Quentin Skinner in Context

Author(s): Emile Perreau-Saussine

Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 106-122
Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of
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The Review of Politics 69 (2007), 106-122.
Copyright C University ofNotre Dame
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670507000332 Printed in theUSA

Quentin Skinner inContext

Emile Perreau-Saussine

Abstract: As Quentin Skinner argues, political thinkers are best read in historical
context. But in what context do Skinner's own interpretations of the history of
political thought belong? This essay places his denunciation of grand narratives in
the context of the decline of Whig interpretations of history and presents his
Republicanism as a substitute source of legitimacy in thewake of the collapse of
the British Empire and of the loss of social influence of Christianity. This essay
also argues that Skinner's inquiries cannot be understood solely in the light of
their historical context. His is linked with his republican
historical work
philosophy. The relation between his concept of liberty and his contextualism
shows the dependence of his contextualist methodology on specific philosophical
commitments.

Contextualism in Context

FromHegel onward, ithas been somethingof a commonplace topoint out

thatpolitical thinkers,inorder tobe interpreted
properly,need tobe placed
in theiroriginalhistoricalcontext.The German historicisttraditionexplored
this approach at the end of the nineteenth and in the first third of the twenti
eth century, many examples of its fruitfulness
offering (and importantlimit
ations).A Cambridge historianof political thoughtlikeJohnNeville Figgis,
writing in the early nineteen hundreds, seems to take the importance of
context for granted. Why is it, then, that in the 1960s and 1970s, Quentin
Skinner's aim to put political ideas "in context" seemed to be an exhilarating,
provocativeprogram forCambridge history?
The answer is tied up with nineteenth-centuryWhig interpretations of
history,describing contemporaryEngland as the culminationof a happy
historyof freedom,thanksto theReformationand theGlorious Revolution
of 1688.The shortcomingsof suchWhig interpretations were denounced by
HerbertButterfieldin a book published in 1931.As a historian,Butterfield
condemnedWhig interpretations for theirbad scholarship.As a Christian
who kept the Fall in mind, Butterfield had no sympathy for any ideology
of progress. It was a mistake to privilege certain parts of history simply
because they appear to point to the future or, more generally, to study the
past with reference to the present: "[T]he truth of history is no simple
matter, all packed and parcelled ready for handling on the market

106

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 107

place."' Seldom is one academic book enough tokill a nationalmythology,

still less themythologyof a nationwhich, in the1930s, stilldominated the
world. Even on Butterfield'sown home turf,an "essentialWhiggishness"
remained in the teachingof one of his successors in theRegius Chair of
History inCambridge,GeoffreyElton.2
PeterLaslett's criticaledition ofLocke's TwoTreatisesofGovernment (1960)
offeredanotherCambridge critique of theWhig interpretation. Prior to
Laslett's edition, theTwo Treatiseshad been viewed as a justification
of the
Glorious Revolution,but Laslettwas able to show that theessay had been
written longbefore itwas printed,about 1681,when theWhigs with whom
Locke was associatedwere planning somethingsignificantly more violent
than the transfer of power that took place a few years later. The Two
Treatisescould not be a retrospectivejustificationforthe revolution.3
Locke
was not, afterall, the foundingfatherofmodem libertysimpliciter, but a
more complex figure who had to be put and to remain "in context"-an
obvious point thatwas, nevertheless,supposed to carrysomeweight at the
time.Quentin Skinnerremembers how "talkingtoLaslettabout thisscholarly
discovery,Iwas verystruckby how he himselfsaw itswider significance.
He
felt thathe had shown Locke's treatiseto be essentiallya party-political
pamphlet. He took it that, by showing how it had arisen out of a specific
political crisis, he had demoted it from the canon by casting doubt on its
ahistoricalcharacterand significance."4
Laslett, likeButterfield,taughtin theHistoryFaculty inCambridge.There,
young dons, John Dunn andQuentin Skinner, were quick to takeup Laslett's
approach,writing contextualhistoriesto show the limitsofWhig interpret
ations of history. For Skinner, "the 'Whig' ideology indeed obviously
amounted neither to genuine historynor to systematicpolitical theory.
Itwas more likepropaganda inhistoricdress."5As a historianof political
thought,Skinnerquicklymade a name forhimself,arguing in an elegant
had tobe understood in theircontext(something
prose thatpolitical thinkers
that should have been taken for granted), and that no grand narrative was

