Ideas in Context: Conversation with Quentin Skinner

Interview conducted by Hansong Li

Chicago Journal of History (CJH): Thank you for joining

us in this conversation. Let’s begin with a question about
the discipline itself. How would you distinguish the work
of an intellectual historian from that of philosophers, po-
litical theorists, and historians of ideas, among others, who
employ different methodologies to study the same texts?

Quentin Skinner (QS): I would say that the intellectual his-

torian is someone who studies bodies of texts and aspires to
understand them so far as possible in their own terms. Such an
historian will consequently be recognizable as someone who
respects certain technical constraints: not using translations,
avoiding the modernization of texts, always taking care to use
the best editions, and so forth. The distinctive task of such
historians seems to me that of trying to situate the texts they
study within whatever contexts help to explain what gave rise
to the texts in question, and to identify what specific problems
they were designed to solve. I should add that in speaking of
texts I am using the term in a familiar but extended sense that
encompasses not merely philosophical treatises and works of
literature, but also films, paintings, buildings and other such
artifacts, all of which for me count as texts.

You ask how I would distinguish this approach from that of

philosophers and political theorists who often study the same
texts. If we are speaking of historians of philosophy, I would say
that nowadays many of them respect the same constraints and
undertake similar tasks. But if we are speaking of social and po-
litical theorists, then some by contrast focus almost exclusively
on the internal logic of texts and how their specific concepts
and arguments should be understood. This kind of analysis can
of course be highly illuminating, although the examining of
such arguments without reference to the circumstances that
Photo by Hansong Li gave rise to them sometimes looks to me strangely disembod-
ied. There is also a danger of what my colleague Lea Ypi likes
Quentin Skinner is an intellectual historian known for his pio- to describe as the sanitizing of texts. Suppose, for example,
neering work on early-modern European political thought. He you offer a purely analytical account of John Locke’s theory of
was educated at Bedford School and Gonville and Caius College, property and his views about the labor theory of value. Isolat-
Cambridge. Author of such works as The Foundations of Modern ing the contents of his discussion in this way, you can hardly
Political Thought (1978) and Visions of Politics (2002) he served as fail to occlude the extent to which his analysis was at the same
the Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, time connected not merely with the denial of property rights to
and currently as the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humani- women but with slavery and imperialism. Such an approach, to
ties and Co-director of The Centre for the Study of the History of repeat, inevitably sanitizes the text.
Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London. Professor
Skinner has traveled worldwide to share his philosophical insights. You also ask about historians of ideas, although I am not sure
Recently, he delivered a lecture at the University of Chicago’s that many scholars would nowadays want to describe them-
Neubauer Collegium, entitled “How Should We Think about selves in those terms. There have been many histories of ideas,
Freedom?” And on September 9th 2016, Professor Skinner dis- some of them celebrated in their time: for example, histories of
cussed his intellectual journey and political visions with the the idea of progress, the great chain of being, the social con-
Chicago Journal of History at his house in London. tract, the perfectibility of man and so on. But in my mind this

