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Desde que o neorrepublicanismo incluiu pensadores romanos e seus leitores modernos entre as fontes relevantes para o debate da Teoria Política, nota-se um interesse renovado pelas fontes romanas como elementos para enriquecer o debate contemporâneo da teoria política e também reavaliar a influência romana entre os modernos. Se de início seus autores enfatizavam a contribuição romana às tradições políticas modernas, defende-se que em anos recentes é possível verificar uma vasta produção voltada ao pensamento político dos romanos propriamente ditos, o que chamamos de “roman turn”. Este artigo tem por objetivo contextualizar e delinear as características metodológicas dessa “virada romana”. Para tal o texto está dividido em duas seções: a primeira analisa a historiografia do pensamento político propriamente dita, após o impulso do contextualismo da Escola de Cambridge; a segunda seção se dedica à história do direito e, mais especificamente, aos rumos recentes da historiografia institucional ou constitucional.

The methodology of the Cambridge School of Intellectual History, the key approach of which was dubbed “contextualism”, draws particular attention to the analysis of political idioms (languages) in a given socio-political context in order to answer the key question: “what was doing the author when he uttered his statement?”, and the answer to this question is used to indicate the possibilities for the study of internal Ukrainian discourse about the role of Ukraine on international arena using the example of the thesis about the imaginary “external governance” of our country. The concept of “intellectual history” itself has been applied to a wide range of research objects, and this fact provides opportunities for the study of discussions about Ukraine’s foreign policy vector and Ukraine’s relations with other states and international actors. It can be studied and as an intellectual history, reconstructed by analysing different language forms of political communities and statements about Ukrainian politics. It will also provide a better understanding of how concepts are used in different political contexts. Rhetorical and practical vocabulary shapes the views of political actors, expands or limits their possibilities of discursive actions. From the perspective of the Cambridge School, the study of political idioms allows us to find out how descriptive paradigms are changing and how political “accents” are placed. The example of the discourse about the role of Ukraine in international relations demonstrates that political actors who put forward the thesis of “external governance” regarding our state, question its sovereignty and international subjectivity, but with this rhetorical approach they also separate Ukraine from the West ( which, among other things, actively insists on how important it is to fight corruption) and they open opportunities for Ukraine’s rapprochement with Russia by reformatting this country’s position within the domestic political discourse – from an aggressor country its status changes to a potential partner, creditor or even financial donor. With the help of such a technique, there is also a shift in attention from forces that have a negative impact on the country’s domestic and foreign policy (oligarchs) to imaginary external pressure. Further research into the processes of production and understanding of statements in Ukrainian politics, including its place and role in the international arena, using the methodology of the Cambridge School of Intellectual History may also contribute to an improvement in interdisciplinary links between humanities and social sciences.

Republicanism has been one of the most influential political ideologies in modern Irish history; however, it remains conspicuously undertheorized by historians of the revolutionary period. While recent historiography has challenged representations of anti-Treaty Sinn Féin as a mindlessly destructive, anti-democratic force, the extent of ideological and rhetorical continuity linking the Provisional Government formed to assume control of the Free State on 7 January 1922 with the pre-Treaty republican tradition has not been understood. This article rejects the historiographical thesis that the Provisional Government abandoned republican ideas. Drawing from the Cambridge School's contextualist account of republicanism as a polysemic and contingent political language, it highlights the vigorously contested nature of republican thought in the intellectual firmament of revolutionary Sinn Féin and argues that the Free State leadership articulated its vision of politics and society through classical republican concepts of ‘civic virtue’ and the ‘common good’. It is suggested additionally that the colonial dynamics of the Anglo-Irish relationship helped to shape the vision of republican citizenship promoted by an administration possessed of a deep-seated determination to refute historical perceptions of the Irish people as congenitally ‘unfit’ for sovereignty.

Political theory offers a great variety of interpretive traditions and models. Today, pluralism is the paradigm. But are all approaches equally useful? What are their limits and possibilities? Can we practice them in isolation, or can we combine them? Modeling Interpretation and the Practice of Political Theory addresses these questions in a refreshing and hands- on manner. It not only models in the abstract, but also tests in practice eight basic schemes of interpretation with which any ambitious reader of political texts should already be familiar. Comprehensive and engaging, the book includes: A straightforward typology of interpretation in political theory. Chapters on the analytical Oxford model, biographical and oeuvre- based interpretation, Skinner’s Cambridge School, the esoteric model, reflexive hermeneutics, reception analysis and conceptual history. Original readings of Federalist Paper No. 10 , Plato’s Statesman, de Gouges’s The Three Urns, Rivera’s wall painting The History of Mexico and Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing; with further chapters on Machiavelli, Huang Zongxi and a Hittite loyalty oath. An Epilogue proposing pragmatist eclecticism as the way forward in interpretation. An inspiring, hands- on textbook suitable for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as experienced scholars of political theory, intellectual history and philosophy interested in learning more about types and models of interpretation, and the challenge of combining them in interpretive practice.

The article discusses the main theoretical provisions of the republican tradition in modern political theory. The main attention is focused on the works of F. Pettit and Q. Skinner. The position of the republican tradition in the political theory of the second half of the twentieth century is presented and the popularity of this tradition is argued today, the theoretical background of the actualization of republican theory is highlighted. It is shown how the republican theory was updated by the Cambridge School of the History of Political Thought. The features of the republican theory, which consists of two points, are considered: the openness of the republican project to alternative political theories (projects), representatives of the republican theory focus not on political theory, but on the history of political thought, that is, they do not develop their own theoretical project, but actualize in political theory and adapt the republican tradition to modern political practices. The origins of the republican tradition in the history of Western political thought are traced, special attention is focused on the development of republican ideas during the civil war in England (1642-1651) and the political/ideological confrontation between parliamentarians and royalists, focuses on the concepts of «political body» and «king-in-parliament». The criticism of the republican understanding of liberty by T. Hobbes and the consequences of this criticism for the political theory of the Modern era is traced. It is shown how the republican understanding of freedom is supplanted by the negative concept of freedom in modern times, why the liberal theory begins to be based on the negative concept of freedom. The republican understanding of freedom as non-domonation and the relationship between the concepts of positive liberty, negative liberty and liberty as non-domination are considered. Criticism of the republican tradition of a liberal interpretation of liberty is presented. The significance of the theoretical developments of the republican tradition for modern political theory is highlighted and the fundamental difference between the republican approach and the liberal one is shown.

