Quentin Skinner

Quentin Skinner is the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University College London. He is the author of numerous books and articles on early modern political thought and is a founder of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ of the history of political thought.

This interview, conducted by Teresa Bejan with Professor Skinner at his home in London in March 2011, is our longest yet. We’ll be publishing it in two parts: the first on Prof. Skinner’s research and method is below, and the second, on his own intellectual context, will follow in December.

Politieke denkers uit het verleden, zoals Machiavelli en Hobbes, kunnen we pas begrijpen als we ze in hun historische context situeren, zo stelt politiek filosoof Quentin Skinner. Maar als deze stelling correct is, wat kan de geschiedenis van het politieke denken ons vandaag dan nog leren? Kanttekeningen bij onze ideeën over vrijheid en de rechten en plichten van de burger.

Teksten van grote politieke denkers uit het verleden worden traditioneel vooral door filosofen gelezen als een antwoord op 'eeuwige vragen', zoals wat het betekent om 'vrij' te zijn. Ze zoeken deze antwoorden in teksten van 'grote auteurs' en ze lezen deze los van hun historische context. Sinds enkele tientallen jaren worden deze teksten echter ook door historici op een vernieuwende wijze gelezen, ditmaal met respect voor de historische context. Dat is vooral de verdienste van Quentin Skinner, die met zijn wetenschappelijk werk de bakens in de geschiedschrijving van het politieke denken verzette en hiervoor met recht in academische kringen wordt geëerd.

Recension parue dans La Revue d'histoire des sciences humaines, 2007, n°17, p. 185-191. Si le public français est désormais familier des travaux de Quentin Skinner sur Machiavel et la Renaissance italienne et, dans une moindre mesure, de ses recherches sur la pensée politique britannique du XVII e siècle, sa réflexion épistémologique sur le métier d'historien est en revanche moins connue. Ceci explique sans doute la multiplicité des interprétations dont a fait l'objet en France ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler son contextualisme en histoire des idées politiques. De ce point de vue, le premier tome du triptyque Visions of politics paru en 2002 aux presses de Cambridge devrait intéresser le lecteur français dans la mesure où il réunit dans un même ouvrage la plupart des écrits méthodologiques de Skinner jusque-là dispersés dans différentes revues d'histoire ou ouvrages collectifs 1 . Sans permettre d'arbitrer les débats qui ont traversé la réception des travaux de Skinner en France, ils éclairent du moins les enjeux méthodologiques qui sous tendent une oeuvre qui a été tantôt perçue comme une forme d'herméneutique historique, tantôt comme une propédeutique vers une histoire sociale des idées politiques.

... These are legitimate in themselves, representing pre-political individuality, political equality being a mere corrective complement to them. ... It will alert to social difference by realising a political association through publicity of government and consul-tation of the citizens (1794 ...

This article explores the ways in which Gramsci's engagement with Machiavelli and The Prince in particular result in three significant developments in the Prison Notebooks. First, I analyze how the 'heroic fury' of Gramsci's lifelong interest in Machiavelli's thought develops, during the composition of his carceral writings, into a novel approach to the reading of The Prince, giving rise to the famous notion of the 'modern Prince'. Second, I argue that the modern Prince should not be regarded merely as a distinctive (individual or collective) figure, but rather, should be understood as a dramatic development that unfolds throughout 'the discourse itself' of the Prison Notebooks, particularly in the crucial phase of reorganisation in the 'special notebooks' composed from 1932 onwards. Third and finally, I suggest that the combination of the two preceding themes is decisive for understanding the modern Prince as a distinctive form of political organization. Rather than equated with a generic conception of the '(communist) political party', this notion was developed as a part of Gramsci's larger argument regarding the necessity for anti-Fascist political forces in Italy in the early 1930s to grow into an antagonistic collective body guided by principles of 'living philology'.

The article is aimed to reconstruct the intention of the historian of architecture Joseph Rykwert as the author of the monograph «The idea of a town: the anthropology of urban form in Rome, Italy, and the ancient world». The analysis relies on the methodological principles proposed by the Cambridge School (intellectual history): Quentin Skinner and John Pocock. The author's intention, contained in the text, can be identified by comparing his language and arguments with other texts of a given historical era, devoted to a similar plot. The book was conceived as a challenge to functionalism and the "picturesque style" in architecture. Published in 1963, it already resists neoavantgarde, the principles of the Ulm School of Design and the Italian rationalism of Aldo Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri.

Статья посвящена реконструкции авторской интенции историка архитектуры Джозефа Рикверта как автора монографии «Идея города. Антропология формы города в Риме, Италии и Древнем мире». Представленный анализ, прежде всего, опирается на методологические принципы, предложенные Кембриджской школой интеллектуальной истории: Кв. Скиннером и Дж. Пококом. Авторское намерение, заключенное в тексте, можно идентифицировать путем сопоставления его языка и аргументов с другими текстами данной исторической эпохи, посвященными схожему сюжету. Книга задумывалась как вызов функционализму и «живописному стилю» в архитектуре. Опубликованная в 1963 году, она противостоит неоавангарду, принципам Ульмской школы дизайна и итальянского рационализма А. Росси и М. Тафури.