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approach raises many doubts. What do we mean by writing the the canon itself. Some major historians have worked in this
history of an idea? Do we mean the history of the verbal expres- idiom, such as my friends John Dunn and John Pocock,5 and
sions of a concept, or of the concept itself? If we simply link a younger generation of scholars is now carrying this approach
together those who have invoked some particular idea, how along new paths.
do we convey a sense of its role and place—marginal or cen-
tral, agreed or contested—in different historical periods? Are CJH: In retrospect, what have you judged to be the stron-
we happy with the devaluation of agency involved in this ap- gest criticisms of your method in the past few decades, and
proach? Is there really a history of ideas to be written at all, as how have you responded to them?
opposed to a history of the changing ways in which ideas have
been debated and put to use? QS: One of the recurrent criticisms to which I was originally
subjected—for example by Howard Warrender—was that my
CJH: In what ways do you think the field of intellectual questioning of the ‘perennial wisdom’ supposedly embodied in
history has changed since you first published “Meaning and our philosophical traditions, and my insistence on the need
Understanding in the History of Ideas” in 1969?1 for a contextual approach even to the most canonical works,
rendered the study of the history of social and political ideas
QS: The discipline has been transformed in so many ways that pointless.6 This criticism always seemed to me to embody a
it is impossible to survey them briefly. But I think the most depressingly philistine view of the value of historical under-
important change is that intellectual history is much more standing. The suggestion appears to be that, unless the past
widely studied than it was when I started out in the 1960s. can be used as a mirror in which we can see our own values
One obvious reflection of this increasing popularity has been and attitudes reflected, then it cannot be of any interest to
the emergence of new journals in the field: History of European us. But I don’t believe that many people think in these terms
Ideas in the 1970s, History of Political Thought in the 1980s, nowadays; our culture seems to have become much more his-
The Intellectual History Review in the 1990s, Modern Intellectual torically-minded. I should add that there have been two main
History about a decade ago, and several other similar initiatives. philosophical criticisms – if I may speak so grandly – that have
With this expansion, a number of sub-disciplines have risen to repeatedly been levelled at my work. One is that I try to defend
greater prominence. Perhaps the most important has been the an indefensible equation between intended meanings and the
history of science, which has also been the site of some of the meanings of texts. The other is that my approach commits me
most sophisticated methodological debates ever since Thomas to a self-defeating form of conceptual relativism. Neither of
Kuhn’s pathfinding work of the early 1960s.2 We have also these judgments seems to me warranted, but both need to be
seen the development of what might be called a democratized properly addressed—so far as I am competent to do so. I don’t
form of intellectual history, in which the focus of attention is want to give an excessively long answer to your question at this
not on professional thinkers but on the outlook of ordinary stage, but I very much hope we can come back to these objec-
people. Carlo Ginzburg, Natalie Davis and Keith Thomas have tions at a later point in our conversation.
all written masterpieces in this genre.3 Meanwhile, everyone
has been influenced by feminist intellectual historians, who CJH: What in your formative years first sparked your inter-
have raised new questions as well as expanding the range of est in early modern intellectual history, and for what rea-
texts routinely read by students. A more recent development son did you focus on Anglophone political theorists such
is that, like so much historical scholarship, intellectual history as Thomas More and Thomas Hobbes, and later the Italian
has increasingly become global in its reach. Among new ap- Renaissance—notably Machiavelli?
proaches to canonical texts, I need to mention the important
work done by Reinhart Koselleck and his associates in tracing QS: My special interest in early-modern history was initially
the genealogies of key concepts in western thought.4 I should sparked at school. We were taught that there were two forma-
also like to speak up for what has come to be called the Cam- tive periods in British history, the sixteenth-century Reforma-
bridge School approach, with which I have been associated. tion and the seventeenth-century constitutional revolution,
We have been attempting to situate classic texts within the cir- and we studied both in considerable depth. This involved some
cumstances of their production, and in doing so to question examination of the intellectual background to politics, which
is how I first came to read Thomas More’s Utopia as well as
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan and John Locke’s Two Treatises of
1 Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of
Ideas”. History and Theory, Vol. 8 (1969)
2 Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922 – 1996), American physicist, historian
and philosopher of science, author of the 1962 book, The Structure of 5 John Montfort Dunn (1940—), political theorist; John Pocock
Scientific Revolutions. (1924—), historian of political thought
3 Carlo Ginzburg, (1939—), Italian historian; Natalie Zemon Davis, 6 Howard Warrender, (1922-1985) Professor of Political Theory and
(1928—) Canadian and American historian; Sir Keith Vivian Institutions at the University of Sheffield. He authored “Political
Thomas (1933—), British historian. Theory and Historiograpy: A Reply to Professor Skinner of Hobbes” in
4 Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006), German historian The Historical Journal Vol. 22. No. 4 (Dec. 1979) pp. 931-940

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Government. You ask how my interests then broadened in the More recently, however, I have become more interested in what
direction of the Italian Renaissance. This development initially I might call substantive interventions. I have come to feel that
arose out of my teaching obligations at Cambridge. I was ap- the range of concepts we currently deploy in talking about po-
pointed to a University Lectureship in 1965, and asked to give litical issues has become unduly limited. Sometimes it looks
a course on early-modern political theory, which in those days as if the vocabulary of rights is being asked to do all the work.
meant starting with Machiavelli. I had of course read him as an So, I have become interested in the project of trying to enrich
undergraduate, but as soon as I began to study him in depth I our vocabulary by reference to the past. For example, we ha-
found myself instantly hooked. This didn’t by any means hap- bitually speak about freedom as if it means nothing more than
pen to me with some of the other theorists on whom I was absence of constraint. I attempt to show in my book, Liberty
asked to lecture, and I cannot satisfactorily explain what it was Before Liberalism, that in earlier times the concept was far more
about Machiavelli that I found so riveting. But perhaps there broadly understood as the name of a status, the status of in-
is no great puzzle here, because finding Machiavelli riveting is dependent persons by contrast with slaves.9 To take another
not an uncommon experience. example, when we speak about the state, we usually treat the
term as a synonym for government. I have tried in a num-
CJH: That brings us to our next question, which attempts ber of recent essays to comment on the significance of the fact
to situate your work in historical polemics. In Visions of that, when the concept of the state first entered our political
Politics you speak of the “performativity of texts and the discourse, it was used to denote a particular kind of moral per-
need to treat them intertextually,” and suggest that the per- son distinct from both rulers and ruled. These are not merely
formativity of texts can “validly be treated as a property of historical excavations on my part; I want to ask how these and
the texts in themselves.” Is there also performativity in your other rival conceptualizations came to be expunged from our
intellectual work? In what way is your scholarship not only political vocabulary, and to consider whether the outcome has
words but also deeds, to invoke your speech-act theory, and involved gain or loss.
what kind of “intervention” have you intended to project
into today’s ideological and intellectual polemics?7 In other CJH: In “Meaning and Understanding in the History of
words, what do you do, in thinking and writing? Ideas,” you say that the study of classical texts should re-
veal “not the sameness, but the essential variety of viable
QS: One kind of intervention I’ve tried to make is method- moral assumptions and political commitments,” and in
ological. If I were to express it in speech-act terms, as you ask Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes, you say
me to do, I would say that in my early essays I was trying to that “the study of the past need not be any the less instruc-
raise doubts and to issue warnings about some prevailing ways tive when it uncovers contrasts rather than continuities
of studying intellectual history, especially the history of politi- with the present.”10 In general, do you think that we could
cal thought, and even to satirize and ridicule them. By the way, learn about human conventions and intentions from histo-
you refer to speech-act theory as if it were my own intellectual ry without taking straightforward lessons on the so-called
property, but my thinking about this aspect of the philosophy timeless truths? On the other hand, how should we read
of language has at all times been overwhelmingly indebted to authors such as Thucydides and Machiavelli who believed
Wittgenstein’s insight that words are also deeds, and to Austin’s they were indeed presenting timeless truths as gifts to hu-
theory of performative utterances, especially as developed by manity for all times?
Strawson and Searle.8