The article is devoted to the evolution of the concept of liberty in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). The article shows the relation between the historical and ideological contexts of the appearance of the doctrine of the «Leviathan”. In particular, author connects the events of the English civil war, the ideological context of that time with the philosophy of Hobbes. A special emphasis is put on the evolution of argumentation of parliament proponents under the influence of Aristotelian philosophy perception, which created the ideological basis for the naturalistic and secular view on political life of the modernity, which came into being as a result of reconciliation of Aristotelian view on self-sufficient civil life with Augustinian concern about otherworldlylife. Thee author considers Hobbes’s philosophy through the lens of the methodology of Cambridge school of intellectual history, which discovered ideological disputes and argumentation of Hobbes’s contemporaries. Philosophy of freedom in this context becomes the sticking point between Hobbes’s understanding of liberty as absence of external obstacles for motion and his ideological adversaries, who were influenced by the neo-roman concept of liberty. The authorshows how the context was reflected in Hobbes’s doctrine of liberty, which was a response to the republican ideas of the Italian Renaissance, which brought a new theory of neo-roman liberty into the England of the XVII century, the central thesis of which was based on the idea that liberty within civil society is undermined by the simple presence of arbitrary will. The ideological dispute of Hobbes and his opponents formed basic elements of contemporary liberal vision of politics, the core of which directly relies on the doctrine of liberty which was initially formulated by Hobbes.

While the discipline of International Relations (IR) has a long tradition of celebrating ‘great thinkers’ and appropriating their ideas for contemporary theories, it has rarely accounted for how these authors came to be seen as ‘great’ in the first place. This is at least partly a corollary of the discipline’s long-standing aversion to methodological reflection in its engagement with intellectual history, and it echoes IR’s infamous tendency to misportray these great thinkers’ ideas more broadly. Drawing on existing attempts to import the methodological insights of historians of political thought into IR, this article puts forward a unified approach to the study of great thinkers in IR that combines the tenets of so-called ‘Cambridge School’ contextualism with those of what broadly falls under the label of reception theory. I make the case for the possibility of developing a coherent methodology through the combination of what is often seen as separate strands of intellectual history, and for the value of such an approach in IR. In doing so, the article ultimately offers a more rigorous methodology for engaging with the thought of great thinkers in IR, for analyzing the way a specific author’s ideas come to have an impact in practice, and for assessing the extent to which these ideas are distorted in the process.

Quentin Skinner has authored some dozen books and has edited seventeen. Further, he has mentored an astounding number of influential scholars. Known as a founder of the “Cambridge School” of politi...

The publication of Richard Tuck's 2012 Seeley Lectures constituted an important event in intellectual history and political theory. The Sleeping Sovereign reflects the depth of Tuck's nearly forty years of historical inquiry into the concepts of rights, reason of state, and freedom, beginning with Natural Rights Theories. The leading member of the “Cambridge school” of the study of the history of political thought in the United States, and the Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government at Harvard University, Tuck combines a contextualist, and often intertextualist, approach to the interpretation of canonical works with a theorist's attention to the value these works retain for contemporary political life.

The previous chapter highlighted how the category of influence, in the study of historical texts in political theory, has struggled to fully recover from significant attacks in the second half of the twentieth century. This chapter considers how, since the turn of this century, there has been a renewed interest in the notion of influence. Four thinkers in particular: Francis Oakley, Gary Browning, Markku Hyrkkanen, and Richard Shorten have strived to reassert the idea in mainstream political thought. The chapter argues that Shorten and Browning both allude to a notion of cumulative and intergenerational influence that views tradition as a progressive force. Crucially, the notion of cumulative influence allows interpreters of an idea or ideology to become inheritors of ideas, with the agency to make the case for their continued relevance. Influence can be viewed as being both positive and, again, intergenerational in nature.

There have been analogous debates on the meaning of influence within the history of political thought, and these too have been shaped by a parallel understanding of influence as Nietzschean and emanational in nature. Despite lasting acrimony from Quentin Skinner, at the height of Cambridge School revolution in the 1960s, recent scholarship in the history of political thought has reasserted the benefit to be had from examining claims of influence between thinkers. Prior to examining these claims in the penultimate chapter, it is necessary to outline the disputes within the history of political thought on the subject of influence. Methodological disputes surrounding the role of influence are nothing new, and stem from the rejection of superficial links made between distant, unrelated thinkers. The principal aim of this chapter is to examine Condren’s statement that his critique of the terms of qualitative appraisal ‘is neither an exclusive property nor is its domain restricted to a single inheritance’ within political theory.

We propose a two-step method for studying the history of political thought roughly in line with the contextualism of the Cambridge School. It reframes the early Cambridge School as a bug-detecting program for the outdated conceptual baggage we unknowingly accommodate with our political terminology. Such accommodation often entails propositions that are inconsistent with even our most cherished political opinions. These bugs can cause political arguments to crash. This reframing takes seriously the importance of theories of meaning in the formative methodological arguments of the Cambridge School and updates the argument in light of new developments. We argue the new orthodoxy of Saul Kripke's causal theory of meaning in the philosophy of language better demonstrates the importance of contextual analysis to modern political theory.

This paper studies the concept of complicity through the work of two Cambridge School poets, J.H. Prynne and Peter Riley. The acknowledgement of complicity in social, political, and economic injustices has been central for poets influenced by J.H. Prynne, and the resulting poetry, often difficult and alienating, nevertheless seeks to give lyric expression to the historical burden of being at the dispensing end of global violence. Peter Riley’s work, on the other hand, implies an ethical position that also includes a real possibility of opting out of exploitative and violent historical tendencies: complicity here is emphatically within the ambit of volition. Through readings of Prynne’s ‘Refuse Collection’ – which was written in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib – and Riley’s Alstonefield: A Poem and Excavations, this paper argues that the differences between these positions are more a matter of emphasis than of kind.