Resumo: a historicidade presente nos textos canônicos da filosofia política e do direito constitui um universo de pesquisa que está longe de se esgotado. Enquanto a tradicional leitura da história das idéias se constitui numa hermenêutica que "lê e relê" os textos clássicos na busca de uma interpretação que compreenda a totalidade do texto enquanto obra filosófica, a "redescoberta" da historicidade do texto a partir do "contextualismo lingüístico" possibilita a percepção de uma nova faceta na hermenêutica dos "cânones": a sua literalidade e a sua perspectiva retórica. A obra de Thomas Hobbes (Elements of law, De Cive e Leviathan principalmente) foi construída sistematicamente com o objetivo de ser a-histórica e analítica; a sua construção enquanto obra é, no entanto, essencialmente histórica e retoricamente orientada. A percepção do projeto político que sustenta a obra filosófica permite interpretar também o texto filosófico enquanto texto literário, definindo-se os elementos propriamente literários da obra de Hobbes, bem como sua orientação voltada para o sucesso retórico do discurso. Contra a perspectiva "textualista" e seguindo o enunciado wittgensteiniano de que "as palavras também são atos", o ponto de partida da análise do "ato retórico" de Hobbes está situado na reconstrução do "espaço de experiência" e do "horizonte de expectativas" do autor, buscando-se evidenciar a intencionalidade do agente enunciante e, por último, "o que o autor estava fazendo ao escrever".

In this article, I suggest that it is plausible to argue that Skinner's methodology is inseparable from his intention to retrieve republicanism. This makes itself evident in the way he structures his critique of John Rawls. In line with Hobbes, this British historian interprets Rawls's A Theory of Justice as another example of theory being politically neutralized. I will present the main aspects of Skinner's analysis of Rawlsian liberalism from a neo-Machiavellian perspective, and discuss to what degree this analysis is or is not conclusive vis-à-vis the relationship between Rawls and republicanism. Finally, I will assess to what extent it is ideology that motivates the British historian to put his methodology in line with republicanism.

This is a sample chapter available at http://d2yvuud5fila0c.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/17130631/friendship-among-nations.pdf

This is the first book-length study of the role that friendship plays in diplomacy and international politics. Through an examination of a vast amount of sources ranging from diplomatic letters and bilateral treaties, to poems and philosophical treatises, it analyses how friendship has been talked about and practised in pre-modern political orders and modern systems of international relations.

The study highlights how instrumental friendship was for describing and legitimising a range of political and legal engagements with foreign countries and nations. It emphasizes contractual and political aspects in diplomatic friendship based on the idea of utility. It is these functions of the concept that help the world stick together when collective institutions are either embryonic or no more.

This review essay investigates two recent contributions - Geoffroy de Lagasnerie's "La dernière leçon de Michel Foucault" and Daniel Zamora's edited volume "Critiquer Foucault : Les années 1980 et la tentation néoliberale" - to the 'seduction thesis' - the claim that Michel Foucault, since the end of the 1970s became seduced by neoliberal thinkers. While the essay dismisses the 'seduction thesis', it calls for a need to revise some of the implicit theses on neoliberalism of Foucault and, in particular, governmentality studies.

A roundtable review of the four-volume
Intellectual History, edited by Richard Whatmore (London
and New York: Routledge, 2015). Reviewers include Michael C. Behrent (Appalachian State University); Amy Jelacic (University of Sydney); George Klosko (University of Virginia); Tracie Matysik (University of Texas, Austin); and  Knox Peden (University of Melbourne).

Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu krytyczne zestawienie dwóch perspektyw, istotnych dla badań szeroko rozumianej historii idei, czyli szkoły Cambridge z niemiecką tradycją Begriffsgeschichte. W pierwszej części tekstu wskazuję na główne podobieństwa między nimi, takie jak czas czy sposoby powstania. Część druga służy omówieniu i problematyzacji głównych kategorii badawczych, wypracowanych w ramach obu nurtów metodologicznych, takich jak akty mowy i pojęcia. Kolejno, w części trzeciej analizuję poziomy kontekstu, w ramach których pracują przedstawiciele obu tradycji, a także wskazuję na słabości czynionych w tej kwestii rozstrzygnięć. Część czwarta służy przytoczeniu zewnętrznych perspektyw, m.in. metod, wypracowanych przez Michaela Freedena, które pozwalają zobaczyć w nowym świetle brytyjską i niemiecką tradycję. Wreszcie, w podsumowaniu wskazuję na sensowność rozwoju tego typu refleksji oraz na wyzwania, przed którymi stoi historia idei w Polsce.