9 Skinner, Quentin. Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: 1998.

10 Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of
7 Skinner, Quentin. Visions of Politics, general preface; “Interpretation Ideas” P. 52;
and understanding of speech acts”, in Regarding Method, P. 118; Skinner, Skinner, Quentin, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. P. 15,
Quentin. Hobbes and Republican Liberty. “I approach Hobbes’ political introduction.
theory not simply as a general system of ideas but also as a polemical Skinner, Quentin. Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. “I am
intervention in the ideological conflicts of his time”; Hobbes thinks it unrepentant in believing that the attempt to gain acquaintance with
is absurd to talk about ‘unfreedom’ without pointing at specific ways in Hobbes’ intellectual world is an undertaking of far greater interest than
which an impediment is imposed; Wittgenstein: words are also deeds the attempt to use his texts as a mirror to reflect back at ourselves our
(1958, 546, p. 146); Skinner: “…not merely what Hobbes is saying but current assumptions and prejudices. One reason is simply that…Hobbes’
also what he is doing in propounding his arguments…my governing world is so rich and strange that, if we turn to it merely for answers to
assumption is that even the most abstract works of political theory our own questions, we shall needlessly impoverish our own intellectual
are never above the battle; they are always part of the battle…seething lives. A further reason is that, if we allow ourselves to approach the past
polemics underlying the deceptively smooth surface of his argument.” with a less importunate sense of ‘relevance’, we may find our studies
preface, xvi. taking on a relevance of a different and more authentic kind. We may
8 Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (1919-2006), English philosopher; John find, in particular, that the acquisition of an historical perspective helps
Searle (1932—), American philosopher; John Langshaw “J. L.” Austin us to stand back from some of our current assumptions and habits of
(1911-1960), English philosopher. thought, and perhaps even to reconsider them. P. 15, introduction.

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 have criticized the attempt to solve “perennial problems” by
QS: As I said in answer to your opening question, my basic transcending the contexts of ideas as “not merely a meth-
approach consists of trying to recover the concepts used by the odological fallacy, but something like a moral error” in
writers I study, and then trying to grasp how they put those the 1960s; on the other hand, you agree that there are “ap-
concepts to work. If you adopt that approach, you will find parently perennial questions,” perhaps in another sense.11
that the concepts invoked by our forebears, and the meanings Why do we ask the same questions, even in completely dif-
they attached to the terms expressing those concepts, some- ferent time periods and circumstances? And in this case,
times look largely familiar to us. There have been major conti- which one should concern a historian first and foremost,
nuities, in other words, in our ways of thinking about political the same questions or different contexts? And do different
values and practices. But I am more interested in the fact that, forms of life, as Wittgenstein calls them, require a relativist
as L. P. Hartley remarked in a much-quoted epigram, the past approach to the study of human civilizations?
is a foreign country. The discontinuities, that is, often strike me
as more instructive than the similarities. An obvious illustra- QS: That is a very rich question, and indeed there seems to
tion is provided by the history of the concept of a right. It is be three different issues here. So, I hope you will not mind if
doubtful whether, in classical antiquity, there was any ‘subjec- I try to separate them out. First of all, you ask about the idea
tive’ understanding of rights by contrast with the idea of what of historical context. I would say that the context is whatever
is right. But at some later stage there emerged a view of rights you need to reconstruct in order to understand some meaning-
as possessions, and later still as moral claims against others. ful item in that context. This is circular, of course, but I am
Wouldn’t it be interesting to reflect on what it might be like to speaking of a hermeneutic circle. You need to think of texts
think about justice in the absence of any such theory of subjec- as answers to questions, and the context as the source of the
tive rights? Given that, in contemporary political theory, the questions. I think of social and political life itself as setting
discourse of rights sometimes seems—as I’ve already said—to the problems for social and political theorists. So, I’m much
be doing too much work, might this perhaps be the most in- concerned with what one might call social contexts. But I also
structive question of all? think of texts as always concerned with other texts. So, I tend
to be even more concerned with linguistic contexts, and indeed
I am even more interested in the possibility that, while our some critics, like Mark Bevir, have described my approach as
forebears may have shared much of our political vocabulary, ‘linguistic contextualism’.12 I am saying, however, that both
they may sometimes have expressed unfamiliar concepts in these contexts always need to be reconstructed.
familiar terms. Answering your previous question, I gave the
example of individual liberty. We tend to think of liberty as a You also ask why we keep asking the same questions. But do
predicate of actions, arguing that people are free unless they are we? Surely philosophy is a subject in which the questions as
constrained in the exercise of their powers. But almost nobody well as the answers continually change. But insofar as we do,
thought in those terms before the age of the Enlightenment. this is surely owing to the fact that—as I’ve already intimat-
As I’ve said, they thought of liberty as the name of a status, ed—western moral and political life has exhibited some aston-
that of independent persons by contrast with slaves. What if ishing continuities. You can go to an Italian city and visit the
we were to try to see things from that sharply different angle? town hall, which in some instances will have been built as early
We would be led to ask different questions about freedom and as the thirteenth century but is still serving the same purpose.
forms of government, and about the relations between freedom Sometimes the conceptual continuities are no less striking. We
and social justice. We might even come to feel – as I have done still ask, as Aristotle did, about the best constitution of the pol-
myself – that this way of thinking about the concept is more ity; about the grounds and limits of political obedience; and
fruitful and potentially useful than our current ways of talk. about other connected questions that, even if not perennial,
have been meditated for a very long time.
You are right to say that some political writers have sought to
insist that their work should instead be seen, in Thucydides’ The third issue you raise is whether the different forms of life
phrase, as a possession for all time. There is a sense in which we study as historians require us to be conceptual relativists.
Thucydides’ ambitions for his history have been realized, for This is what used to be called the sixty-four-thousand-dollar
many people still read Thucydides. But this is not to say that question, and obviously, it plunges us into deep philosophical
his modern readers necessarily endorse anything he says about waters. But perhaps I can try to make two contrasting points.
politics and war. My whole point is to insist that, when we One is that there is a sense in which historians do, I think,
say that Thucydides remains worth reading, this need not be need to be relativists. They need, that is, to relativize the notion
because his work contains any timeless truths.