Recent work on the history of political thought, exploiting digital resources, is challenging the idea that empirically and hermeneutically minded political scientists must work independently in silos. Work by students of the Cambridge School and work by textual data miners are showing the way toward a new hermeneutical circle—one in which empirically and hermeneutically minded political scientists can use digital resources to analyze diverse texts and make groundbreaking discoveries on relationships between textual uses of language and political change. I analyze this new trend toward different sorts of political scientists using digital resources to study ideas, to outline underlying paradigms relating language and politics in these respective fields, and to consider how they could be brought into productive conversation. I then consider how such conversation would enrich subdisciplinary understandings of the role of language in politics. Ultimately, I use this analysis to generate a broader model for how empirically and hermeneutically inclined political scientists can benefit from collaboration in the age of digital humanities.

The article presents the life and methods of John G. Pocock, the famous representative of the Cambridge school of history of ideas. The introductory text sketches the development of his thoughts and explains in which ways he responded to the challenges of the present political world. Finally, Pocock's method is demonstrated by a commented excerpt from his recent article on the conservative Enlightenment.

This article presents an account of those works, related to conceptual history and historiographical issues, written by the American historian of political thought Melvin Richter. The attention is primarily directed toward the reception of the German historiographical style called “Begriffsgeschichte” (“history of concepts”), and especially on its reception among Anglophone scholars. Therefore, the main objective of the article is to throw light on Richter’s understanding of Begriffsgeschichte, and to sum up his efforts to put in contact Koselleck’s “history of concepts” with the works of authors such as Quentin Skinner and John G. A. Pocock, who are associated with the so-called “Cambridge school contextualists”. Thus, the aim is to point out their direct thought about Begriffsgeschichte, and consequently, to see how they’ve reacted to Richter’s proposals concerning the possibility of adopting that “history of concepts” as the frame for future historical researches. By doing so, and relying mainly on the extensive contributions appeared on the pages of the specialized periodicals, this article highlights some of the principal reactions to the theoretical and practical implications of “conceptual history”; in particular as they are emerging in the midst of what is indeed a recent and still ongoing international debate. Furthermore, the article tries to compare Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte with some works of “analytical bibliography” (which is a highly reliable form of physical and textual analysis of books). It is also interesting to note that these bibliographical studies are associated with Cambridge University as well as the historical researches of Skinner and Pocock.

This essay seeks to characterize Michael Oakeshott’s relationship to that approach to the study of political thought that has been referred to as the “Cambridge School.” It does so by considering Oakeshott’s relationship to J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner. Although Pocock could not accept Oakeshott’s antiquarian conception of historical inquiry, Oakeshott’s conceptualization of tradition attracted Pocock’s early attention and left a clear mark on his subsequent scholarship. And although Oakeshott’s On Human Conduct provides an intellectual history of the modern concept of the state like Skinner’s Foundations and even shares its emphases, Oakeshott’s theorization of the concept of the state can be seen as perhaps more historically sensitive. The author also focuses on Pocock’s claim that by denying the practical relation of past to present Oakeshott represented the “anarchic and antinomian strain in conservatism.” The author suggests that the third, historical section of On Human Conduct should be understood as bi-modal—both history and art—and that the aesthetic dimension of his discussion of the different “dispositions” informing theories of the state can be understood as the closest Oakeshott comes to bridging the gap between theory and practice, and thus the best answer to Pocock’s charge of “anarchism and antinomianism.”

In The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner has three aims: creating a sort of reference book for hundreds of primary texts in multiple languages, illuminating a more general historical theme using late medieval and early modern political texts, and giving us a history of political thought with a genuinely historical character. Skinner allows us to see political theorists creatively wrestling with difficult political problems of their day, and attempting to solve them through their writing. Skinner’s critics, however, cannot shake the sense that placing these texts in historical contexts robs them of some of their profundity and value as works of political theory. This chapter examines some of Skinner’s treatments of particular authors, notes some difficulties with the book’s methods, and situates the debate around Foundations within the emergence of a self-conscious Cambridge School.

This article intends to clarify what distinguishes the so-called new “politico-intellectual history” from the old “history of political ideas.” What differentiates the two has not been fully perceived even by some of the authors who initiated this transformation. One fundamental reason for this is that the transformation has not been a consistent process deriving from one single source, but is rather the result of converging developments emanating from three different sources (the Cambridge School, the German school of conceptual history or Begriffsgeschichte, and French politico-conceptual history). This article proposes that the development of a new theoretical horizon that effectively leads us beyond the frameworks of the old history of political ideas demands that we overcome the insularity of these traditions and combine their respective contributions. The result of this combination is an approach to politico-intellectual history that is not completely coincident with any of the three schools. What I will call a history of political languages entails a specific perspective on the temporality of discourses; this involves a view of why the meaning of concepts changes over time, and is the source of the contingency that stains political languages.

In this excellent new book, Reidar Maliks supplies, for the first time, an interpretation motivated by Cambridge School commitments of the political theory of Immanuel Kant. It is, of course, not t...

Alasdair MacIntyre is often recognized for his contributions to moral philosophy. In this article, I argue that his reputation should be rehabilitated as a theorist who has realized an essentially critical conception of social science that moves beyond the old dogma of value neutrality. The article’s first section narrates how MacIntyre’s unique conception of a critical social science arose out of debates with Peter Winch, whose defense of value neutrality MacIntyre found untenable. He responded by developing a social science every bit as interpretive as Winch’s, but also inherently critical and normative. The second section explores how MacIntyre’s vision of social science can generate criticism of major approaches to political inquiry today, including mainstream political science, Quentin Skinner’s Cambridge School, and Michel Foucault’s post-structuralism.