The expression “political concepts” refers to concepts essential to any serious reflection on political life. This includes authority, democracy, equality, freedom, justice, power, and further concepts that represent fundamental political values and principles.  However, political concepts are political in a double sense: they refer to some central idea or issue of great political relevance, but the meanings of these concepts are also topics of perpetual debate. Political concepts are not simply used to describe political life, but constitute significant sites of political disagreement.

This article surveys the state of the field of the history of political thought. The premise of the discipline is that political arguments and ideas have developed historically and thus have theoretical histories that can be located and traced. But, as our survey of the field shows, what counts as 'context' is up for debate, and contextual methods have become more sensitive to present-day concerns. The border between the history of political thought and political theory is increasingly porous. We begin with some of the main claims and criticisms of the 'Cambridge' method of political thought, chiefly associated with Quentin Skinner, John Dunn and J. G. A. Pocock. We then consider newer developments, such as the 'global turn', which have steered the discipline beyond its traditionally European or male subject matter. While this shift in direction is welcome, we caution against a history that abstracts away from local sites of political contestation. Finally, we stress that (Western) historians moving beyond the West have even more reason to stay conscious of their own linguistic and cultural limitations.

""In his « little Treatise in English» on Human nature (1640), and, later, in Leviathan (1647 – 1650), Thomas Hobbes examines and redefines the passions. Basing his argument upon the concept of motion, he conceives them as thoughts: passions are nothing but perceptions, which transit through the brain, and then move towards the heart. There they cause various sensations of pleasure or pain, by helping or hindering « vital motion ».
Anger, Hobbes claims, is a break-through in front of a sudden opposition, not the response to an outrage, as the Ancients had erroneously claimed. « Courage, in a large signification, is the absence of fear in the presence of any evil whatsoever; but in a stricter and more common meaning, it is contempt of wounds and death, when they oppose a man in the way to his end. Anger (or sudden courage) is nothing but the appetite or desire of overcoming present opposition. It hath been commonly defined to be grief proceeding from an opinion of contempt; which is confuted by the often experience we have of being moved to anger by things inanimate and without sense, and consequently incapable of contemning us. » (Leviathan, I, 6, 1-2.  Cf. Human Nature, VII, 1-2).
The definition of 'orge', as the grief for an undeserved slight, joined to the wish to retaliate, comes from Aristotle’s 'Rhetoric', a text Hobbes not only knew, but also translated. Anger was, for Aristotle, the political passion par excellence. It is because we are insulted that we revolt, and that our revolt is justified. It is in anger that we commit tyrannicide. Be it a tumultuous explosion or a long lasting grudge, ire is by definition the reasoned answer of a social actor, who suffers in his body as well as in the social image that he has  created for herself, and on behalf of justice: one does not recognize this person for that which he wishes to be considered. The gender mark is intended, given the heroic context. This criticism might appear to be just a minor detail, confined to Hobbes’ typology of the passions.  But since the new description of anger disconnects the emotion from any justification (thus from justice), refuting Aristotle was crucial for the consistency of Hobbes’ theory of the state. Leviathan must have zero tolerance for any form of social violence, from sedition (his sickness) to civil war (his death). Therefore the celebration of the noble killing of a king (conveniently labeled “tyrant”), has no place in modern politics. Those who come to treat a sovereign as an obstacle in their way understand nothing of the nature of the state, which is artificial and vulnerable, always threatened by a return to the state of nature.
    Furthermore, to object to Aristotle on anger was consistent with Hobbes’ profound weariness with classical political theory. One of the most insidious causes of the dangerous misunderstanding of the state, Hobbes argues, was ideological. People learned to cultivate dissent and glamorize discontent from subversive, poisonous political theories: those of the Ancients. « From the reading, I say, of such books, men have undertaken to kill their Kings, because the Greek and Latin writers, in their books and discourses of Policy, make it lawful and laudable, for any man so to do ; provided, before he do it, he call him tyrant. For they say not regicide, that is, killing a king, but tyrannicide, that is, killing of a tyrant is lawful » ('De Corpore Politico', XXVII,  10).  No learning of a language, Hobbes dryly comments, has ever been paid with so much blood, as that of Greek and Latin (Ibidem, 150).
In the transition from a theory of man as a political animal, naturally inclined to sociability (Aristotle), to a vision of human nature, made up of movement and competition, Hobbes rethought the anthropological underpinnings of politics. This required the simplification of the passions, and the rejection of that interlacing of rights, habits and body, which framed the complexity of the emotions in the classical past. The demystification of anger was critical.
 

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Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe contends that the fact that a person has the capacity to argue entails that she has the moral right of exclusive control over her own body. Critics of Hoppe’s argument do not appear to have pinpointed its flaws. I expose the logical structure of Hoppe’s argument, distinguishing its pragmatic-contradiction and its mutual-recognition components. I provide three counterexamples to show that Hoppe’s mutual-recognition argument is invalid and I argue that the truth that appears to motivate the argument is simply a banality. I show that Hoppe’s pragmatic-contradiction argument is invalid, has a false premise and fails to link up with his mutual-recognition argument in the way that he requires to reach his conclusion. I conclude by outlining three perils of pragmatic-contradiction arguments, the weakness of mutual-recognition arguments, and the implausibility of attempts to derive a universal moral status from a specialised activity such as argumentation.