CJH: This is another methodological question on a theme 11 Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of
central to your research. What is a historical context, and Ideas”. P. 52.
what are the particular things a historian studies in order to 12 Bevir, Mark. “The Errors of Linguistic Contextualism” in History and
grasp a context to the fullest extent? On the one hand, you Theory, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Oct., 1992), pp. 276-298

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of rationality. Here I dissent from the approach recommended tional for the Churchmen to deny the truth of the heliocentric
by a number of philosophers of history and social science—I hypothesis, even if such a denial would not be rational for us.
am thinking of Martin Hollis, Steven Lukes and Philip Pettit But we don’t want to end up by saying that the heliocentric
in some of his earlier work.13 They invite us to begin by ask- hypothesis was false for the Churchmen although it is true for
ing whether the beliefs we investigate as historians are true or us. It has never been true that the sun goes around the earth,
false. The underlying suggestion is that true beliefs require to although it may have been rational for the Churchmen to be-
be explained in a different way from false beliefs. There is held lieve it.
to be no special puzzle about why people hold true beliefs. But
false beliefs are said to point to failures of reasoning, so that the CJH: And in light of both this method of contextualization
explanatory task becomes that of enquiring into the various and your focus on intertextuality, you are certainly opposed
forms of social or psychological pressure that may prevent peo- to treating thinkers in intellectual isolation. For example,
ple from recognizing the falsity of their beliefs. This approach you have expressed skepticism toward the canonization of
seems to me nothing less than fatal to good historical practice. classical texts, and have refused to ignore the seemingly
The reason is that it involves equating the holding of rational minor thinkers. But with regard to those reputed by many
beliefs with the holding of beliefs that the historian judges to to have been “beyond their time”—that is, in your words,
be true. This leaves no space for the possibility that there could inventors of new “semantics” and “normative vocabular-
have been good and rational grounds, in earlier historical pe- ies,” those who created paradigms that are later followed by
riods, for holding a number of beliefs to be true, even though others—what is their special relationship with their histori-
there would be no grounds for holding the same beliefs to be cal contexts? Are they relatively unbound by them? Do you
true in our own society. think there have been “masterminds” that have transcend-
ed or at least led their time, thus permanently influencing
The contrasting point I want to make is that it is easy to carry and even altering the direction of intellectual history, or
this relativist thought too far. I do not think, that is, that his- do you think their “extraordinary” thoughts were after all
torians should simply adopt a coherence theory of truth, as generated out of ordinary debates, and are therefore not
Thomas Kuhn sometimes appears to do, and likewise Richard extraordinary?15
Rorty in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.14 Rorty argues
that, if we ask whether it was or was not rational for someone QS: I’m inclined to say that there may be a non-sequitur some-
to hold a certain belief in a society very different from ours, where hidden in this question, because my prejudice is to sup-
we are simply importing, in a kind of imperialist manner, a pose that even the most startling intellectual discoveries must
purportedly neutral and trans-temporal conception of rational- of course have an explanatory context. The discovery will stem
ity to which we cannot possibly have access. Rorty wants to from the fact that something has been overlooked, or some
say, for example, in the case of the debate between Galileo and implication of what is already known hasn’t been noticed, or
the Catholic Church about the heliocentric hypothesis, that some explanatory hypothesis simply hasn’t been entertained.
the point of view adopted by Galileo’s opponents was no less For example, Copernicus’s heliocentrism picked up an ancient
‘objective’ than that of Galileo himself. But it seems to me im- hypothesis and gave new evidence for it.16 Likewise, Einstein’s
portant that the Churchmen’s contention that the sun travels special theory of relativity supplied a new answer to an existing
round the earth was false, and thus that it is correspondingly puzzle, the puzzle raised by the Michelson-Morley experiment.
important to ask whether it was rational for them to believe it The experiment had been designed to establish how the direc-
to be true. Perhaps it was, but perhaps it wasn’t, and part of the
historical task is to try to find out the answer. But this is not
to impose an alien or anachronistic conception of rationality
15 Skinner, Quentin. Hobbes and Republican Liberty. “Most recent studies
on the past. It is merely to ask whether the Churchmen were have focused exclusively on Hobbes’ texts, without asking what might have
applying the criteria for the formation and criticism of beliefs prompted him to formulate and reformulate his distinctive arguments, and
current in their own society, or whether they were in some way thus without attempting to identify the nature of the disputes in which he
ignoring or defying them. was taking part. By contrast I have tried to show how Hobbes’ successive
attempts to grapple with the question of human liberty were deeply affected
I am proposing, in short, that historians need to be relativists by the claims put forward by the radical and parliamentarian writers in the
with respect to the idea of rationality, but not with respect to period of the civil wars, and by Hobbes’ sense of the urgent need to counter
the idea of truth. We want to find out whether it may have ra- them in the name of peace”. Preface xiv.
16 3rd century BC, Aristarchus of Samos; Archimedes, Ψαμμίτης:
Ἀρίσταρχος δὲ ὁ Σάμιος ὑποθέσιών τινῶν ἐξέδωκεν γραφάς…
Ὑποτίθεται γὰρ τὰ μὲν ἀπλανέα τῶν ἄστρων καὶ τὸν ἅλιον
13 James Martin Hollis (14 March 1938 – 27 February 1998) was an μένειν ἀκίνητον, τὰν δὲ γᾶν περιφέρεσθαι περὶ τὸν ἅλιον κατὰ
English rationalist philosopher; Steven Michael Lukes FBA (born 1941) κύκλου περιφέρειαν, ὅς ἐστιν ἐν μέσῳ τῷ δρόμῳ κείμενος,
is a political and social theorist; Philip Noel Pettit (born 1945) is an τὰν δὲ τῶν ἀπλανέων ἄστρων σφαῖραν περὶ τὸ αὐτὸ κέντρον
Irish philosopher and political theorist. τῷ ἁλίῳ κειμέναν τῷ μεγέθει τηλικαύταν εἶμεν… microform,
14 Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: 1979. Oxonii: E theatro Sheldoniano, 1676.

