Abstract
In this chapter I examine the claim that it is the retrieval of the author’s intentions which must act as the centre of attention in understanding the writings of the past. Both Skinner and, to a lesser extent, Dunn, subscribe to this view. Dunn, however, tends to be equivocal on this point and changes the ground of necessity from that of an epistemological requirement to a moral obligation. Initially he is definite about the historian’s need to discern the intentions of an author in order to uncover the meaning of a text. Like Skinner, he grounds his prescription on the fact that authors actually do things with words, and to know what they intended to do with them is to know the historical meaning of the text. The appropriate method to achieve this, in Dunn’s view, involves closing the historical context around the text and thus delimiting the boundary between possibility and fantasy. ‘What closes the context in actuality is the intention (and much more broadly, the experiences) of the speaker’.1 In The Political Thought of John Locke, Dunn is quite confident that by these means he can reconstruct the intended meaning of Locke.2 He later becomes much less optimistic about the possibility of equating the meaning of a text with the author’s intentions. In fact, he suggests that there is no coherent theory which has yet managed to characterize the meaning of language and linguistic behaviour, but, nevertheless, ‘always and everywhere people act, behave, mean (intend to assert) exactly as they do and not otherwise’.3
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Notes
Dunn, ‘The Identity of the History of Ideas’. 98.
Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke, xi and 9.
John Dunn, ‘Practising History and Social Science on “Realist” Assumptions’ in Action and Interpertation: Studies in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. Christopher Hookway and Philip Pettit (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 1980 ). 173.
Ibid.. 174.
Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation. 90.
John Dunn. ‘The Cage of Polities’, The Liitener, March 15, 1979, p. 389. This is not to suggest that Dunn sees history purely in intentionalist terms He says, for example, ‘the human will is scarcely the master of the historical process’, in ‘Comparing West African States’ in West African States, ed. John Dunn ( Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978 ), 215.
Skinner, ‘On Two Traditions’, 139; Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke. 58.
Skinner. ‘Some Problems’. 289.
Ibid, 280; Quentin Skinner. ‘Hobbes’ “Leviathan”, The Historical Journal, 330.
Arthur Child, review of J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism: Reprinted with a Study of the English Utilitarians, Ethics, LX (1961), 537.
Philip P. Wiener, ‘Some Problems and Methods in the History of Ideas’, Journal of the History of Ideas. 22 (1961), 537.
Quentin Skinner, ‘The Limits of Historical Explanations’, Philosophy, XLI (1966), 211.
Ibid., 212.
Green leaf, ‘Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation’. 28.
Skinner, ‘The Limits’. 205. Cf. Quentin Skinner, ‘More’s Utopia’. Past and Present, 36–38 (1967). 163. Here he describes the tracing of influences as a ‘non-subject’.
Skinner, ‘The Limits’. 211–212.
Ibid., 214.
Quentin Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory. 8 (1969). 25.
Ibid., 26.
Femia, ‘An Historicist Critique’, 115, 121.
This is an incitment to take Skinner seriously when he says that ‘I have explicitly pointed to Collingwood as a major intellectual influence’. Skinner, ‘Some Problems’, 284.
J. L. Austin. How To Do Things With Words (Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1962), 6. Austin’s example is the uttering of the words ‘I do’ in a marriage ceremony.
Ibid., 63.
Ibid., 99. There is some ambiguity in Austin’s understanding of a locutionary act. For some useful discussions on this matter see Essays On J. L. Austin by Isaiah Berlin et al. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973).
See Austin. How To Do Things With Words, lecture IX.
Ibid., 14–34; J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971), 237–238. ‘The first rule is. then, that the convention invoked must exist and be accepted. And the second rule, also a very obvious one. is that the circumstances in which we purport to invoke this procedure must be appropriate for its invocation’.
J. L. Austin. ‘Performative-Constative’ in The Philosophy oflumguageed. J. R. Searle ( Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1971 ). 14.
Austin, How To Do Things With Words, 116.
Ibid., 25 and 120–121.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1978). par. 43.
Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 37.
Ibid.. 37–39 and 50–51.
Ibid.. 40. 49. 3 and 4 respectively. Cf. Q. Skinner, ‘Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts’, New Literary History, 3 (1971–1972). 404. fn. 37.
See. for example, O. Skinner.‘“Social Meaning” and the Explanation of Social Action’ in Philosophy. Politics and Society, fourth series. 144–145.
Ibid., 142.
Ibid., 142 and 155; Q. Skinner. ‘On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions’, The Philosophical Quarterly. 21 (1971), 13; Q. Skinner, ‘Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts’, 403.