This volume provides an introductory guide to interpretive approaches in political theory. There is a wide, and perhaps bewildering, assortment of interpretive approaches available to students of political theory today. The aim of this volume is to help readers navigate their way through this dense and diverse field by providing an overview of the backgrounds and practices that inform these approaches to interpretation. Mastering any of the approaches surveyed in this volume can be a daunting task. So much has already been written on Straussianism, the Cambridge School, and feminism that the novice may have no idea where to begin. Moreover, the texts detailing approaches like deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and genealogy are often so prohibitively dense as to discourage new readers from making the attempt at all. The aim of this volume is thus to provide an introduction that renders these approaches more accessible. Although the book is intended primarily for graduate students and advanced undergraduates who want to know about the backgrounds, methods, and objectives associated with different interpretive approaches, seasoned practitioners of particular approaches will also find the discussions of other, perhaps less familiar, approaches useful as a foundation for further inquiry. Interpretation is an essential activity of political theory. Political theory is arich, complex, and contested interdisciplinary field of study that takes diverse forms and pursues a variety of interrelated activities including historical narrative, textual exegesis, normative theorizing, applied ethics, empirical analysis, and political commentary.1 For all the differences in form, style, and objective among these and other endeavors, however, the interpretation of texts is an indispensable activity in political theory. Although interpretation is arguably an unavoidable (ifsometimes unacknowledged) aspect of all scholarship-if not of any and every engagement with the world2-political theorists face the special challenge of interpreting texts that come as close as anything to defining the core of this increasingly pluralistic and unabashedly undisciplined field of study. Even if the analysis of written texts is not their primary concern, the requirements of professional training, teaching, and scholarship make it necessary for political theorists to interpret written texts. But what distinguishes-and sometimes divides-different political theorists are the different methods, techniques, and procedures they use to render texts intelligible and to explain their meaning. The interpretive approaches explored in this volume exemplify this diversity.Some of these schools of thought, such as Straussianism, the Cambridge School, Marxism, feminism, genealogy, and deconstruction, have attracted sizeable followings. Others, such as Lacanian psychoanalysis, negative dialectics, and Greimassian semiotics, are perhaps lesser-known approaches that have (so far) worked largely around the margins of political theory. Others may be familiar (by name and reputation if nothing else) to most political theorists as distinct modes of analyzing norms, practices, and institutions, but not exclusively as ways of reading texts. Some of these approaches were specifically designed for the reading of canonical texts in the history of political thought, while others are adapted from approaches first developed or used primarily for the analysis of discourses, institutions, social systems, and other phenomena in more empirical forms of scholarship. Some were developed by self-identified political theorists working within the larger field of political science, while others were formulated by scholars and thinkers in psychiatry, philosophy, linguistics, and other disciplines. Regardless of its provenance, though, each offers a distinct perspective on the meaning and significance of texts that makes it worthy of study. The diversity of approaches used in political theory today stands in markedcontrast to the situation that existed when political theory first emerged as a distinct sub-field of political science. The approaches that dominated political theory until the 1960s generally treated it as a single continuous tradition centered on a fairly limited set of fundamental questions and topics. During the latter part of the nineteenth century and throughout the first half of the twentieth century, political theory was chiefly conceived as the history of political thought in the “West.” With the emergence of political theory as a distinct sub-field within political science-which had itself become established at the start of the twentieth century as a distinct discipline with its own professional associations, journals, subject-matter, and standards of scholarship-the study of political thought was often defined in terms of the evolutionary development of a continuous tradition that stretched from the ancient Greeks into the present. Scholarship focused on those thinkers who were either deemed to be 1) “great” according to some timeless standard, 2) representative of political thought in their own eras, or 3) influential in the subsequent development of political thought or practice. Studies often took the form of narrative and critical commentary on the so-called Great Booksof Western political thought composed by a select group of luminaries, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Other thinkers also made notable appearances in studies during this period, but a canon centered around the aforementioned thinkers had taken shape. Although there were always exceptions, the field was dominated by studieswhich assumed that works by thinkers from very different time periods and social and cultural contexts were preoccupied with many of the same basic political concerns. There were always studies on individual thinkers and surveys of the political thought of particular periods (e.g., the Middle Ages),3 but the works that probably did the most to define the field of political theory at this time were much broader in scope. Some of the most influential studies in the last century took the form of sweeping surveys of the history of political thought presented in chronological order.4

Summary One of the great intellectual productions of the postwar period, J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment was also an intervention in the American polity of the 1970s. The book's content, its rhetorical style, its methodology, and even its physical printed form were all designed to effectuate a political gesture. The crises of 1968 to 1973 invalidated the optimistic liberalism of Pocock's academic circle. The history of political language offered a refuge and a programmatic foundation for Pocock's pragmatic conservatism. The Machiavellian Moment was designed to reinforce the weight of tradition in contemporary political debate.

Through an extended critical engagement with John P. McCormick'sMachiavellian Democracy, this paper aims to shed light on Machiavelli's account of relations among the many and the few in theDiscourses on Livy. While we agree with McCormick that Machiavelli should not be too quickly subsumed within the republican tradition, as interpreted by the “Cambridge School,” we reject the idea that Machiavelli's central thrust is prodemocratic. By focusing on the structure and logic of Machiavelli's arguments, we show that Machiavelli was critical of the capacities of ordinary citizens to govern themselves. As a result, Machiavelli emphasized and endorsed continuous elite intervention in the political life of the mixed regime, even as he paid due attention to the people's participation in a political regime with appropriate laws and institutions. Machiavelli's political theory, as embodied in theDiscourses on Livy, challenges the transparency and equality that contemporary egalitarians and democrats embrace.

McCormick’s book engages with the theoretical and political positions discussed by the Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli about five centuries ago, and, in particular, the creation of the tribunes of the plebs. In ancient Rome, plebeian power had been institutionalised through the creation of tribunes. According to McCormick, a similar institution would offer a legitimate forum for expression to the people in modern democracies. In fact, following Machiavelli’s suggestions, this would contribute to the implementation of a new form of democracy, more respectful of the people and more eager to defend values such as freedom and independence from the influence of the powerful and the rich. In this review, Filippo Del Lucchese comments on McCormick’s book from a Marxist point of view. One of the strongest points of the book is the discussion of the opposition between democracy and republicanism. Over the last decades, the latter has in fact been absorbed into the sphere of influence of the Cambridge School, and neutralised, or at least defused its most interesting and radical aspects. McCormick’s attempt to repoliticise the Machiavellian discourse is indeed praiseworthy, yet, by mainly focusing on the ‘institutionalisation’ of popular power, McCormick fails to discern the most radical elements of Machiavelli’s thought. From this angle, the review discusses McCormick’s use of the category of ‘class’ and offers a different perspective on the revolutionary dimension.