1HerbertButterfield, TheWhig InterpretationofHistory (London: G. Bell and Sons,

1931), 132.
2PatrickCollinson, "Elton," OxfordDictionary ofNational Biography (Oxford:Oxford
University Press, 2004), 18, 351.
3JohnLocke, Two Treatises ofGovernment,ed Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1960), Introduction and Notes.
4"An Interviewwith Quentin Skinner," Finnish YearbookofPolitical Thought (2002), 6:
42. Cf. James Tully, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 327, n. 12; J.Pocock, "Quentin Skinner. The History
of Politics and the Politics ofHistory," Common Knowledge 10, no. 3 (2004): 534-39.
5Q. Skinner, "History and Ideology in theEnglish Revolution," TheHistorical journal
8, no. 2 (1965): 178.

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108 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

available (somethingthatsounded exciting,perhaps even "post-modem," in

theCambridge of thattime.)6
When giving an account of the rootsof his own contextualism,Skinner
emphasizes the influenceof Collingwood's Autobiography, as well as the
work of PeterLaslett,Duncan Forbes, and JohnPocock.He is also keen to
with what he saw as thecrude intellectualhistorythat
stresshis frustration
had become fashionablein the1950s, an intellectualhistorythatowed little
toGerman historicismor toFiggis.Thismight explainwhy he foundcontex
tualism attractive, but not why he found it so attractive. For him and for those
around him, therewas anothermotivation, besides good scholarship.For
young dons, contextualismofferedan exhilarating way to articulatethedis
tance theyfeltfromtheEngland of theirown parentsand grandparents.
As I have said,Butterfieldhad not quite killed off
Whig interpretations.In
1931,Englandwas stilltoo formidablea nation toabandon easily itsnational
mythology.However, in the early 1960s, after a long relative economic
decline, two costlyWorld Wars, the loss of an empire,and thedecline of its
established church,England's national mythology had lostmuch of its
capacity to seduce.
Empire-buildingsatisfiedthedesires of English oligarchs foracquisition,
offeringthemnew resourceswith which tomeet thedemands of thosewho
stay at home. The popular success of the empire, symbolized inVictoria's
titleas Empress of India,had added a powerful source of legitimacyto the
moral grounding traditionallyprovided to the state by the established
church. In the 1960s, however, the empire shrank away. Christianityhad
already lostsome of itspoliticaland intellectualimportancein thenineteenth
century.In 1924,Keynes suggested that the decade of the 1860s would
probably "be regardedby historiansof opinion as the criticalmoment at
which Christian dogma fellaway fromthe serious philosophicalworld of
England, or at any rate of Cambridge."7 The late 1950s and early 1960s
turned out to mark a different watershed. Christian dogma fell away not
from"the serious philosophicalworld" or fromthe statenarrowlyunder
stood,but fromsocietyat large.8As the social authorityof theestablished
church was withering away and as the discourse on the secularization of
societywas becoming fashionablein theuniversities,alternativesources of
legitimacyhad to be found.For disillusioned academics of the previous

6J.-F.Lyotard, La Condition Post-Moderne (Paris:Minuit, 1979).

M. Keynes, Essays in Biography,vol. 10 of The CollectedWritings ofJohn
7J. Maynard
Keynes, ed. E. Johnson (London: Macmillan, 1971-1982), 168.
8In these years, the trialofD.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterleysymbolized powerfully
Christianity's loss of social influence. C.H. Rolph, ed., The Trial of Lady Chatterley:
Regina c. Penguin Books Ltd. The Transcript of the Trial (London, Privately printed,
1961). See, for instance, Bryan Wilson, Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological
Comment (London: Penguin, 1966) and Callum Brown, Death of Christian Britain
(London: Routledge, 2000).

