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The Pen is a Mighty Sword: Quentin Skinner's Analysis of Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Abstract

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Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 I would like the reader to know at the outset that Skinner was my supervisor when I was a graduate student and he continues to be a friend.

2 His early work, ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’ (1965)Google Scholar, contains all these elements. (See pp. 507–9 for a list of Skinner's principal publications.)

3 ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’.

4 For his adaptation of speech–act theory, see the second through to the ninth article under Interpretation and Explanation in the bibliography.

5 For Habermas, Jurgen, see ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’ in Communication and the Evolution of Society, tr. McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).Google Scholar

6 ‘“Social Meaning” and the Explanation of Social Action’, p. 146.Google Scholar

7 ‘Social Meaning’, pp. 144–5, 154–5Google Scholar; The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, I, p. xii.Google Scholar

8 See Machiavelli, pp. 3148Google Scholar; Foundations, I, pp. 180–6.Google Scholar

9 See especially, ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’. (Let ‘text’ stand for any linguistic unit of analysis.)

10 ‘Social Meaning’, p. 154.Google Scholar

11 ‘Social Meaning’, p. 145.Google Scholar

12 Foundations, I, p. xiii.Google Scholar

13 ‘Social Meaning’, p. 142.Google Scholar

14 ‘Social Meaning’, p. 146.Google Scholar

15 ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action’, p. 287.Google Scholar

16 ‘Meaning and Understanding’; pp. 33–5Google Scholar; ‘Social Meaning’, p. 155Google Scholar; ‘Some Problems’, pp. 288–9.Google Scholar

17 Foundations, I, p. xi.Google Scholar

18 Foundations, I, pp. 113–39.Google Scholar

19 Foundations, I, p. 9.Google Scholar

20 See ‘Some Problems’, pp. 289301Google Scholar; and especially ‘Language and Social Change’.

21 ‘Language and Social Change’, p. 576.Google Scholar

22 ‘Language and Social Change’, p. 576.Google Scholar

23 ‘Some Problems’, p. 294.Google Scholar

24 This explicitly Weberian theme is analysed from the perspective of the legitimating agent in ‘Some Problems’ and from the perspective of the legitimating role of the language in ‘Language and Social Change’.

25 ‘Some Problems’, pp. 299300.Google Scholar See ‘The Principles and Practice of Opposition’, for a case study.

26 Foundations, I, pp. xiixiii.Google Scholar

27 Foundations, II, p. 64.Google Scholar

28 ‘Some Problems’, pp. 294–5.Google Scholar

29 ‘Language and Social Change’.

30 Foundations, II, pp. 20113.Google Scholar

31 Foundations, I, p. xi.Google Scholar

32 The exception is John Dunn, who alone saw clearly the challenge Skinner had launched at modern political theory. Dunn, John, ‘The Cage of Politics’, The Listener, 15 03 1979.Google Scholar

33 Foundations, I, p. ix.Google Scholar Not precisely our concept of the state, he carefully notes.

34 Foundations, II, pp. 349, 358.Google Scholar

35 Foundations, I, IIGoogle Scholar, back cover of paperback edition.

36 ‘Some Problems’, p. 281.Google Scholar

37 This conclusion of Foundations is taken up more recently in Machiavelli and Liberty, an unpublished manuscript.

38 Foucault, Michel, ‘Lecture Two: 14 January, 1976’, in Gordon, Colin, ed., Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 92108.Google Scholar

39 In Machiavelli and Liberty, Skinner pits the old republican humanist ideology against recent manipulations of the juridical ideology, including John Rawls's A Theory of Justice.

40 Foundations, II, p. 347.Google Scholar

41 This is summarized in four major steps in the Conclusion of Foundations, II.Google Scholar

42 Foundations, II, pp. 302–49Google Scholar; ‘The Origins of the Calvinist Theory of Revolution’.

43 ‘Meaning and Understanding’, p. 53.Google Scholar

44 Foundations, I, pp. 86–9.Google Scholar

45 Foundations, I, pp. 69112.Google Scholar

46 ‘Language and Social Change’.

47 See ‘Meaning and Understanding’ for exposure of several instances of this, especially pp. 51–2.Google Scholar

48 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, 10Google Scholar and On Certainty, 204–5.Google Scholar

49 Taylor, Charles, ‘Interpretation and the Sciences of Man’, in Dallmayr, F. R. and McCarthy, T. A., eds, Understanding and Social Inquiry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), p. 117Google Scholar; Gadamer, Hans-George, Truth and Method, tr. Glen-Doepel, William (London: Sheed and Ward, 1979), pp. 345431.Google Scholar

50 Foundations, II, pp. 347–8Google Scholar; cf., Foucault, , ‘Lecture Two’, p. 103.Google Scholar

51 von Clausewitz, Carl, On War, ed. Rapoport, A. (Middlesex: Penguin, 1974), p. 402.Google Scholar

52 Foucault, Michel, ‘Truth and Power’, Power/Knowledge, p. 114.Google Scholar