Abstract This essay takes up the fundamental question of the proper place of history in the study of political thought through critical engagement with Mark Bevir’s seminal work, The Logic of the History of Ideas. While I accept the claim of Bevir, as well as of other exponents of the so-called “Cambridge School,” that there is a conceptual difference between historical and non-historical modes of reading past works of political philosophy, I resist the suggestion that this conceptual differentiation itself justifies the specialization, among practicing intellectuals, between historians of ideas and others who read political-philosophical texts non-historically. Over and against the figure of the historian of ideas, who interprets political thought only in the manner of a historian, I defend the ideal of the pupil, who in studying past traditions of political thought also seeks to extend and modify them in light of contemporary problems and concerns. Against Bevir, I argue that the mixture of historical and non-historical modes of learning, in the manner of the pupil, need not do damage to the historian of ideas’ commitment to scholarship that is non-anachronistic, objective, and non-indeterminate.

This article traces the development of contextualist methodology in the study of the history of political thought/political theory after WWII. It argues that the so-called ‘Cambridge School’, often regarded as the core of historicist contextualism, arose during the 1950s and 1960s in response to dilemmas that were largely internal to (the history of) political philosophy as it was practiced in Britain in an academic culture dominated by analytic philosophy. This first stage of contextualist theorizing, usually associated with Laslett, Skinner and Pocock, was highly influential, but it also contributed to the formation of a new set of problems. These were connected to the diversification and internationalization of the historicist contextualist study of political thought after the 1960s. The ‘second stage’ of contextualist theorizing was shaped by post-analytic and post-modernist impulses among others. Because of the variety of philosophical and conceptual commitments on notions central to the field such as ‘political thinking’, ‘politics’, or ‘power’, it is unlikely that the present historicist contextualist approaches would come to share a unified methodology or theory of historical interpretation.

In Machiavellian Democracy, John McCormick elegantly highlights the “ferocious populism” inherent in Machiavelli’s writings. McCormick distinguishes his reading from that of the Cambridge School, emphasizing that interpreting Machiavelli within the republican tradition fails to do justice to Machiavelli’s anti-elitism. Whereas republicanism both in its historical and contemporary forms is in many respects compatible with aristocratic rule and hostile to popular agency, McCormick’s reading of Machiavelli affirms the importance of institutions designed to give the people—the economic lower classes in particular—a means of keeping elites accountable and an active role in political life. The book is divided into three sections. The first is largely interpretive, focusing on arguments for popular participation in the Prince and the Discourses; the second discusses Machiavelli’s analysis of the way in which institutions structure the motivational logic of citizens and elites in Rome and Florence in particular; and the third provides a normative critique of the aristocratic impulses of even contemporary republicanism, accompanied by institutional prescriptions for challenging elite domination along Machiavellian lines. Throughout the book, McCormick’s reading of Machiavelli is both careful and bracing, a rare combination. For instance, within the first third, the discussion of Machiavelli’s relationship with the two dedicatees of the Discourses, Cosimo Rucellai and Zanobi Buondelmonti, is especially interesting. There McCormick demonstrates persuasively that Machiavelli encourages the grandi to believe that the stability of the

For nearly half a century, Quentin Skinner has been the world's foremost interpreter of Thomas Hobbes. When the contextualist mode of intellectual history now known as the “Cambridge School” was first asserting itself in the 1960s, the life and writings of John Locke were the primary topic for pioneers such as Peter Laslett and John Dunn. At that time, Hobbes was still the plaything of philosophers and political scientists, virtually all of whom wrote in an ahistorical, textual-analytic manner. Hobbes had not been the subject of serious contextual research for decades, since the foundational writings of Ferdinand Tönnies. For Skinner, he was thus an ideal subject, providing a space for original research on a major figure, and an occasion for some polemically charged methodological manifestos. Both of these purposes animated his 1965 article “History and Ideology in the English Revolution,” and his 1966 article “The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought”. The latter of these remains to this day one of the most widely cited scholarly articles in the fifty-year run of Cambridge'sHistorical Journal. Among other results of these early efforts was the scholarly controversy during which Howard Warrender chided Skinner for having reduced the “classic texts in political philosophy” to mere “tracts for the times”.

As a discipline, the history of political thought itself has a history of competing methods: on the one hand, there are political theorists whose principle interest is in the use to which the ideas they find can be put—they seek to put the discoveries to work on instances of perennial problems in the present. On the other hand, there are those whose real interest is in trying to understand what the ideas meant at the time they were written—they seek to reconstruct the place of the ideas within a given historical context and how those ideas functioned to address political problems at that time. The temporal and intentional focus of these two approaches is so different that they might constitute different enterprises entirely. To the extent that historians of political thought are interested in history, the predominant method for analyzing the meaning and context of texts for the last few decades has been the so-called Cambridge School. It is the contention of this article that while the focus of the Cambridge School on the importance of contextual readings should open up the history of political thought to extra-European contexts, in fact its method serves to close down this possibility by emphasizing the importance of continuity between places in the past and the present of the historian. In other words, this method reduces to a process of narrating the historical identity of the Eurocentric discipline. Furthermore, I suggest that the work of the wartime Kyoto School contains methodological insights into the history of political thought that might overcome this problem and provide for a more inclusive (or at least a less exclusive) approach to the field.

In his histories of political discourse, Pocock has construed political economy as a prime site for hostile responses to the dilapidating effects of commerce on the virtue of citizens. In this paper, I dispute two aspects of Pocock's treatment of this terrain. The first is the criteria he uses to identify the constitution of political economy, which are vague and make no reference to the emergence of ‘the economy’ as a sphere distinct from the state. The second, and closely related complaint, is that by conscripting earlier writings on trade as anticipations of political economy their historical specificity is effaced, resulting in anachronism of the very kind Pocock has typically tried to correct. I conclude by drawing out some general implications for the historiography of political economy.