This chapter surveys the three most prominent ways in which the historical context of ideas have been understood. Put simply, they can be labelled textual contexts, social contexts and cultural contexts. Although all three ways of understanding historical context have thrived at various points in the past and certainly continue to be used today, there is a sense in which general trends in the practice of intellectual history have favoured each of these approaches in turn. At the moment, the cultural history of ideas tends to present itself as the cutting edge of current intellectual practice.

This chapter suggests that the present ascendancy of cultural history has developed not just from changing scholarly fashions, but also from a growing apprehension amongst many historians that the older concepts of context utilised by previous intellectual historians were perhaps too restrictive. The cultural history of ideas has flourished in recent years because it offers a self-consciously capacious understanding of historical contexts.

Marx’s account of wage-labour is permeated with neo-Roman republican vocabulary. But Marx, in contrast to some interpretations of the tradition, also stressed the structural dimensions of domination and its relationship to exploitation. In this chapter, I focus on Marx’s account of the periods before, during and after the agreement of the labour contract. Marx held that workers were structurally dominated by the capitalist class because their ownership of the means of production meant that propertyless workers had no choice but to work for a capitalist master. Marx argued that this enabled the capitalist and capitalist class’s exploitation of the workers in the bargaining and setting of the labour contract. Finally, Marx detailed how once the labour contract had been agreed workers were subjected to the interpersonal domination of the individual capitalist inside the factory workplace. Together, these three moments of domination undermined the worker’s liberty and, according to Marx, made them a slave of the individual capitalist and the capitalist class. Marx thus maintained that the putatively free wage-labour contract amounted to wage-slavery.

Here are some fairly detailed notes for a discussion of the 1324 _Defensor Pacis_ of Marsilius of Padua. Marsilius aims to show that the root of all political instability (or "intranquillity") in his time is the overreach of the Papacy into secular matters. Against the background of this undermining of the _plenitudo potestatis_, Marsilius manages to construct a political theory that lodges the legislative power of society entirely within the People, who should then appoint a Prince on the basis of periodic elections. In so doing, Marsilius anticipates any number of claims in the subsequent history of political thought, even down through the early modern era. At the same time, he remains firmly embedded within his own medieval context. Reading Marsilius can give us a chance to see how medieval political conversations gave rise, in some cases, to new paradigms in sociopolitical reflection.

conception of morality' (p. ). Future scholarship on Locke will have to engage with Lucci's revisionist plea to reconsider the prevalent perception of the 'liberal' and 'secular' Locke. PETER SCHRÖDER UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON In the shadow of Leviathan. John Locke and the politics of conscience. By Jeffrey R. Collins. (Ideas in Context.) Pp. xiv + . Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, . £.      JEH () ; doi:./S Jeffrey Collins's In the shadow of Leviathan is one of the best works of early modern British intellectual history to have appeared in the last quarter-century. In it Collins offers a new and persuasive account of how Thomas Hobbes's thought about religious conscience influenced John Locke's thought about religious conscience. Scholars have rarely tried to discern what, if any, influence Hobbes had on Locke. The so-called Cambridge school of intellectual history has tended to keep the two seventeenth-century English political philosophers separated, not least because of methodological commitments. Those associated with that school have rejected 'canon-formation', have denied that A-list thinkers 'developed their ideas in dialogue' and, indeed, have been wary of attributing influence altogether. Leo Strauss's work also encouraged the Cambridge school to quarantine Hobbes from Locke. For one thing, Strauss and Straussians have focused exclusively on canonical thinkers. For another, in the Straussian narrative, Hobbes and Locke play crucial roles as founding fathers of liberal modernity; insofar as they differ, Locke is supposedly the kinder, gentler purveyor of Hobbes's stark truths. Those working in the Cambridge school tradition have rejected both the Straussian approach and the Straussian narrative. Collins does too but, pace the Cambridge school, argues that we should ask what it meant for Locke to write in the wake of Hobbes. In showing what it entailed, Collins makes important historical, methodological and theoretical interventions. Collins's historical argument is straightforward. From early on, there was a 'fairly durable connection between the two thinkers, followed by a gradual emancipation of Locke from Hobbesian patterns of thought'. Collins carefully traces the process by which 'Locke escaped the strictures of a politique, Hobbesian account of religious conscience, and developed an account oriented around natural rights, individual religious duty and resistance theory.' The book opens with two chapters on pre-Restoration Hobbism and on Hobbes's Restoration-era attempts to repackage his earlier arguments in a more congenial idiom. Five chapters follow which chart changes in Locke's thinking about the conscience. Collins reckons that Locke was initially drawn to Hobbes's 'science of sovereignty that might have tolerationist or anti-tolerationist implications'. By the late s, though, Locke had jettisoned Hobbes's 'logic of civil religion' and had, instead, defended the individual free conscience and churches as 'voluntary, sacred and autonomous societies'. So, while some late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century contemporaries tried to lash together Locke with Hobbes, Collins argues that their conjoining reflected polemical exigencies, not actual fact.

