theory constitutes an attempt to challenge and discredit the rival neo-Roman account. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin, English Liberalism and a Third Concept of Liberty. Isaiah Berlin is celebrated for having defended the claim that there are two distinct concepts of liberty. According to the more familiar view, liberty is a « negative » concept. The presence of liberty is said to be marked, that is, by the absence of something, and specifically by the absence of inteference with an agent’s capacity to pursue some chosen end. According to Berlin, however, this concept stands in contrast (...) with a « positive » view, according to which liberty is the name of that state in which we shall have realised ourselves most completely. Liberty on this account is the name not of an opportunity but of a moral achievement. Berlin considered the second view dangerously confused, but one aim of the present essay is to defend its coherence. Its principal aim, however, is to show that Berlin’s understanding of negative liberty is a misleadingly narrow one. As is evident from classical and early-modern debates, we have in fact inherited two rival conceptions of negative liberty. One of these focuses, as Berlin rightly observed, on the idea of absence of interference. But the other, which he overlooked, sees lack of liberty as arising from relations of domination and dependence. The principal aim of the present essay is to distinguish these two traditions and to give new prominence to the idea of negative liberty as absence not of interference but of dependence. (shrink)

This collaborative volume offers the first historical reconstruction of the concept of popular sovereignty from antiquity to the twentieth century. First formulated between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the various early modern conceptions of the doctrine were heavily indebted to Roman reflection on forms of government and Athenian ideas of popular power. This study, edited by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner, traces successive transformations of the doctrine, rather than narrating a linear development. It examines critical moments in (...) the career of popular sovereignty, spanning antiquity, medieval Europe, the early modern wars of religion, the revolutions of the eighteenth century and their aftermath, decolonisation and mass democracy. Featuring original work by an international team of scholars, the book offers a reconsideration of one of the formative principles of contemporary politics by exploring its descent from classical city-states to the advent of the modern state. (shrink)

The imminent demise of the nation-state in the face of global capitalism and supra-national agencies like the United Nations has often been predicted, yet in practice the death of the state seems unimaginable: indeed terrorist activity and corporate collapse have made states, if anything, more assertive in recent years, and the condition of 'statelessness' is regarded as pitiable and grave in the extreme. This volume, first published in 2003, offers a coherent survey of perceptions of the state, its history, its (...) theoretical underpinnings, and its prospects in the contemporary world. The coverage of the Western European experience is thorough and wide-ranging, with the greatest post-colonial democratic state, India, as a comparative example. The provocative and accessible contributions of a very distinguished and genuinely pan-European team of contributors ensure that States and Citizens provides a unique and valuable resource, of interest to students and teachers of the history of ideas, political theory and European studies. (shrink)

This volume in the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes contains A dialogue between a philosopher and a student, of the common laws of England, edited by Alan Cromartie, supplemented by the important fragment on the issue of regal succession, 'Questions relative to Hereditary Right', discovered and edited by Quentin Skinner. The former work is the last of Hobbes's major political writings. As a critique of common law by a great philosopher, it should be essential reading (...) for anybody interested in English political thought or legal theory. Although it was written when Hobbes was at least eighty, it is a lively piece of work that goes beyond a recapitulation of earlier Hobbesian doctrines, not least in applying his central ideas to the details of the English constitution. This edition supplies the extensive annotation on matters of legal and historical detail that is required by non-specialist readers; it also assists students by offering cross-references to other treatises. Cromartie's introduction is an authoritative account of seventeenth-century thinking about the common law and of Hobbes's shifting attitudes towards it. It has often been suspected that the book was motivated by fear of being burned for heresy. Cromartie disentangles the complex evidence that documents this fear's development, and shows why the philosopher's acute anxieties eventually led him to write a legal treatise. In clarifying these questions, the edition casts fresh light upon his attitude to law and sovereignty. The second piece takes the form of a question put to Hobbes about the right of succession under hereditary monarchies, together with Hobbes's response. The question is in the handwriting of the fourth Earl of Devonshire, the son of the third Earl, whom Hobbes had tutored in the 1630s. He asks Hobbes whether an heir can be excluded if he is incapable of protecting his prospective subjects. The question of 'exclusion' became the most burning issue in English politics in the course of 1679, when a bill to exclude the future James II was introduced into the House of Commons. Hobbes answers with a robust defence of hereditary right, in the course of which he also makes some important general observations about the concept of a right. The manuscript is also of special interest as it constitutes Hobbes's last word on politics. It was almost certainly written in the summer of 1679, less than six months before Hobbes's death. (shrink)

This highly acclaimed volume brings together some of the world's foremost historians of ideas to consider Machiavelli's political thought in the larger context of the European republican tradition, and the image of Machiavelli held by other republicans. An international team of scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (notably law, philosophy, history and the history of political thought) explore both the immediate Florentine context in which Machiavelli wrote, and the republican legacy to which he contributed.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface to the Paperback Edition -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Research Design and Methodology: The Two Studies -- Chapter 3: Is There a Problem? Current Patterns of Ethical Standards and Practices -- Chapter 4: The Dilemma of Science and Therapy: The Effects of Competitionin the Science Community -- Chapter 5: The Dilemma of Science and Therapy: The Effects of Competitionin the Local Institution -- (...) Chapter 6: Social Control: Some Patterns and Consequences of Socialization -- Chapter 7: Social Control: Some Patterns and Consequences of CollaborationGroups and Informal Interaction Structures -- Chapter 8: Six Case Studies -- Chapter 9: Social Control: The Structures, Processes, and Efficacy of PeerGroup Review -- Chapter 10: Social Control: Have Medical Schools Been Ethical Leaders? -- Chapter 11: The Social Responsibilities of a Powerful Profession: Some Suggestionsfor Policy Change and Reform -- Appendix I. National Survey Questionnaire -- Appendix II. Intensive Two-Institution Interview Schedule -- Index. (shrink)

A critical edition of two great works by Thomas Hobbes. The Dialogue of the Common Laws is his classic critique of common law, essential reading for anyone interested in English political thought or legal theory. It is accompanied by Hobbes's last word on politics, a fragment in which he mounts a robust defence of hereditary right.