At the heart of the problematic of colonialism lies a deceptively simply question: why did the colonized put up with their subjection? I say deceptively simple because, while there is an obvious answer on which practically all researchers are agreed-that is, European 'power'-its nature, sources, and mode of implementation have always been hotly debated. In the 1960s and 1970s, a period dominated, at least on the South Asian front, by the so-called "Cambridge School," the apparent acceptance of European rule by many or most of the colonized peoples of Asia and Africa was generally interpreted as arising from a conscious, 'free' choice on the part of collaborating social elites-such as, in India, landlords, 'princes,' Brahmin pandits, and Muslim ulema. Already privileged, these groups had the power, the leverage, and the acumen-the argument ran-to exploit the colonial compact to their advantage, which in turn gave them a 'vested interest' in its survival.' But the Cambridge School line has not weathered well. The notion that colonial subjects voluntarily and consciously entered into arrangements that permitted their subjection to European metropolitan political and

The Cambridge school of animal morphology dominated British zoology in the late nineteenth century. Historians have argued that they were very successful until the death of their leader F. M. Balfour in 1882, when the school all but died with him. This paper argues that their initial success came about because their work fitted well with the university in the 1870s and 1880s. They attempted to trace evolutionary trees by studying individual development. To do this they needed access to species they considered primitive. Balfour made use of his social networks to aid the school and to collect the specimens they needed for their work. The school has been portrayed as failing in the 1890s when students rejected dry laboratory-bound studies. However, a new generation of researchers who followed Balfour had to travel extensively if they were to obtain the organisms they needed. International travel was popular amongst zoologists and the Cambridge school developed their own extensive networks. A new breed of adventurer–zoologists arose, but because of the school's tenuous position within the university they were unable to equal Balfour's success.

Over the past quarter century, the Cambridge School of Intellectual History has had a profound influence on the study of political theory in the U.S. The scholarship of historians such as John Dunn, Quentin Skinner, and John Pocock has almost single-handedly defined the terms with which political scientists understand early modern thought, and consequently liberalism and its alternatives. In this essay I analyze Quentin Skinner's “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” as the seminal argument for the Cambridge School's interpretive strategy. In particular, I note the degree to which Skinner attacked the scholarship of Leo Strauss in order to establish the Cambridge approach. Contrary to Skinner, I argue Strauss too has a concern for genuine historical understanding. I conclude with a re-reading of Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing in order to show that Strauss' interpretive strategy ultimately comes much closer to the “historicity” claimed by Skinner and others.

This article has two main aims. First, it provides a brief account of the terms modernidad (modernity) and modernismo (modernism) in the Spanish context from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Second, it seeks to illustrate the way in which conceptual history is being approached in a Spanish context. It draws upon the collaborative efforts of a group of over 30 scholars who have sought to explore the political lexicon of 19th-century Spain. The article deploys the analytical categories and methodological tools associated with the followers of Begriffsgeschichte and of the Cambridge school. Our conclusion is that an examination of these two terms reveals that the emphasis upon Spanish singularity has been exaggerated and that, despite the historical backwardness of the country, Spain played an outstanding role in the creation of the language of modernity and postmodernity.

Was Leo Strauss wrong about John Locke? Surely that he was has been the consensus among historians of political thought, though their reasons are sometimes at variance. The Cambridge school, influenced by the work of John Dunn, interprets Locke's work in the light of the Calvinism in his family background. Though attacked by spokesmen for the Church of England, Locke quickly gained admirers among dissenting clergy, for his psychology, his politics, and of course his program for religious toleration, and the proponents of the Calvinist interpreta tion explain why: His discourse closely tracks the theological language of his Calvinist contemporaries. Richard Ashcraft, meanwhile, sought to restore Locke's reputation as a revolutionary by investigating his role in English politics under the Restoration, albeit at the price of reducing the Two Treatises to a tract for the moment. James Tully would likewise save him from the charge of being a capitalist apologist, insisting Locke merely offered a defense of Whig landholding, with the responsibilities as well as the privileges embedded in the English law of estate. All these interpretations dismiss or disregard Strauss's account of Locke as an atheist in the mold of Hobbes and Spinoza who succeeded by his mastery of the art of esoteric writing in concealing his unbelief; as the most successful, because most prudent, proponent of the modern doctrine of natural rights, which revolutionized politics around the world; and as the theorist who prepared the way for modern capitalism by his vigorous defense of unlimited acquisition.

Scholars loosely affiliated with the “Cambridge School” (e.g., Pocock, Skinner, Viroli, and Pettit) accentuate rule of law, common good, class equilibrium, and non-domination in Machiavelli's political thought and republicanism generally but underestimate the Florentine's preference for class conflict and ignore his insistence on elite accountability. The author argues that they obscure the extent to which Machiavelli is an anti-elitist critic of the republican tradition, which they fail to disclose was predominantly oligarchic. The prescriptive lessons these scholars draw from republicanism for contemporary politics reinforce rather than reform the “senatorial,” electorally based, and socioeconomically agnostic republican model (devised by Machiavelli's aristocratic interlocutor, Guicciardini, and refined by Montesquieu and Madison) that permits common citizens to acclaim but not determine government policies. Cambridge School textual interpretations and practical proposals have little connection with Machiavelli's “tribunate,” class-specific model of popular government elaborated in The Discourses , one that relies on extra-electoral accountability techniques and embraces deliberative popular assemblies.

The first step in planning a lexicon of European political and legal concepts is to decide upon how it is to be organised. Among the principal alternatives are the formats of three German reference works on the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and the methods associated with John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. Although these German and Anglophone styles are often regarded as incompatible, on closer inspection, they turn out to be in many respects complementary, as Skinner has recently acknowledged. What would such a format look like? Is it possible to overcome the difficulties inherent in attempting a lexicon combining continental and Anglophone political and legal concepts?

William Molyneux’s Case of Ireland (1698) is widely regarded as the most important work of Irish political thought published during the long eighteenth century. Over the last 40 years Patrick Kelly has analysed its arguments and patiently reconstructed the wider Anglo-Irish controversy of the late 1690s in a series of illuminating articles. But in the wider historiography, anachronistic readings of Molyneux still persist, focused on his alleged contributions to evolving ideas of Irish nationhood. We can make better sense of the various strategies Molyneux adopted by situating him within the debates over the ancient constitution that took place in late seventeenth-century England. A careful reading of the hostile responses to Molyneux also reveals that the Case of Ireland prompted the first attempt by English constitutional writers to conceptualise their empire as a single power structure. Contextualising Molyneux in this way prompts further methodological questions concerning the indifference among most Irish scholars to the ‘Cambridge school’ of intellectual history.