This is the second part of a two-part interview with Prof. Skinner published in 'Art of Theory'.

Quentin Skinner is the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University College London. He is the author of numerous books and articles on early modern political thought and is a founder of the ‘Cambridge School’ of the history of political thought.

The 'Cambridge School' is a term associated with some historians of political thought who since the 1960s have claimed to have something to say of contemporary relevance about politics. Here it is argued that the School has to be understood as a long consequence of Seeley's determination at the foundation of the Historical Tripos in the 1870s to relate history and politics to each other. For a century almost all the major figures in Cambridge agreed that history and politics should be related, but disagreed about how to do it. The writings and others are studied here in order to indicate how the historians of the Cambridge School for a century attempted to relate history and politics in not one but four ways-through political science, the history of political thought, political philosophy and political theology.

Explanation in terms of final causes is explanation in terms of ends or goals. Is such explanation essential to the theory of nature in general, or only to the theory of rational nature – in so far as outcomes are aimed at and produced as the goals of deliberate agents? Do final causes operate in natural processes in themselves, or only in and through the mind?

Some claim that the early modern Jesuit restriction of final causation to rational nature anticipated an ‘enlightenment’ retreat from appeals to teleology in metaphysics. Not so. The Jesuit theory of general nature remained robustly teleological, but final causation was largely reserved for something metaphysically distinctive - goodness as a productive force of practical reason. This theory of power in normative form - power as a force of reason - was not an anticipation of the ‘enlightenment’ but the development of a very traditional metaphysics of humanity as bearing the image of God - as created rational nature. This theory was vital to Jesuit moral and political theory, and to theology. Its metaphysics of normative power met the systematic opposition of Thomas Hobbes.

Punto focale della collana è l'esercizio della filosofia politica, intesa insieme come tentativo di comprensione del reale e di orientamento della prassi. A tale scopo appare indispensabile interrogare criticamente i concetti e i valori con i quali comunemente si pensa la politica, per verificare se in essi non si manifestino presupposti ingiustificati o addirittura vere e proprie contraddizioni. Egualmente essenziale si mostra l'attraversamento della lezione dei classici, che ci parlano al di là di pur consolidate linee interpretative. L'attenzione alla politica e alle concezioni politiche non può essere disgiunta dalla riflessione sulla struttura speculativa del pensiero e sull'incrocio tra la ricerca filosofica e la molteplicità dei saperi, nelle loro specificità e trasformazioni. Questo intreccio caratterizza i lavori di filosofia politica della collana e motiva l'apertura a contributi più specificamente teoretici, per quanto riguarda non solo il taglio, ma anche il contenuto. È da un lavoro complessivo di tale genere che possono emergere categorie nuove, o nuovamente pensate, attraverso le quali porre il problema politico alla luce della originaria questione della giustizia e rischiare di indicare punti di riferimento nella complessità del nostro presente.

Anachronism is one of the central themes of the discipline of history. This study discusses the problem anachronism from various perspectives. The main aim of the work is to develop ways of identifying anachronisms.

In the firs part I discuss Quentin Skinner's methodological writings' relevance to the problem of anachronism. Skinner's methodological ideas offer both important views and a ground for further research on the topic. In this work I highlight some, partly unnoticed, original insights of Skinner and partly develop his ideas further by pointing out problems and offering a solution to them. The most important section is a rereading of Skinner's article (1969) "Meaning and Understanding In the History of
Ideas" in which Skinner presents a typology of anachronisms which is much richer than has so far been noticed. I demarcate thirteen types of anachronisms instead of the four that commentators usually notice and add four more form Skinner's other works. I also highlight the fact that Skinner already in this article maintains that it is impossible to get totally rid of one's contemporary perspective when studying thepast. I conclude that even though we are tied to the contemporary view it does not
follow that it is impossible to avoid all kinds of anachronism.

In the second part this is done by marking potential points of discontinuity in history of concepts. For this I develop a framework which I call conceptual prism. Its backbone is Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblance of concepts and I use W. B. Gallie's and Quentin Skinner's ideas to fill in the details. Conceptual prism offers a way to analyse concepts both on semantic and pragmatic levels which enables the historian to notice conceptual changes on different levels. The advantages of the conceptual prism are demonstrated by a case study on the concept of liberty. In general I regard that such questions ––sometimes addressed by historians and philosophers–– as how much changes a concept can go through and still remain the same concept and how this can be determined are not informative. The main point is to describe similarities and differences, and concluding whether the concept remains the same or not, does not add any information.

However, I consider that the main tool for a historian who wishes to avoid anachronisms is his or her imagination and that there is no universal method to avoid anachronisms. Every model has to be reconsidered and challenged.