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tion of light affects its speed, but it turned out to have no effect the intentions that went into the act of uttering it.
at all. There had to be an explanation, and Einstein supplied
it. This is not in the least to say, however, that because Galileo’s To put the same point another way, I think that recent theories
and Einstein’s thinking arose out of a context of existing discus- of interpretation—including Derrida’s work and that of other
sion and debate their discoveries were any the less remarkable. deconstructionist critics—have been too much preoccupied
The effect in both cases was nothing less than the creation of with warning us not to look for intended meanings. I largely
what Kuhn would call a paradigm shift, and indeed these were agree, as I’ve intimated, with Derrida’s skeptical observations
the two major paradigm shifts that Kuhn liked to single out. about the possibility of recovering intentions in the face of
polysemy and ambiguity. But it’s a mistake to infer from this
CJH: When intellectual historians talk about the meaning that the study of intentionality must either be an irrelevance
of a text, is it important to distinguish between the intend- or a lost cause. I say this because, in addition to the purported
ed meaning of the author and the meaning that is received meanings of texts, we also need to ask what any given writer
by his contemporaries? How do you use historical and tex- may have been doing in issuing a given utterance, and hence
tual sources to obtain insights on both? Usually, how much what they may have meant by it. But here we are dealing not
of your work is biographical—that is, to explore the intel- with meanings but with linguistic actions. And, as in the case
lectual development of the author in order to grasp what of any other type of action, we identify the specific nature of
he had in mind as he wrote a text—and how much of it is any speech-act by way of recovering the intentions embodied
political and social history—that is, to study the commu- in it.
nity, society, and regime in which the author wrote his work
in order to gain insight on what the author’s audience was It is true, however, that the ascription of intentions to speech-
trying to get from the text? acts is always a matter of inference. J. L. Austin makes the
relevant distinction very effectively in How to do things with
QS: The study of what you call the received meanings of texts words.18 If you place any speech-act within the context of lin-
obviously constitutes a branch of intellectual history in itself. guistic and social conventions that makes sense of it, then you
But I have always tried to avoid writing such histories of al- will have succeeded in recovering the force of the utterance.
leged influences. When you read a given text, you may often be You will be able to show, for example, that a particular utter-
inclined to infer the influence of some earlier texts. But in the ance had the force of a warning, say, rather than an order or a
absence of independent documentary evidence, it will always greeting or a prediction and so on. But it is another and further
be impossible to distinguish such alleged influences from ran- thing to claim that the person who spoke with the force of a
dom resemblances, or resemblances arising from a wider intel- warning was performing the intended act of warning someone.
lectual background. Such so-called reception studies have be-
come more fashionable of late, but I continue to be somewhat My response to this objection is that it will often be legitimate
skeptical about their historical worth. to insist on the inference. We can sometimes hope to show
that, when someone spoke with a certain force, this was be-
Let me turn to your question about whether it is important to cause they intended what they said to carry that specific force.
distinguish the meaning of a text from the intended meaning This is what I tried to argue, for example, in my book Hobbes
of its author. I have been taken by a number of my critics to and Republican Liberty.19 I showed that Hobbes’s insistence on
equate the two. But it seems to me that we need to disentangle physical constraint as the antonym of freedom had the force
a confusion here. On the one hand, if by the meaning of a text of criticizing and repudiating the well-established claim that
you have in mind the meaning of the words and sentences con- the antonym of freedom is dependence on the will of others. I
tained in it, then I don’t make any equation with the intended inferred that Hobbes’s underlying intention was to undermine
meaning at all. I think there will always be what Paul Ricœur and set aside the widely-held account. Some critics complained
nicely called surplus meaning in texts.17 There will always be that we can never hope to get into the mind of a dead writer (or
an intended meaning, but in complex texts there will always be even a living one) in this fashion, if only because such inten-
far more, if only because our words often have multiple or con- tions are purely mental events. But I am claiming that they are
tested meanings, so that often we cannot hope to infer authori- not purely mental events. They are entirely in the public arena,
al intent from usage. But on the other hand, if by the meaning and are susceptible of being recovered simply by intertextual
of a text you have in mind how the text was meant to be taken, comparisons and the inferences that can be drawn from them.
that is, what its author may have meant by it, then I do indeed
make an equation between meaning and intentionality. This You also ask about biography and social history. As I have al-
is because I take it that, when we ask what a writer may have
meant by a given utterance, this is equivalent to asking about
18 Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words, Harvard University Press
(Cambridge: 1962), the William James Lectures Series (Book 1), P. 72,
17 Paul Ricœur (1913–2005), French philosopher. Interpretation Theory: 75, 135, 146, 150
Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (1976) 19 Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge: 2008.