This article reports on a conversation convened by Quentin Skinner at the invitation of the Editors of The Journal of Political Philosophy and held in Cambridge on 13 February 2001.

This paper examines the methodological propositions of Quentin Skinner, whose influence on intellectual history, including the history and philosophy of science (HPS), cannot be disregarded. It is well known that Skinner’s method is based on John L. Austin’s theory of speech acts. Nonetheless, the very idea of applying ordinary language philosophy to the subject matter of history rests on other assumptions that form Skinner’s philosophy of historiography. The paper focuses on reconstructing this philosophy of historiography and (...) especially on R. G. Collingwood as a primary source of inspiration. This famous British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist authored many inspirational texts concerning the historical craft. The complex and sometimes contradictory structure of his posthumously published texts requires careful interpretation, and many philosophers see Collingwood as an obscure thinker. The paper argues that even though Skinner openly denounces Collingwood’s central concept of re-enactment, his philosophy of historiography is deeply influenced by a specific understanding of Collingwood’s legacy. (shrink)

The number of transnational corporations - including parent companies and subsidiaries - has exploded over the last forty years, which has led to a correlating rise of corporate violations of international human rights and environmental laws, either directly or in conjunction with government security forces, local police, state-run businesses, or other businesses. In this work, Gwynne Skinner details the harms of business-related human rights violations on local communities and describes the barriers, both functional and institutional, that victims face in (...) seeking remedies. She concludes by offering solutions to these barriers, with a focus on measures designed to improve judicial remedies, which are the heart of international human rights law but often fail to deliver justice to victims. This work should be read by anyone concerned with the role of corporations in our increasingly globalized society. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive exposition of the work of one of the most important intellectual historians and political theorists writing today.

The classical theory of government and citizenship was conceived in terms of virtue and civic equality. Against this, Hobbes derived his individualistic and liberal view of citizenship from the model of the social contract, an idea that still prevails in contemporary theories of justice as fairness. Recent contractarian thought has been concerned to oppose the view that assigns priority to the welfare of groups over the rights and liberties of citizens. The author wants to question, however, whether this thought is (...) justified in its assumption that the best way to secure liberty is to insist that the interference of social duties should be minimised and that this is the fundamental purpose of law. The classical republican tradition, centred upon the ideal of promoting civic virtue, commits citizens to engage themselves in the life of the State. The understanding of citizenship in active and participative terms presupposes public service. Freedom has to be produced, and not merely secured, by law, i.e. by giving shape to the general will of the community, acting as one body. Man, however, being irrational in civic laziness and selfish ambition, one of the goals of the law must be to prevent corruption by coercing the citizen into the performance of those civic duties upon which liberty depends. (shrink)

Newman was keenly aware of the challenge posed to Christians by the development of historical biblical criticism in the nineteenth century. In several of his Anglican writings—most notably in no. 85 of Tracts for the Times, in unpublished notes and drafts dating from 1861–1863, and in two essays published in 1884—he attempted to resolve questions regarding the nature of biblical “inspiration,” the respective roles of the divine and human “authors,” and the nature of biblical “truth.” This article, originally a paper (...) given at the 2012 conference of the Association française des Amis de Newman on Newman et la Bible, was first published in French in Études Newmaniennes no. 29 (2013). (shrink)

Retraction note: Maciá-Barber, C. (2022). Archaeology, Gender, and Journalism. HUMAN REVIEW. International Humanities / Revista Internacional De Humanidades, 12(6), 2–13. https://doi.org/10.37467/revhuman.v11.4320 The Editorial Office of Eurasia Academic Publishing Group has retracted this article. An investigation carried out by our Research Integrity Department has found a group of articles, among which this one is found, that are not within the thematic scope of the journal. We believe that the editorial process was manipulated and, furthermore, acceptance decisions were made under (...) possibly inappropriate peer review. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner’s dedication to investigating Hobbes’s concept of liberty in a number of essays and books has born some unusual fruit. Not only do we see the enormous problems that Hobbes set himself by proceeding as he did, but Skinner’s careful analysis allows us to chart Hobbes’ ingenuity as he tried to steer a path between the Charybdis of determinism and the Scylla of voluntarism – not very successfully, as we shall see. The upshot is a theory (...) of individual freedom and civil liberty to challenge the classical republican traditionThis Article does not have an abstract. (shrink)

The wellbeing that can accrue to individuals through their participation in collective endeavours, here called their participatory wellbeing, is a fundamental component of human wellbeing more broadly. It is also difficult to conceptualize, let alone quantify, and has been neglected in philosophy, apparently falling into a gap between the literature on collective agency and the literature on wellbeing. As a contribution towards filling in that gap, this chapter uses the notion of a role within a group—encompassing anything from familial and (...) professional roles to being a friend or a citizen—to solve a puzzle about participatory wellbeing. The puzzle, crudely stated, is that while wellbeing is an essentially individualistic notion, participation is essentially social. By conceiving of participation as a matter of occupying and performing a role, we can recognize and model the complexity (i.e. the multifaceted nature) of participatory wellbeing. (shrink)

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