Skinner. ‘Social Meaning’, 145.
Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 47.
Austin., How To Do Things With Words, 103.
P. F. Strawson, ‘Intention and Convention in Speech Acts’ in The Philosophy of language ed. J. R. Scarlc (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971 ), 33.
Q. Skinner, ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’, Philosophical Quarterly. 20 (1970), 127.
Ibid., 122.
Pocock., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, 235–236.
Pocock, ‘Virtues, Rights and Manners’, 363.
Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 47–48
Skinner., ‘Some Problems’, 286.
Q. Skinner., The foundations of Modem Political Thought (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. I. xhr.
Collingwood, An Autobiography. 131; Strauss. Thoughts on Machun-elh, 30. See Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding’. 20–21 for a criticism of Strauss.
This argument appears in various stages of completeness in Q. Skinner, ‘Empirical Theorists of Democracy and Their Critics: A Plague on Both Their Houses’. Political Theory. I (1973), 289–303
Q Skinner, ‘Some Problems’. 293–301
Q. Skinner. ‘The Principles and Practice of Opposition: The Case of Bolingbroke Versus Walpole’ in Historical Perspectives: Studies in Thought and Society ed. N. McKendrick (London, Europa Publications, 1974 ), 93–128
Q. Skinner, ‘The Idea of a Cultural Lexicon’ in Essays in Criticism, XXIX (1979), 209–211
Q. Skinner. ‘Language and Social Change’ in The State of the Language eds. Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks (Berkeley. Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1980 ), 565–566.
Skinner., ‘The Idea of a Cultural Lexicon’, 219
Skinner.,’Language and Social Change’. 574.
Skinner. ‘Some Problems’, 294
Skinner. ‘Motives. Intentions’, 403–404.
J. Richards., L. Mulligan and J. Graham. ‘Intentions and Conventions: A Critique of Quentin Skinner’s Method for the Study of the History of Ideas’. Political Studies. XXVII (1979). 96–97. For further discussion of this article see my ‘A Comment on Mulligan. Richards and Graham’, Political Studies, XXIX (1981). 453–454.
Q. Skinner., ‘Hermeneutics and the Role of History’. New Literary History. 7 (1975–1976). 219.
Femia, ‘An Historicist Critique’, 114 and 132.
Skinner, ‘Motives, Intentions’. 405
Skinner, ‘Some Problems’, 284
Skinner, ‘Hermeneutics’, 219.
Austin., How To Do Things With Words, 8–9 and 147
J. L. Austin. Sense and Sensibilia reconstructed from the manuscript notes by G. J. Warnock (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1962 ). 147.
Skinner, ‘Some Problems’. 289.
Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’. 49.
Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’, 155
Skinner. ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’, 133.
Peter Mew, ‘Conventions on Thin Ice’, The Philosophical Quarterly. 31 (1971), 352–356
Michael Hancher. ‘Three Kinds of Intention’, Modern Language Notes, 87 (1972), 827–851.
Also see A. J. Close, ‘Don Quixote and the “Intentionalist Fallacy”’, British Journal of Aesthetics. 12 (1972), 19–39.
Skinner, ‘Some Problems’. 285 and 287.
See. for example. Q. Skinner. ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’. The Historical Journal. VIII (1965). 152–178
Q. Skinner. ‘The Ideological Context of Hobbes’s Political Thought’, The Historical Journal. IX (1966). 286–317.
Skinner, ‘Some Problems’, 289–301.
Skinner, The Foundations, vol. I, xiii
Q. Skinner, ‘Action and Context’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 52 (1978). 64. ‘For even if his professed principles are not his real motives, he needs to be able to act in such a way that his actions remain compatible with the claim that they were motivated by his principles’.
Skinner, ‘The Idea of a Cultural Lexicon’. 213.
Cf. Skinner, ‘Language and Social Change’, 568.
Skinner. ‘Hermeneutics’, esp. 222–224.
Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding’. 45–46.
Ihid., 46; Skinner. ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’, 137.
Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 37 and 47.
Skinner. ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’, 129
L. Jonathan Cohen. ‘Do Illocutionary Forces Exist?’ The Philosophical Quarterly. 14. (1964). 118–137.
Skinner, ‘On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions’. 3.
Skinner, ‘Motives, Intentions’, 394.
Ibid., 396–397.
Ibid., 402.
Skinner. ‘On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions’, 14.
Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’. 146
Skinner. ‘Hermcneutics’. 218.
Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’. 148.
Skinner. ‘Hermeneutics’, 218.