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ready declared, my basic operating assumption is that in the some of the dislike of absolutism in early seventeenth-century
history of social, moral and political theory it is society that England stemmed from a sense on the part of the aristocracy
sets the questions, causing a certain and continually changing that their standing was being debased, that they were being
range of issues to appear problematic, and hence in need of debarred from the exercise of traditional privileges. But I don’t
philosophical attention. About the value of biography, I must feel that an inability to realize my political ambitions would
confess I am something of a skeptic, especially because it some- figure at all largely on my own list of reasons for thinking that
times seems that the huge popularity of biography in our time it would be terrible to live under a powerfully authoritarian
is chiefly a testament to the entrancing power of gossip. I am regime. I must admit, however, that this may simply because
not sure that we really know how to write biographies. It is a I have never had any political ambitions at all. I have chosen a
genre that carries us away from the realm of intentions and into way of life that gives me a lot of autonomy, but even so I find
the much murkier depths of motivation and character. Here it hard to live according to my principles as much as I should.
the problem is that we do not have agreed theories about the To adopt politics as a way of life, in which you are continually
springs of action. As a result, biographies inevitably contain a asked to compromise your principles and treat politics as the
lot of speculation, and are frequently condemned to operate art of the possible, would to me be unimaginable.
merely on the surface of things. I should add, however, that
there is one way in which biography seems to me a crucial CJH: To continue the conversation on contemporary forms
tool for intellectual historians to wield. We need to discover as of political life: since what scholars refer to as the fall of
much as we can about the education received by the writers we “medieval universalism” in the West—that is, the under-
are trying to understand. In the case of professional thinkers, standing of the cosmos as constructed in a fixed way accord-
it is surely obvious that a detailed awareness of their range of ing to the teachings of Christianity—has there emerged in
reading will be one of the best means of acquainting ourselves the “foundation of modern political thought” a modern
with the contents and limits of their mental world. universalism in the context of globalism? Are today’s poli-
ties moving towards relativist ends or a comopolis?
CJH: Hence in several of your works on Hobbes, you have
constantly referred to the books available to Hobbes in the QS: I am no prophet, and I like Hobbes’s remark that the best
Hardwick Library.20 prophets are merely the best guessers. But if I am allowed a
guess, then it would be that the prospects for a modern form
QS: Yes. That’s right. of universalism are set to recede rather than advance. It is true
that neo-liberal economists have for a long time been urging
CJH: This is a question on politics: you say in Hobbes and globalization on us, and that this has helped to give rise to
Republican Liberty that Hobbes denounced the soi-disant neo-liberal forms of the state that have actively encouraged this
freedom-seeking mindset as a type of aristocratic ressenti- ideological project. But it now looks as if these developments
ment—the elites wished to attain honors from the com- may be arrested and even reversed by populist protests that are
monwealth that the sovereign was not to hand out.21 Do already visible on a large scale. Politicians who oppose the free
you think that is characteristic of modern republican de- movement of capital and labor are gaining mass support in the
mocracy? Is one of the sources of discontent with authori- European Union as well as the United States from people who
tarian regimes the fact that they do not let us fully realize feel betrayed and marginalized by the neo-liberal state. The
our political ambitions?22 current trend seems to be towards a narrow nationalism rather
than anything like a burgeoning cosmpolis.
QS: I think it was certainly shrewd of Hobbes to observe that
CJH: Your works have challenged us to see in greater light
the different trends and traditions at work in early modern
political thought, such as the neo-Roman and Hobbesian
20 See, for example, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes
(Cambridge: 1996) and Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge:
views of liberty, or the humanist and scientific approaches
2008) to knowledge, etc. At a macroscopic level, do you identify
21 Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty. P. 81. ‘a sense of their want of a general tradition of the West emerging out of the Renais-
that power, and that honour and testimony thereof, which they think is sance and the Reformation, and is it still in place? What
due unto them’, Hobbes 1969a, 27. 3, p. 169 could be referred to as the western legacy, if there is one?
22 Skinner, Quentin. Foundation of Modern Political Thought Vo. I. Preface
xi-xii. “…And it is evident that, as long as historians of political theory QS: I agree that a particular self-image has developed in the
continue to think of their main task as to interpreting a canon of classic
west since the era of the Renaissance. We have been encour-
texts, it will remain difficult to establish any closer links between political
theory and political life. But if they were instead to think of themselves
aged to accept a self-congratulatory narrative about the end of
essentially as students of ideologies, it might become possible to religious warfare, the growth of toleration, the pushing back of
illustrate one crucial way in which the explanation of political behavior obscurantism by Enlightenment rationalism, the vast increases
depends upon the study of political ideas and principles, and cannot in wealth and welfare made possible by the scientific revolution
meaningfully be conducted without reference to them. and the triumph of capitalism, and so on. But surely very little