Hay un ideal, una meta que aflora de vez en cuando en la filosofía. Su inspiración es la de barrer con el pasado y tener de las cosas una comprensión que sea enteramente contemporánea. Subyace a ello la atractiva idea de liberarse del peso muerto de los errores y las ilusiones del pasado. El pensamiento se sacude las cadenas. Ello puede requerir cierta austera valentía puesto que, naturalmente, nos hemos puesto cómodos, hemos llegado a sentirnos seguros en la prisión del pasado. Pero es también estimulante.

First, I examine the aspects of the political sovereignty on the Shakespearean stage. In the light of Walter Benjamin’s Origin of the German baroque drama (1928) and of Carl Schmitt’s answer to Benjamin in Hamlet or Hecuba (1956), I show that Shakespeare stages the mortality of the political bodies and the new sovereignty of the plotter. Urged to master the art and the tempo of the plot, the prince is nonetheless unable to prevent the decomposition of the state. Then, drawing on the Elizabethan drama, I question the contemporary effort towards order and synchronization within the city. Hobbes’s theory of political and juridical representation breaks with the mystical conception of political unity and with any inspired legislation, whereas the civil scene is dedicated to the peace between individuals in order to ensure the possibility of a real autonomy in the private sphere. Reciprocally, this autonomy must consolidate the solutions to the problems of melancholy and skepticism conceptualized in Leviathan. While endorsing the tragedy of human condition and of knowledge already put on stage by Shakespeare, Leviathan prevents Schmitt’s exaltation as well as the « pure » violence which, according to Benjamin, lies in the subject’s state of exception. Yet, through the ghosts that Leviathan cannot tolerate within the public sphere, the Shakespearean stage unravels the mechanisms of perpetual order and synchronization without rejecting the law and the project of autonomy.

Keywords : Melancholy – Skepticism – Law – Discipline – Elizabethan drama – Shakespeare – Walter Benjamin – Carl Schmitt – Hobbes – Leviathan – Behemoth

Suarez seems to view the state as arising from some form of contract. Does that mean, as Quentin Skinner has suggested, Suarez is a herald of modern contract theory - of Hobbes and Locke? This paper argues not. There is a deep discontinuity between Suarez and later political theory, arising from a radically different metaphysics of reason and the self. For Suarez, the state does not simply channel or restrain human desires. The state acts as a conduit for, and teacher on behalf of normative power - the power of truth and goodness to move us with the force of reason. The state channels reason rather as the Church channels grace - normative power at the supernatural level. The radical differences between Suarez and modern political theory arise from a profound naturalisation of political theory after Suarez - and a pioneer naturaliser was Hobbes.

This book deals with a fascinating episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who are interested in the nature of modernity and its global origins have a great deal to learn. I believe that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a remarkable project began to take shape in the Sanskritic philosophical world. Early modernity in India consists in the formation of a new philosophical self, one which makes it possible meaningfully to conceive of oneself as engaging the ancient and the alien in conversation. The ancient texts are now not thought of as authorities to which one must defer, but regarded as the source of insight in the company of which one pursues the quest for truth. This new attitude implies a change in the conception of one’s duties towards the past. Having reconstructed the historical intellectual context in detail, and after developing a suitable methodological framework, I review work on the concept of inquiry, the nature of evidence, the self, the nature of the categories, mathematics, realism, and a new language for philosophy. A study of early modern philosophy in India has much to teach us today—about the nature of modernity as such, about the reform of educational institutions and its relationship to creative research, and about cosmopolitan identities in circumstances of globalisation. Readers may also want to consult my essay "Philosophical Modernities: Polycentricity and Early Modernity in India" (Philosophy, 2014).

"Jonardon Ganeri's book is a treasure trove of new insights and fascinating figures that leaves this reader craving much more. He weaves a rich tapestry where ideas come to life, reinvigorating our understanding of Indian philosophy and the important lessons it can teach us today. The book is refreshing and exciting . . . Anyone interested in learning about early modern Indian philosophy will have the best work I know of on the subject in their hands. And those interested more in the philosophical issues than in comparing traditions will also profit greatly. . . a fascinating view of Indian philosophy and how its insights have genuine relevance for contemporary debates. I could not recommend it more highly"
—Thom Brooks, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2012

 “Jonardon Ganeri’s The Lost Age of Reason … is a book that Indologists and students of Indian philosophy cannot afford to ignore” —Andrew Nicholson, Journal of the American Oriental Society 2013.

“[The Lost Age of Reason] is packed with attention to unjustly neglected philosophers, fluent translation of difficult texts, excellent exegesis and a challenging historical argument. This is a volume that deserves to be taken seriously by a broad readership in philosophy […] This volume is highly recommended to Western and to Indian philosophers.”
—Jay L. Garfield, The Philosophical Quarterly 2013.

Il s'agit des deux chapitres consacrés au Léviathan de Hobbes dans ma thèse de doctorat, intitulée "Mélancolie, scepticisme et écriture du pouvoir à l'âge baroque" et soutenue à Bruxelles en juin 2014.