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 109

generation, the Soviet Union offered an alternative empire and the

Communist Partyan alternativechurch.9But in 1956,Khrushchev'scritique
of Stalin and theoccupation of Budapest discredited these substitutesfor
empireand church.
The decline of theBritishEmpire and thedecline of itsCommunist rival
were crises forthegrand politicalmythologies stilldominant in the 1950s,
for theWhig interpretations of history that had underpinnedmodem
British self-understanding,and for theMarxist-Leninist philosophy of
history that had attracted exasperated left-leaningintellectuals.Both
interpretationsofhistoryhad promisedhistory'send in freedomand happi
ness. The collapse of theBritishEmpire and the decline of theAnglican
Church were a blow for the romannational,while the collapse of the
Stalinistliewas a blow forinternational
eschatology.
Skinner and his generation reacted in a straightforward manner to the
collapse of imperialand communistpoliticalmythologies: theykept the
historicismand dropped thegrand narratives.Born in 1940, Skinner is a
member of the generation keen to refashion the England famously
described by Orwell as "a family,a ratherstuffy Victorian family,
with
not many black sheep in it, but with all its cupboards burstingwith
skeletons.... It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted
and most of thepower is in thehands of irresponsibleuncles and bedrid
den aunts."l0Born of Scottishparents but educated in England, Skinner
was not insensitive to the fate of the British Empire, upon which his
familywas dependent for its living.Sixteen at an important moment in
thehistoryof its decline, theSuez Crisis, he had "opposed thepolicy of
the Eden government," and more generally, "had quarreled with his
fatheron British colonial policy."11As forChristianity,
he became such a
keen reader of Russell's History ofWestern Philosophythat "for a long
time, I knew many passages from it almost by heart": "I shall never
forgetthe electrifyingeffectit had upon me."12 Skinner seems to have
remained faithfulto Russell's brand of atheism. "Speaking as a modern
unbeliever," he writes without apparent regret,"a lot of what theists
claim about their faith strikesme as unintelligible."Many eminent
Cambridge historians of the previous generation (Owen Chadwick,
Ullmann,Knowles, Butterfield, Kitson Clark among others)were practicing
Christians.With a certaintycharacteristicof the zealous atheist although

9Moses Finley, for example, emigrated to Britain after coming under attack forhis
left-wingopinions in the committee run by JosephMcCarthy. Finley was appointed
lecturer in classics at Cambridge in 1955.
10George Orwell, England Your England and Other Essays (London: Seeker and
Warburg, 1953), 210.
11KariPalonen, Quentin Skinner:History, Politics, Rhetoric (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2003), 11.
12"An Interviewwith Quentin Skinner," Finnish YearbookofPolitical Thought: 36.

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110 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

unusual in a historianof earlymodern Europe, Skinner expands that "to

say all this is not merely to say that theism must certainly be false; it is
also to say that itmust be grossly irrationalto believe otherwise.To say,
however, thata belief is grossly irrationalis to say thatanyonewho con
tinues to affirmitmust be sufferingfromsome serious formof psychologi
cal blockage or self-deceit."
13
Ifneitherthechurchnor theempirewould do, towhat could a youngman
turningtwentyin 1960 devote himself?Stalinismwas no longeran option,
nor (for anyone historicallyminded) was a Marxism reduced to a self
righteoustheoryofhistoricalinterpretation.The Labour Partywas not attrac
tiveeither:ithad become complacentlysatisfied with thewelfare-stateithad
long sought,and theclass strugglewas being transformed by theabsorption
ofmost of theworking class intoa vastmiddle class.14Most young people
aspired to somethingmore, wanting to overcome thenarrowness of bour
geois private life, to create a new type of social bond. Hence, the call of the
new left,which flourishedaround that time: "Out of Apathy!"15Neither
theWhig exaltation of the private nor the Soviet critique of the private
seemed to offeran honorable way forward:Skinner's generationhad to
findanothersolution.Focusing on contextensured amore accurate scholar
ship,while attemptingto stay clear of any politicalmythology,old or new.
But a contextual focus could also seem tomake the history of political
thoughtirrelevantto thepresent.
JohnDunn's account of Locke's political thoughtemphasized its very
limited relevance to the contemporaryworld. Locke's ideas were insuffi
cientlydemocratic (conceding only a very limited role to actual popular
consent)and much too religiousfora secularmodern age.16Dunn's indict
ment of Locke corresponded to thisvision of a new world. The England of
the 1960s, itwas hoped, would be a much more democratic society, and
one inwhich the social influence of the church had become limited. Dunn's
book on Locke suggests thatthereis littletobe learned fromhim. Similarly,
Skinner's paradoxically entitled FoundationsofModern Political Thought
(1978) suggests that thereare no foundationstomodern political thought.
Implyingthatone's subject is ultimatelyof no relevance to one's own time
and politics is somewhat dispiriting.Trying to resistthatconclusion,John
Dunn wrote an article dedicated to "What Is Living and What Is Dead in