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of this narrative now remains in place. We have been forced the humanities and social sciences. How do you character-
to acknowledge that all these benefits came with enormous ize that change, and what is your opinion on Marxist histo-
costs, that the past century was perhaps the most barbarous in rians’ approach to the understanding of history?
the history of mankind, and that the human race is currently
threatening its capacity even to sustain its own continued ex- QS: I should begin by explaining why it was that, in my early
istence. years as a scholar, I devoted so much time to thinking about
Marxist approaches to history. The reason was that such ap-
CJH: What constitutes the other for the west? Is there a proaches were strongly in the ascendant at the time, especially in
non-western tradition, and how would an intellectual his- the work of Fernand Braudel and the Annales school in France,
torian be able to compare them? and in such prominent Anglophone historians as Christopher
Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, C. B. Macpherson, E. P. Thompson and
QS: Of course, there are many non-western traditions, but others.24 They tended to assume that the leading motors of his-
they do not necessarily constitute self-conscious alternatives torical change will always be fundamentally economic in char-
to western values, as opposed to merely offering different out- acter. When they had anything to say about political theory,
looks on life. As for how intellectual historians might compare they tended to argue that the principles by which political ac-
such traditions, I hope it won’t be a consequence of the current tors commonly claim to be motivated are usually rationaliza-
globalization of intellectual history that we start asking ques- tions of their socio-economic interests and general condition of
tions of this kind. We can of course hope with profit to com- life. This way of thinking clearly underpins C.B. Macpherson’s
pare specific features of strongly contrasting ways of life. But to book, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, which was
mount comparisons between entire traditions of thinking, to published just as I was beginning research in 1962.25 It was
say nothing of entire civilizations, would surely be beyond the said to follow that social and political principles can have no
powers of even the most learned historian, and I don’t see how independent explanatory role in accounting for the processes
it could responsibly be done. of social change. The study of intellectual history thus came to
seem of marginal significance. I remember that, when I arrived
CJH: Is that your point of view on Professor Toynbee’s A at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1974 (where I stayed for
Study of History? four years) I discovered that intellectual history was regularly
dismissed by Princeton historians like Lawrence Stone in pre-
QS: If I correctly remember, Arnold Toynbee revealed to the cisely these terms.26
world that there have been nineteen civilizations, to which
he added the offensive claim that Scandinavia is the site of an I came to feel that this approach embodies a misunderstanding
‘abortive’ civilization, and that in the Ottoman and some other of the complex role played by social and political argument in
cases the march of civilization was ‘arrested’. One absurdity lies relation to social change. One obvious weakness arises from
in Toynbee’s governing assumption that the term ‘civilization’ the unargued assumption that people’s professed principles
refers unambiguously to a distinctive form of life, so that lists are generally little more than rationalizations of their interests.
of civilizations can be uncontentiously compiled. But the main This contention appears in some cases to be obviously false.
absurdity is that he then proceeded to argue that his nineteen Some people undoubtedly act out of normative principles that
cases provide him with sufficient information to generate in- may be strongly at variance with their interests. But the main
ductive and hence predictive generalizations about what causes problem is that, even if we accept that professed principles are
civilizations to rise and fall. The whole project is statistically as mere rationalizations, what the Marxist approach fails to recog-
well as conceptually illiterate. nize is that they nevertheless help to construct, and not merely
to reflect, the lineaments of our social and economic world.
CJH: Let us then discuss another distinct method of doing We can see how this comes about as soon as we reflect on the
history. You have on many occasions referred to the influ- crucial consideration that normally we can only hope to suc-
ence of Marxism on history as a discipline.23 Today we still ceed in doing what we can manage to legitimize. As a result,
talk about the Marxist branch of historicism, and refer to we are generally committed to acting only in such ways as are
the Marxist method as a historical one. Since the decline of compatible with the claim that we are motivated by our pro-
the Soviet Bloc at the end of the twentieth century, there has
been a contemporaneous decline in Marxism’s influence on
24 Fernand Braudel (1902-1985), French historian and a leader of
the Annales School; Christopher Hill (1912-2003) English Marxist
23 See, for example, Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding historian; Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012), English historian; Crawford
in the History of Ideas”. History and Theory, Vol. 8 (1969); interviews Brough Macpherson (1911-1987), Canadian political theorist;
such as: ‘Making history: the discipline in perspective’ Interview with Edward Palmer Thompson (1924-1993), British historian, writer, and
Quentin Skinner: http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/ campaigner.
interviews/Skinner_Quentin.html; “Quentin Skinner on Encountering 25 Macpherson, C.B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism.
the Past”: http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/redescriptions/Yearbook%202002/ Oxford: 1962.
Skinner_Interview_2002.pdf 26 Lawrence Stone (1919-1999), English historian