Le premier chapitre (qui correspond au 8ème chapitre de ma thèse) s'intitule "Léviathan ou l'ascèse de la condition historique-naturelle" ; le chapitre suivant s'intitule 'Léviathan ou l'ordre et l'autonomie non imaginaires". Ces deux chapitres analysent le motif de l'autonomie non imaginaire telle que Léviathan en dessine le projet. Cette autonomie serait, en effet, ce à quoi Hobbes aspirait lui-même, comme sujet (comme citoyen et comme individu considéré en son for interne ou dans la sphère privée), ainsi qu'en attestent sa théorie de l'écriture - littéraire et philosophique - et ses démêlés personnels autant qu'intellectuels avec les auteurs de son temps ou des temps passés. C'est le citoyen comme auteur (autonome) du cadre de la représentation politique et juridique et l'individu comme auteur (autonome) d'énoncés littéraires ou philosophiques que Hobbes convoquerait sur une scène jusqu'alors inédite. Et Hobbes aurait vu dans la conversion de certaines peurs imaginaires, des peurs présidant notamment à la rivalité mimétique entre les individus, le ressort de l'existence autonome et de l'institution civile. Il en irait, dans cette perspective, d'une auto-institution du sujet et de la souveraineté modernes, le sujet moderne aspirant à l'autonomie non imaginaire ou le plus possible concrétisée dans le temps du séjour terrestre, à l'abri de la puissance souveraine instituée pour préserver la paix civile et la possibilité de l'autonomie non imaginaire dans la sphère privée – telle serait la raison d’être du contrat dont Léviathan formule les mécanismes.
Plutôt que l'expression d'une sereine ironie, la célèbre formule de Hobbes à propos du « spectre du défunt Empire romain » (4ème partie de Léviathan) signalerait la détermination du philosophe à voir dissiper, dans l'ordre civil et dans les esprits, les assujettissements infinis à des voix elles-mêmes indéfinies, invisibles, inassignables, comme telles spectrales, pour qu'advienne le « vif » ou la possibilité de vivre ce qu'il est réellement permis de vivre (notamment ce qu'il est possible d'apprendre, d’enseigner, de posséder, de transmettre et d'accomplir) dans le temps du séjour terrestre. Il en irait d'un nouveau pacte d'intelligence entre les individus, lequel serait un nouveau pacte de lecture, d'interprétation, d'identification et d'expression - ou de signification - dans l'ordre civil. Celui-ci entérinerait la « société de marché » naissante et le libéralisme des voix ou des énoncés dans la condition sociale naturelle (par opposition à la condition sociale politiquement construite et établie par le contrat), mais dans le but de préserver constamment la possibilité de l'autonomie réelle des individus (qui doit précisément être construite grâce à l'institution de la société civile / politique, à l'issue d'une première conversion salutaire en tant qu'elle provoque le contrat qui institue la société civile / politique). Loin du « panoptikon mélancolique » que constitue la souveraineté baroque dans la perspective de C. Buci-Glucksmann, Hobbes projetterait une scène civile dont l'organisation, structurée par la notion de « représentation », doit favoriser le dés-assujettissement continu - ou continué - à l'égard des puissances imaginaires, via l'assujettissement à la « voix visible » d'un seul souverain (d'une seule autorité juridique et politique). Ainsi, mon travail souligne l'importance de cette autre projection, corrélée à la projection de la scène de la « représentation politique et juridique », que constitue l'expulsion « hors de soi » des « spectres », « démons » et « phantasmes » (qui n'ont, précisément, pas d'existence « hors de l'imagination »).

La pagination, les références et les renvois sont ceux du document original de ma thèse de doctorat (https://www.academia.edu/8177973/M%C3%A9lancolie_scepticisme_et_%C3%A9criture_du_pouvoir_%C3%A0_l%C3%A2ge_baroque). Aussi, l'annexe de documents et la bibliographie succèdent-elles à ces deux chapitres, pour qu'on ne soit pas contraint de consulter la thèse proprement dite.

ÖZ: Bu çalışmada temel kuram çerçevesinden klasik ve temel kuramcılar arasındaki ilişkiye değinilmiştir. Kuram, temel kuram, klasik temel kuram ve çağdaş temel kuram kavramları açıklanmıştır. Ayrıca her iki disiplin içinden Marx, Weber, Durkheim, C. Wright Mills, Derrida ve Foucault gibi örnek düşünürler seçilerek, klasik ve modern dönem analizi yapılmaya çalışılmıştır.
ABSTRACT: In this study, the relation between classical and basic theorists from the basic theory framework is mentioned. The concepts of theory, basic theory, classical fundamental theory and contemporary fundamental theory are explained. In addition, sample thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, C. Wright Mills, Derrida and Foucault were selected from both disciplines and classical and modern analysis were tried to be done.