13Q. Skinner, "Who Are "We"? Ambiguities of theModern Self," Inquiry 34, no. 2
(1991): 148. Cf. Maurice Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine inModern England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3: 619-21.
14RalfDahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1959).
15E.P. Thompson, ed., Out ofApathy (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960).
16John Dunn, The Political Thought ofJohnLocke:An Historical Account of theArgument
of theTwo Treatises ofGovernment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969),
reviewed by Q. Skinner inAmerican Historical Review 75 (1969): 489-90.

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 111

thePoliticalTheoryof JohnLocke?"17Skinneralso seems tohave felttheneed

tomake his work and the thinkers he was studying relevant to his students
and contemporaries.
In his FoundationsofModern Political Thought,Skinner recognizes his
intellectualdebts to JohnDunn and toAlasdair Maclntyre.18Dunn's and
Maclntyre's intellectualjourneyscontrastwith Skinner's.
With characteristic
skepticism,Dunn continued to criticizecontemporarypoliticalmythologies,
revealingtheweakness of existingdefensesof liberaldemocracyand demol
ishing themwith perhaps an ounce of despair.19In a characteristic
combat
againsthis own skepticaltendencies,Maclntyre has turnedfromhis earlier
Trotskyism to become a Roman Catholic and a Thomist, giving a new
impulse to virtue ethics.Under the influenceof Pocock's Machiavellian
Moment (1975),and in reactiontoMargaret Thatcher's revivalof theWhig
idea ofnegative freedom,Skinnerbecame a republican.
Where does Skinner leave an England thathas lost itsempirebut not yet
found a new role? The British state has long owed itsmoral authority to its
associationwith theAnglican Church. And democracy developed in the
British Isles in significantpart thanks to the empire ithad found for the
advantage of itsoligarchsand thevanityof itspeople.What could serve as
contemporarysurrogates for church and empire in the British context?
Skinner'swork has the greatmerit of raising the question, but it goes
further.It does not acknowledge passively the end of the empire and
Anglican Church's loss of influence:itwelcomes both and suggests thatone
should go much furtherin the destructionofwhat has made theUnited
Kingdom great.Skinnerwants to inviteus tobemore politicallyresponsible,
tobecomemore committedcitizens, with amore powerfulsenseof civicduty.
In a world where he can see neither an empire nor a place for the church, he is
calling forcivicvirtue.He ishoping thathisworkwill challengeour political
imaginationand reinvigorate his blase students.
Ifhis students do focus on the context as much as he advises, theywill lose
thegrandperspectivethatSkinnerowes tohis own teachers.20Alternatively,
if
what will thisinvolve?
his studentsaccepthis own grand narrative,

17J.Dunn, "What Is Living andWhat IsDead in thePolitical Theory of JohnLocke?"

in J.Dunn, InterpretingPolitical Responsibility:Essays 1981-1989 (Cambridge: Polity
Press), 9-25. The title alludes to B. Croce's What Is Living andWhat Is Dead in the
Philosophy ofHegel (1907).
18Q. Skinner, The Foundations ofModern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1978), 1: x (n. 2).
Dunn, Western Political Theory in theFace of theFuture (Cambridge: Cambridge
19J.
University Press, 1979).
20JudithShklar, "The Foundations ofModern Political Thought,by Quentin Skinner,"
Political Theory7, no. 4 (1979): 549-52. JohnDunn, "The Cage of Politics," The Listener
15 (March 1979): 389-90. Kenneth Minogue, "Method in Intellectual History:
Quentin Skinner's Foundations" [1981] inTully, ed.,Meaning and Context, 176-93.