Anthony Quinton, ‘Politics in the Making’, The Observer, 15th April, 1979, p. 37.
For criticisms relating to the narrowness of Skinner’s context see J. M. Weiner, ‘Quentin Skinner’s Hobbes’. Political Theory, 2 (1974), 258.
Skinner. ‘Action and Context’, 65; Martin Hollis. ‘Action and Context: Say It With Flowers’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Supplementary Volume 52 (1978), 43–56.
Skinner, The Foundation;, Q. Skinner, Machiavelli (Oxford. Oxford University Press. 1980)
Dunn. ‘Practising History’, 175.
John Gunnell. ‘Interpretation and the History of Political Theory: Apology and Epistcmology’. The American Political Science Review, 76 (1982). 319–320.
Tarlton, ‘Historicity, Meaning and Revisionism’, 320
Parekh and Bcrki. ‘The History of Political Ideas’, 167.
Skinner, ‘Some Problems’, 281
Dunn, ‘Practising History’. 166.
Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’, 155
Skinner, ‘Motives. Intentions’, 393.
Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation. 256–257
Dunn. ‘Practising History’. 173.
Sec, for example. Skinner. ‘The Ideological Context of Hobbes’s Political Thought’. 286–317.
Skinner. ‘Social Meaning’, 153.
Skinner, ‘Hermeneutics’, 227–228.
Skinner, ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’, 135–138
Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’, 149–157.
See. for example. Peter Winch. ‘Understanding A Primitive Society’, American Philosophical Quarterly. 1 (1964). 307–324.
See. for example. Alasdair Maclntyre. ‘Is Understanding Religion Compatible With Believing’ in Faith and the Philosophers ed. John Hick (London, Macmillan, 1964 ), 115 – 133
Alasdair Maclntyre, ‘The Idea of a Social Science’ in The Philosophy of Social Explanation ed. Alan Ryan (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1973 ), 15–32.
Martin Mollis, ‘Reason and Ritual’ in The Philosophy of Social Explanation ed. Ryan. 46.
Skinner. ‘Social Meaning’, 150.
Skinner. ‘Some Problems’, 281.
Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 3, 4 and 39. Subsequent page references to this article appear in parentheses in the text, except where confusion might arise. It is appropriate here to point out that such historians at Cambridge as John Wallace, Duncan Forbes and Peter Laslett played a part in fostering a climate of hostility towards traditional approaches to the study of the history of political thought and made the intellectual atmosphere more conducive to the development of the methodological criticisms of Pocock, Skinner and Dunn. Laslett. for example, formulated a rudimentary list of criticisms of the way the history of political philosophy had been generally studied, and all these criticisms are taken up and developed by Skinner.
Sec Peter Laslett, ‘History of Political Philosophy (Introduction through Kant)’ The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (London and New York. Macmillan and the Free Press. 1967), vol. 6, pp. 370–371.
These injunctions are presented as rules for aspiring historians in Skinner, ‘Motives, Intentions’, 406–407
Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’. 154.
Skinner, Machiavelli, 88.
Austin, How To Do Things With Words, 106. fn. 1.
Cf. Keith Graham. ‘How Do Illocutionary Descriptions Explain?’ Ratio, XXII (1981), 124–135
Keith Graham, ‘Illocution and Ideology (How to do more things with words than you realize)’ in Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vol. 4, Social and Political Philosophy ed. John Mcphan and D-H. Ruben ( Harvester. London. 1981 ), 153–194.
Also see Ian Shapiro, ‘Realism in the Study of the History of Ideas’, History of Political Thought, III (1982). 535–578.
Cf. J. L. Austin, ‘Three Ways of Spilling Ink’ in Philosophical Papers. 272–287.
For an interesting, yet highly contentious, theory of retrospective influence see Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry ( New York, Oxford University Press. 1981 ).
Gadamer. Philosophical Hermeneutics, 9.
Gadamer. Truth and Method. 264.
Ibid., 204–205.
Ihid., 265.
Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 3.8–11.15.22,29, 133. 146. 154–156. 160-161, 216–218 and 230. Subsequent references to this book appear in parentheses in the text, except where confusion might arise.
Paul Rkrocur. Interpretation Theory, Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press. 1976), 79.
Skinner. Meaning and Understanding. 7. 8. 32. 40 and 41.
F. R. Leavis. The Common Pursuit (Harmondsworth, Penguin. 1962). 200 and 203 respectively. Also see pp. 183. 187. 194. 225. 228 and 230
Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding’. 3.