126
fessed principles. But this in turn means that such principles fluenced by what is going on in the discipline. Never select a
will always have to be invoked when it comes to explaining subject simply because it is currently fashionable. One reason is
our behavior. This is because our conduct will always in part be that historiographical fashions change all the time, and some-
limited and directed by the need to legitimize what we are do- times with bewildering suddenness. Far better to stick with
ing. The explanation of what we are doing will therefore need what you care about. But the most important reason is that the
to make reference to the principles in the light of which we early years of academic life are often lonely and difficult, and it
seek to legitimize our behavior. This was one of the claims I was is easy to become discouraged. If you are not committed at an
most of all concerned to underline in my book, The Founda- existential level to what you are doing, it is all too likely that
tions of Modern Political Thought.27 you will lack sufficient determination to continue in discourag-
ing times. The best way to endure and flourish is to concentrate
As I say, for me what is crucial about this argument is that on what matters most to you, not what currently captivates the
it yields the conclusion that social and political ideas are not profession. If your research is of sufficient interest, the profes-
merely the products but one of the producers of social reality. sion will soon be captivated.
But this is not necessarily because they serve as the motives of
our social behavior. Rather it is because the need to legitimate
our behavior requires that our actions must remain compatible
with the claim that they are motivated by some already recog-
nized normative principle, even in those instances (or rather,
especially in those instances) where this is not the case. The
need for legitimation, in short, is one of the constraints that
helps to shape our social world. This is how it comes about
that social and political ideas are among the constructors of
reality, and this is what Marxist theories of ideology seem to
me to miss.

CJH: Thank you, Professor. At the closing of our interview,

what would you offer as advice to undergraduate students,
aspiring historians, and students of the social sciences and
humanities interested in intellectual history? What should
we pay attention to in our reading and research?

QS: I am most grateful for the question. I’m only a student of

certain questions in moral and political philosophy, so maybe
it will be best if I limit myself to addressing people like yourself
who are interested in these specific issues. I think I only have
two pieces of advice. One stems from my answer to your open-
ing question. As I said, I think we should study the thinkers
of the past so far as possible in their own terms. But I should
now like to add that our motivation for studying them should,
I think, come from here and now. This is the point I was try-
ing to bring out when I spoke earlier about my book, Liberty
before liberalism. If we turn back to the pre-modern era, we find
that freedom was understood not as a predicate of actions, but
rather as the name of a status, that of an independent person
by contrast with the dependence characteristic of slaves. Once
we have succeeded in reconstructing this earlier and unfamiliar
story, I then want us to ask: what do we think of this alterna-
tive view? Might it be more useful to reconsider it rather than
continuing to set it aside?

My other piece of advice would be that, in selecting topics for

research, you should never allow yourself to be too much in-

27 Skinner, Quentin. Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Vol. 1, 2.

Cambridge: 1978.

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