The Cambridge School of Intellectual History is most associated with the work of Quentin Skinner and John Pocock, but encompasses the work of a number of scholars of political thought and political philosophy who have had connections with the University of Cambridge from the 1950s to the present. Members of the Cambridge School, who now teach at institutions of higher education across the globe, share a commitment to the historical study of texts, and reject approaches characterized by presentism and teleology (labeled prolepsis). They also reject canons of dominant authors and histories of philosophy that evaluate past ideas. Members of the Cambridge School have accordingly been in the vanguard of a historical turn in the study of past politics and ideas more generally, alongside the similarly historically minded approach, albeit distinctive methodologically, of Begriffsgeschichte or Conceptual History pioneered by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck. Beyond a belief in the need to establish a context for the understanding of historical texts, and distaste for grand or theory-inspired narratives, the members of the Cambridge School have conflicting views of the origins and nature of modern political thought. This is illustrated through a comparison of the work of Skinner and Pocock.

The study of past ideas and writings concerning politics has been undertaken not just by historians, but by scholars from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives. This article focuses primarily on historical approaches to the study of past thinking about politics. In particular, three approaches that have been especially influential in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are explored in detail: the Straussian approach initiated by Leo Strauss; the Cambridge School interpretation that was developed by J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner; and Begriffsgeschichte or Conceptual History that was pioneered by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck.

Volume II contains entries on the major schools of economic thought and analysis. These schools differ with regard to their 'vision' of the working of the economic system, the major forces and interactions that shape its path, and the policy recommendations proposed. At any moment of time, several such schools typically compete with one another, striving for dominance within the economic and political discourse. Each Handbook can be read individually and acts as a self-contained volume in its own right. It can be purchased separately or as part of a three-volume set.

We are...in a world in which power figures and reconfigures; in which human artifice must struggle with human necessities; in which notions such as justice, freedom, compassion, and autonomy, authority, legitimacy, security and force animate, constrain, and enable human beings in each and every arena within which they engage one another. Jean Bethke Elshtain In our own times we can neither endure our thoughts nor the task of rethinking them. We think restlessly within familiar frameworks to avoid thought about how our thinking is framed. William E. Gonnolly The role of language in the constitution of social and political life has long been overlooked in the academic study of international relations. The most influential theoretical approaches, those that dominate debate in U.S. political science, remain firmly wedded to a correspondence theory of truth and the "elusive quest" for a scientific understanding of the world. (1) Concerns about language and intersubjectivity are deemed irrelevant in the positivist mission to explain the pattern(s) of world politics. It is as if much of twentieth-century social theory and philosophy had never been written. Nevertheless, over the last few years, a plethora of critical voices have sought to challenge this pervasive attitude, and their work has made an "indelible impression" on the topography of the field, undermining its boundaries, questioning its questions and problematizing its practices. (2) The starting point for many of these critical approaches--which include postmodernism(s)/poststructuralism(s), most forms of feminism, and some constructivists--has been work produced in the wake of the "linguistic turn" in social and political theory. (3) This turn has followed a number of diverse routes, encompassing the universal pragmatics propounded by Habermas and Apel, the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl, the ordinary language analysis of Wittgenstein and Austin, and the hermeneutics of, among others, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. Nevertheless, in social and political theory in general, and international-relations theory in particular, much of this intellectual terrain remains under-explored. One important project is that developed by what in this article I am calling the Cambridge School (CS) of historians--in particular, by Quentin Skinner. Kari Palonen, for example, has claimed that Skinner should be regarded as one of "the few dissidents in the contemporary academic world" who concentrat e on the role of conceptual-linguistic transformation in the unfolding of history; and Charles Taylor argues that Skinner has formulated an "interesting and challenging" political theory. (4) This article outlines the Skinnerian position in relation to IR, and as such it is a partial response to Ken Booth's contention that it "is vital that students of IR give language more attention than hitherto, as words shape as well as reflect reality." (5) The CS approach has much to offer the theorist of international politics, especially through its focus on the historicity of conceptual change and its understanding of how political legitimacy is embedded in and constrained by the set of political vocabularies available at any given time. Why have the implications for political theory inherent in the CS project been largely overlooked? The CS authors, and Skinner in particular, are usually bracketed as historians, and aspects of their work that relate to political theory remain unnoticed or are assumed to refer primarily to the study of the history of ideas. (6) This characterization is a mistake, for within the arguments sketched by the CS authors can be discerned an important approach to understanding social and political life. By concentrating on conceptual change and the constitutive role played by language in shaping the normative architecture of (any given) society, we can reach a more sophisticated understanding of language in both the reproduction of social norms and conventions and consequently in the process(es) of change itself. …