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 112 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

RepublicanisminContext

Still sufferingfromthe effectsof totalitarianism,modem Europeans often

associate the nation-statewith Nazism and, in reaction,often defend a
radical individualism.Many contemporarypolitical theoristsoffersophisti
cated versionsof personal autonomy,but ratherunsophisticated theoriesof
Most would struggleto explain, forinstance,thepatriotismdis
citizenship.
played by citizenof theUnited Statesand ofGreatBritain in thename of inde
pendence and freedom.These great democracies showed that theircitizens
could act as citizensworthy of the name and that liberalismcannot be
reduced to thecultof theprivate,to the indefiniteaccumulationofwealth at
theexpense of thepublic sphere.Accordingly,some political thinkershave
contended that theproper response to totalitarianismis republicanpartici
pation. Far fromassociatingNazism with thenation-state, Hannah Arendt
explains in TheOriginsofTotalitarianismthatNazism was a consequencenot
of thetriumphofpoliticalparticipationbut of itsdecay.Far fromofferingindi
vidualism as an answer to totalitarianism, she associates itwith the very
destructionof social and political bonds that led to totalitarianism.
Today,
influentialscholars likePocock (indebted toArendt), Skinner,and Gordon
Wood condemn theshallowness of the individualismand cosmopolitanism
21
dominatingpolitical thoughtinmany universities. They criticizea narrow
liberalism
with too stronga focuson theprivate sphere.
For a country like theUnited Kingdom, tired of its former desire to trans
cend geographicand spiritualboundaries, a renewedcivichumanism could
be seen as an attractive solution. Republicanism seemed to fit the demands of
a secular and democratic society. It offered equality as an alternative to the
hierarchies of the empire, and the earthly city as an alternative to the city of
God. Since thehierarchicalstructuresof imperialBritainwere being dis
mantled, and since religion would no longer do, citizenship had to take
over. With the end of the Empire came equality and democracy. But what
kind of democracy?An oligarchic liberaldemocracy built around private
propertyand theremainsof theestablishment?
Or amore radicallyparticipa
tory democracy? For republicans, an opportunity awaited the young and
thebold: building a much more demanding political regime,a democracy
founded on more than a minimal agreement.
Skinner'shistoryofpolitical thoughtoffersan alternativetoWhig interpret
ations of history,substitutinga republicanfocuson democracy foraWhig
focus on commerce and liberalism, and a history of the decline of freedom
fora historyof its triumph.
Opposed to theWhig interpretation
of history,
Skinner is also opposed to the Whig theory of freedom as absence of

21GordonWood, The Creation of theAmericanRepublic (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth

Carolina Press, 1969). JohnPocock, TheMachiavellian Moment: FlorentinePolitical Thought
and theAtlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton,NJ: PrincetonU.P., 1975).

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 113

constraint. We "must takeour duties seriously,and insteadof tryingtoevade

anythingmore than 'theminimum demands of social life'we must seek to
discharge our public obligations as wholeheartedlyas possible."22His call
for civic virtue aims to nurture social and political bonds among the
English people in a post-colonial and post-Christiancontext.Since his
English contemporarieswere not attractedby republicanism,and since
therehas been littlerepublicanisminEngland in recentcenturies,Skinner
had to lookback to theseventeenthcentury. And since the"English republi
cans"were lesskeen on popular participationthanon representative govern
ment, he turnedinsteadto theItalianrepublicsof theMiddle Ages where he
found themodel he has been keen to extol.23
Inhis historic
work,Skinneroscillatesbetweena commitmentto republican
ismand thesafehaven ofmodern relativism. Wearing his contextualist hat,he
isverycarefulto explain:"I am not reallyinterestedin takingsides ... I have
veryseldom,as a historian,askedmyselfwhether thebeliefsI studyare true."
But a fewlineslater, puttingon his republicanhat,he ishappy toconcludewith
an indictment: "Hobbes is, ifyou like,theculpritin thedestructionof the idea
which was so centralto theRenaissancemoral philosophy,thatthecontrast
concept forfreedomis slavery."24 There is,afterall, a "culprit."In the three
volume collectionof his past articles (Visionsof Politics,1, 2, and 3, 2002),
Skinner leaves us with alternativesdeveloped fiveyears before in Liberty
before Liberalism,alternativeswhich summarizehis "vision of politics": an
appealing, republicanMachiavelli or a dreadfully (fascinatingly)anti
republicanHobbes.25
ButMachiavelli and Hobbes are not the starkopposites Skinnerwould
have thembe. Itwould be foolishto conflatetheposition of the sixteenth
centuryFlorentine Machiavelli with thatof theseventeenth-century English
Hobbes. Their styles could not contrastmore; the historical contexts in
which theywrite differ;the political options theyofferdiverge. Inmany
respects, Machiavelli isclearlyrepublicanandHobbes clearlyanti-republican.
Machiavelli bringspoliticalglory to thefore;Hobbes does his best toexpunge
it.However, historiansof political thoughthave long recognized thatthere
were stronglyMachiavellian features in Hobbes's thought,or, to put it
more anachronistically, stronglyHobbesian featuresinMachiavelli. "Itwas