One of the core principles of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics is that interpretation culminates in application, or appropriation. But what exactly is an appropriation, and what makes some appropriations better than others? I try to shed light on these difficult matters by examining Ricoeur's own appropriation of Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of the narrative unity of a life, and by contrasting it with Richard Rorty's appropriation of the same notion. I argue that Ricoeur's appropriation is more successful than Rorty's, and that the best explanation of its success is that it respects a distinctive norm that governs the activity of appropriation. I conclude by describing this norm, which I call the principle of ultimate compatibility.

GRADUATE DISSERTATION: This is a study of ideas through the critical analysis of terms and the concepts they represent. It is now largely accepted that terms –such as class– are considered anachronistic in their application to periods that precede the term’s first conception. This study follows this tradition, arguing that other terms that have been continually employed throughout the past, change in what they represent over time. To demonstrate this, the thesis concentrates on the ideas surrounding the term ‘peace’ in mid-seventeenth century England.

It uses the contemporary distinctions of ‘a Christian, Universal and Perpetual peace’ espoused within the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a lens to examine the ideas of peace they represent. It identifies a discourse between those who prioritised confessional identity and those who favoured prosperity brought by peace, and follows the shift in dominant use from one to the other.

The thesis uses a hybrid chrono-thematic approach. Each chapter focuses upon one of the three aspirations of peace advocated in the Peace of Westphalia and how they relate to English ideas at the time. By using this approach, it follows the upheaval in the ideas of a religiously-based peace and the subsequent replacement with a legal framework. The core question throughout is: ‘Did contemporaries believe peace in this period could exist in the absence of war?’. Before 1640 the answer appears to be no, by 1660 it changes to yes. The term peace, it argues, represented entirely different ideas both at the start of the period and after its conclusion. These contemporary ideas, it concludes, are also fundamentally distinct from our modern understandings; and so, the term peace should be reconsidered in its application in the study of history.

In the disciplines of political science and international relations, Machiavelli is unanimously considered to be “the first modern realist.” This essay argues that the idea of a realist tradition going from the Renaissance to postwar realism founders when one considers the disrepute of Machiavelli among early international relations theorists. It suggests that the transformation of Machiavelli into a realist thinker took place subsequently, when new historical scholarship, informed by strategic and political considerations related to the transformation of the US into a global power, generated a new picture of the Renaissance. Focusing on the work of Felix Gilbert, and in particular his Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the essay shows how this new interpretation of Machiavelli was shaped by the crisis of the 1930s, the emergence of security studies, and the philanthropic sponsorship of international relations theory.

The question addressed by this article is whether esotericism or secret teachings exist in Machiavelli's writings. This question has been a major point of contention between the commentators of Machiavelli, with many denying the existence of esoteric teaching in the Machiavellian corpus. This article will explore the controversy by studying Machiavelli's own works, and on this basis it will be contended that there are many references and elements present in Machiavelli's works that justify an esoteric interpretation. Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that Machiavelli has esoteric intentions that are different from the surface meaning of his texts. It is therefore necessary for commentators to go beyond the surface of his writings to uncover his deeper teachings.

Cet article se penche sur la question de la présence d'éléments ésotériques ou d'enseignements secrets dans l'oeuvre de Machiavel. Le sujet est un point de désaccord important parmi les commentateurs de l'oeuvre de Machiavel, puisque plusieurs nient l'existence d'un tel enseignement. L'article explore cette controverse en examinant l'oeuvre de Machiavel, pour ensuite montrer qu'il s'y trouve plusieurs références et éléments justifiant une interprétation ésotérique. En conséquence, il est vraisemblable que Machiavel ait eu des intentions ésotériques différentes du propos apparent de ses écrits. Il s'avère donc nécessaire que les commentateurs aillent plus loin que la surface de son oeuvre afin de découvrir ses enseignements cachés.

This paper attempts to reconsider the role that Christian religion played in the political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli, focusing specifically on "The Prince." Despite regnant popular and scholastic opinion, this paper posits that Machiavelli's ideological foundation falls squarely into the theological and moral traditions and scripture of Christianity, and is thus an inseparable element of the political theory of Machiavelli. Further, this work seeks to illustrate the presence of orthodox political and religious beliefs contained within "The Prince" and throughout the Machiavellian corpus, focusing on the socio-political milieu of Renaissance Florence and the broader traditions of humanist thought. In doing so, this paper argues for a much more religiously-compatible understanding of Machiavelli and his political philosophy, even going so far as to place the Christian God at the center of his political advice in "The Prince."

Within the past forty years two approaches to writing history have attracted considerable attention among political theorists-Begriffsgeschichte (associated primarily with Reinhart Koselleck), on the one hand, and Linguistic Contextualism (with Quentin Skinner as its foremost practitioner) on the other. Eschewing Lovejoyian history of ideas for treating concepts as perennial units of analysis, proponents of both approaches put concepts in their 'proper' historical context in order to uncover how agents used them as 'weapons' against their adversaries at a particular moment in time. In short, they treat agency, antagonism, and historical contextualization as cornerstones of their historical analyses.