F. R. Leavis, ‘The Responsible Critic: Or the Function of Criticism at any Time’, Scrutiny, XIX (1952–1954), 174. Although Leavis says here that ‘some of the most essential scholarly knowledge can be gained’ where it can be assumed that the text ‘duly pondered, will yield its meaning’, he also says that this will reveal ‘the need, here, there and elsewhere for special knowledge’. ibid., 163.
Skinner. ‘Meaning and Understanding’. 5.
Doyle, A History of Political Thought. 7
Wolin. Politics and Vision, 8.
Doyle, A History of Political Thought, 14 and 15.
Wolin. Politics and Vision, 27. 243 and 244.
Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’. 52.
Strauss. The City and Man, 11
Plamenalz. Man and Society, vol. 1. xi.
Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’, 50.
Oakeshott, review of Lockc, Two Treatises of Government. 99; Oakcshott, ‘Thomas Hobbes’. 227; Cf. Collingwood, The New Una than, vi; Collingwood. An Essay on Philosophical Method ( Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1933 ). 226.
Dante, On World Government, trans. Herbert W. Schneider: Introduction by Dino Bignoriari (Indianapolis, Bobbs Merrill, 1957), xi.
R C. Cross and A. D. Woozley, Plato’s Republic: A Philosophical Commentary (London, Macmillan, 1964), v and xiv–xv.
Bowie. Western Political Thought, 9 and passim.
Plamenatz. Man and Society, vol. I. xiv; vol. II. 9–11.
Skinner. Machiavelli. 24.
Skinner. The Foundations, vol. I, 48.
Skinner. Machiavelli, 28.
Skinner. The Foundations, vol. II. 239.
Ibid., vol. I. 73 and 90.
Ibid., vol. I. 200. Skinner also maintains that Suarez and Rousseau addressed themselves to the ‘question about what serves to legitimate the act of inaugurating a commonwealth’. In this respect they are described as articulating the ‘same problem’. The Foundations, vol. II, 151.
Ibid., vol. II. 2. 343. 353-354. Cf. 227. Also see 353. 156. 165, 231 and 338 respectivley.
Q. Skinner. ‘The Origins of the Calvmist Theory of Revolution’ in After the Reformation: Essays in Honour of J. H. Hexter, ed., Malament, p. 309.
Skinner, The Foundations, vol. II. 353.
Skinner, The Foundations, vol. II. 349. Locke’s ideas arc frequently used as definitive statements of doctrines against which earlier attempts to formulate the same ideas are compared.
SeeThe Foundations, vol. II. 119, 122, 153, 156. 158–159. 163. 165, 174–175. 239. 301. 338 and 347–348.
Skinner. ‘The Origins of the Calvinist Theory of Revolution’, 310.
Skinner. The Foundations, vol. II. 65 and 81.
Ibid., vol. II. 89.
Ibid., vol. II. 65.
Ibid.,vol. II. 239.
Ibid., vol. II. 338.
Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’. 24.
Skinner, The Foundations, vol. I, 34,91,213 and vol. II. 19 respectivlcy. Also see vol. I, 149 and 242; vol. II, 22, 24, 26, 214 and 337.
Cf. Preston King’s view that much of Skinner’s exegesis is ‘textualist’ in character. Proton King. ‘The Theory of Context and the Case of Hobbcs’ in The History of Ideascd. Preston King (London, Croom Helm, 1983). For further interesting discussions of Skinner’s work sec Howard Warrander, ‘Political Theory and Historiography
A Reply to Professor Skinner on Hohhes’, The Historical Journal, 22 (1979)
James H. Tully. ‘Review Article: The Pen U a Mighty Sword: Qucntin Skinner’s Analysis of Politics’, The British Journal of Political Science, (1983)
Nathan Tarcov, ‘Quentin Skinner’s Method and Machiavclli’s Prince’, Ethics, 92 (1982)
John Keane, ‘On the “New” History: Quentin Skinner’s Proposal for a New History of Political Ideology’, Telos, 47 (1981)
Antony Black. Skinner On. Skinner On ‘The Foundations of Modern Political Thought’ Political Studies. XXVIII (1980)
Deborah Baumgold. ‘Political Commentary on the History of Political Theory’, American Political Science Review. 75 (1981).
Julian H. Franklin’s and Judith Shklar’s reviews of Skinner, The Foundations, Political Theory, 7 (1979), 554 and 599 respectivley.
Austin, Philosophical Papers, 274.
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Boucher, D. (1985). The View From the Inside: Skinner and the Priority of Retrieving Authorial Intentions. In: Texts in Context. Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5075-7_6
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