22Q. Skinner, "The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty," inG. Bock, Q. Skinner, and
M. Viroli, Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), 308.
23Q. Skinner, The Foundations of
Modern Political Thought,and LibertybeforeLiberalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also Q. Skinner and Martin
van Gelderen, Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
24"An Interviewwith Quentin Skinner," Cogito 11, no. 2 (1997): 76.
25Volume 1 is concerned with methodology, Volume 2with Machiavelli and repub
licanism, and Volume 3 with Hobbes's world.

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 114 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Hobbes who first turned the Prince into everyman and explored the
Machiavellianism ofeverydaylife."26 Both thinkers
give rulersunconstrained
leeway toact forthegood of thepeople; both emphasize theneed fortheruler
to be cruelwhen necessary.Machiavelli's Prince, likeHobbes's Leviathan,
could be described as an "absolutist" ruler.Both thinkersare oftenseen as
thequintessentialrealistsfortheirapproach to the internationalworld. The
effortto reconcileHobbes and Machiavelli has been a crucial concern for
philosophers fromMontesquieu onward. Skinner acknowledges that "the
question of how to reconcilethesedivergentperspectivesremainsa central
problem in contemporarypolitical thought."27 Far fromcontributingto this
reconciliation,however,he does his best tomake it impossible.
On theall importantquestion of the relationbetween The Princeand the
Discorsi, Skinner is evasive. Still present in his small but balanced
Machiavelli (1981), the toweringfigureof thePrince tends todisappear from
hisMachiavellian republicanism.The Princedisappearswhen Skinnerstarts
developingmore explicitlyhis own republicanalternative.Is itbecause the
Prince seems so difficultto reconcile
with our own imageofwhat a participa
torydemocracy is supposed to look like? Is it because thisPrince is so
obviouslymanipulative, so keen to decide thingsforhimselfindependently
of thepeople?
Skinner'sopposition betweenHobbes and republicansalso leads him to
leave aside the fact thatHobbes himself was, ifnot also an atheist, at least a
theistforwhom religionshould be subordinated to politics: a significant
common point with Machiavelli, which should deserve ample comment.
Writing on the English Civil War, Skinner draws a radical opposition
betweenHobbes and republicanswhom Skinner describes as disciples of
Machiavelli. This understateshow importantChristian faithwas formost
republicans: the Civil War was, above all, a Puritan Revolution.28As
opposed to theatheistMachiavelli, Skinner's so-calledMachiavellians were
more often thannot Calvinists.How faithfultoMachiavelli can a Calvinist
be? Skinnerneitherasks nor answers thisquestion.

26MichaelWalzer, "On theRole of Symbolism inPolitical Thought," Political Science

Quarterly 82, no. 2 (1967): 203. Richard Tuck: "The 'Modern' School of Natural Law
[Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf] arose not out of a critique or repudiation of the
Renaissance, but out of a profound sympathywith some of the fundamental themes
of Renaissance political and moral thought" (The Rights ofWar and Peace [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999], 5). Cf. Pierre Manent, An IntellectualHistory of
Liberalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1994), 10-38.

27Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2002), xi.
28S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution (London: Longman,
Green and Co, 1876); C.H. Firth,Cromwell's Army (London: Methuen, 1902);Michael
Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1965); JohnMorrill, TheNature of theEnglish Revolution (London: Longman, 1993).