Victorian men of science were great correspondents. Many of them corresponded incessantly, leaving behind a remarkable testimony of academic, political and social networks in nineteenth-century science and medicine. But they were also great correspondents in another respect. They knew how to write a good letter. Allusions to art, history and literature were integral to their communications. More than exchanging news and queries, it was a way to display wit and cultural education. It is striking, reading the correspondence of, for example, Charles Darwin, James Clerk Maxwell, William Thomson and others, with what ease these Victorians mastered the combination of scientific discussions, philosophical arguments, contemporary commentary, personal involvement and family affairs with humour, excellent form and impeccable standards for letter writing, even in brief notes. The thirty years of correspondence between Michael Foster and Thomas Henry Huxley is no exception. This collection is a genuine pleasure to read in the old-fashioned way, for pleasure, with a cup of tea in front of the fire. It is a testament to a life-long friendship between two central characters in mid- and late Victorian science and medicine, and to what it meant to be a man of science on a daily basis. While Foster gradually emerges as a competent letter writer, Huxley is a natural. In itself, his sharp comments, irony, puns, playfulness, comprehensive scientific and classical knowledge, and wonderful dismantling way of puncturing his own public image, makes the reading worthwhile. Today, we remember Huxley, whereas Foster is less known. The latter’s importance for the success of the so-called Cambridge school of physiology, however, should not be underestimated. Foster and Huxley’s correspondence adds to the layers of this, demonstrating how much involved Foster was in the business at South Kensington where Huxley resided, and how close the links were between London and Cambridge. The new scientific elite emerging in London and, notably with the X-Club of which Huxley was one of the founding members, reacted strongly against the old Oxbridge power networks. Huxley himself, in his many addresses on universities and a liberal education, was instrumental in reinforcing this image of differences, opposition, tradition vs progress, connections vs meritocracy, and an old world and old knowledge vs a new world and new knowledge. The correspondence between Foster and Huxley reveals a much more nuanced picture, where Foster on occasion provides Huxley with details about Cambridge ways, and thus uses his friend and ally to criticise what is difficult for himself to do within the Cambridge system. It is good to be reminded that the world is always painted black and white for a reason and that we should always look behind and beyond rhetorical constructions. The correspondence between Foster and Huxley helps us to do just that. For the historian, this collection is also an excellent source of anything from scientific details, questions of education, politics, institutions, professionalisation, and personal and international relationships. We learn a lot about the politics and inner workings of the Royal Society. This includes details about the way to Huxley’s nomination as President of the Royal Society and how Foster proved invaluable to help pave the way, negotiating, smooth-talking reluctant Fellows and making sure that Huxley kept his position and control, even though he took a long leave of absence travelling to Italy because of his failing health. We learn about the care for family members and how that extended to friends and their children. One example is the care Foster and Huxley took in helping Horace Darwin, the ninth child of Emma and Charles Darwin, set up business in Cambridge. Then, of course, there are all the juicy bits of what they thought of their scientific peers, colleagues and fellow members of the Royal Society. Altogether, through two high-powered and prolific correspondents, this volume presents a fascinating look behind the curtains of everyday life, for better and worse, among Victorian men of science and medicine. The book comes with an introduction providing the necessary context, excellent scholarly footnotes and a first-rate index. Furthermore, through the generous courtesy of The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, the correspondence between Foster and Huxley is made available online at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/issues/180404, making this indispensable resource for anyone working on mid- and late Victorian science and medicine readily available and searchable. It would, of course, be whiggish for historians to talk about progress in science and medicine the way Foster and Huxley did: it is not, however, when it comes to online access of archival material. This is progress and we should be happy for it.

In the topic of this article, it is the early modern intellectual history; it will be offered at first an overview of the approaches of the parallelism between the researches of words, pictures, and gestures, based on the author's personal experiences as a researcher of this epoch. The first examples will be severallociof English classics, John Milton, and John Locke; then it will be mentioned the significance of the methodology of the “Iconic Turn,” with the concept of “pictorial (speech) act”, and with the history of religious art. At the end of this overview it will be mentioned briefly the methodological contribution of the Cambridge school of intellectual history, and that of theGeschichtliche Grundbegriffeof Reinhart Koselleck. Second part of this article will offer a historical example from the early modern age. The first one is an analysis of several details of Thomas Hobbes’ ambivalent relationship with the antique tradition of rhetoric, and their consequences for the visual sphere. Santrauka Šio straipsnio tema – moderniųjų laikų pradžios intelektualinė istorija. Pirmoje jo dalyje pateikiama tarp mokslinių tyrinėjimų, skirtų žodžiams, vaizdams ir gestams, susiklostančių paralelių traktavimo bendroji samprata. Vienoks ar kitoks jų traktavimas priklauso nuo autoriaus, kaip toje epochoje gyvenančio tyrėjo, asmeninių patirčių. Pirmieji pavyzdžiai – tai keletas anglų klasikų, tokių kaip Johnas Miltonas ir Johnas Locke'as. Paskui pabrėžiama „vaizdinio posūkio“ metodologijos „vaizdavimo (kalbėjimo) akto“ koncepto, religinio meno istorijos svarba. Galiausiai trumpai paminimas Kembridžo mokyklos indėlis į intelektualinę istoriją ir Reinharto KoselleckoGeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Antroje straipsnio dalyje pateikiamas istorinis pavyzdys iš ankstyvosios moderniosios epochos. Pirmiausia imamasi Thomaso Hobbeso ambivalentiško santykio su antikine retorikos tradicija keleto detalių analizės, o paskui aptariama šio santykio įtaka vizualumo sričiai. Reikšminiai žodžiai:gestai,vaizdinis posūkis,retorika,kalbėjimo aktas,Thomasas Hobbesas,rašymo aktas

This chapter examines the introduction of German idealism in Britain. Then, it analyzes the status of idealism in war philosophies and deals with the development of different concepts of Idealism in Britain and Germany after the First World War. In terms of methodology, the chapter follows the 'Cambridge School of intellectual history' developed by John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. This approach does not exclude the acting subject, as Foucauldian discourse analysis tends to do, but rather analyses the subject's interference in discourse in terms of innovation and tradition. This "speech-act-will" can only be recognized if the horizon of experience as well as the linguistic, political, social, and cultural context is considered. In addition, the chapter draws on the theory of travelling concepts as formulated by Mieke Bal and others. Idealism also varied regionally between different countries of the United Kingdom, and between academic and public discourses. Keywords: Cambridge School of intellectual history; First World War; Foucauldian discourse analysis; German idealism; John Pocock; Mieke Bal; Quentin Skinner; theory of travelling concepts; war philosophy

Republicanism is generally said to promote virtue and equal political participation, yet many historical republics and republican theories endorse the hierarchical political participation of the upper and lower social classes and recommend a centralised executive power. Republican constitutions incorporate the authority of the nobles, the freedom of the people and the political power of one man. Cicero formulates this understanding of the republic, which endures in the ideas of Machiavelli and Montesquieu. I characterise this school of thought as conservative because it promotes the preservation of the social hierarchy, private property and stability; moreover, it harnesses change by advancing a policy of expansion. I challenge the mainstream Cambridge School interpretation by tracing the trajectory of conservative republican ideas in the thought of Cicero, Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Few interpretations relate the republicanism of these three thinkers to each other; hence this reading contributes a new way of thinking about republicanism.