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 115

Skinner also contrastsHobbes's fundamentaldistrustof political partici

pation with what he calls theneo-Roman republican idea of liberty. This
leads him to neglect themost importantfocus shared by Hobbes and
Machiavelli: a commitmentto theidea ofpolitical representation.
The repub
licanssidedwith parliament;Hobbes was undoubtedly thefirst great theorist
Skinnerhas writtenextensivelyon thesematters,
of political representation.
which makes itall themore strikingthathe underplays theextenttowhich
Hobbes and the republicanscan be seen as cofoundersof representative
government.
Why does Skinnerwant toplace his oppositionbetween thesetwo thinkers
at thecenterofhis vision ofpolitics?Skinner,a giftedrhetorician
who can be
very clear when he wants to be, does not give a clear answer to this question.
The crucial issues forhim seem to involve the role and thehistoricityof
the state.29Inwhat is perhaps hismost personal piece ofwriting,Skinner
strikinglydescribes the birth of the state as the "earliestmajor counter
revolutionary movement inmodern European history."30 Does sidingwith
Machiavelli againstHobbes mean thatone should have no time for the
state?Skinnerextols republicanparticipationnotwith but against the state
and representativedemocracy.In this sense, his republicanismechoes the
politicalaestheticismof thestudentmovement of the1960s.
Skinner emphatically is not a political anarchist. But he seems to be
attractedto a romanticanarchism.His interpretation ofMachiavelli margin
alizesMachiavelli's fascinationwith evil.31Reading Skinner'sworks, it isdif
ficultto sense that"there is evidentlysomethingpeculiarlydisturbingabout
whatMachiavelli said or implied[,]somethingthathas caused profoundand
lastinguneasiness"32 or to recall thewell-documented, sixteenth-century
interpretation ofMachiavelli as devilish. "Old Nick" disappears. (It is only
afterNiccolo Machiavelli that the devil is so called.)33Why Machiavelli
has been seen for so long as the founder of the reason of state is difficult to
understand (even if the expression itselfdoes not occur inMachiavelli).34
Machiavelli describeshowmuch betterit is forcitizenstodefend themselves
and not to depend on others, but he is also keen to show thatmost citizens
prefernot to do theirduty-hence theneed foran exactingprince.Skinner

29Q. Skinner, The Foundations ofModern Political Thought,vol. 2, 349-58.

30Q. Skinner, "The State of Princes to thePerson of theState," Visions ofPolitics,vol. 2,
405. Cf. Michael Oakeshott, "Review of The Foundations ofModern Political Thought,"
TheHistorical Journal23, no. 3 (1980): 451-53.
31For instance, Q. Skinner on Machiavelli, 16-18, 33-34.
Borgia,
32Isaiah Berlin, "The Originality of Machiavelli" [1972], in The Proper Study of
Mankind (London: Chatto and Windus, 1997), 270.
33Q. Skinner, "Old Nick," The Spectator8 (January 1965): 46-47.C
34In contrast with Meinecke, for instance. See his Machiavellianism: The Doctrine
of
Raison d'Etat and Its Place inModern History [1924], translated from theGerman by
D. Scott, 1957.

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116 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

laments theabsence of politicalparticipation,theweakness of our sense of

civic duty.He thinksthat"we live in reactionarytimes."35 Yet inhis ceuvre
there is littleplace for the human's recalcitrantside. Skinner calls for a
renewed sense of citizenship,but without any account of why citizens
remainreluctanttoperformtheircivicduty.This is strikingsince itis thestart
ingpoint of bothMachiavelli and Hobbes, thevery reasonwhy both insist
that states need powerful and imperious leaders. Both Machiavelli and
Hobbes remindus again and again of our fundamentalselfishness, but this
basic selfishness is the common denominator Skinner tends to ignore.
Could it be that likemost anarchists,he would ratheremphasize our
natural goodness to explainwhy we might be willing to do our duty in the
absence of thestate?
What will be theeffectofSkinner'steaching?Ifit is tooone-sided, ifitdoes
not have any place forthestate,Skinner'sinvitationtopolitical responsibility
might undermine itself. Whig interpretationsofhistoryhad many shortcom
ings. But they had one advantage: they put privacy to the fore, and privacy
lies at the heart of the freedomof themodems, liberal freedom.Whig
interpretations of historybolstered theBritishelite in itshaughtyarrogance,
but at least theyseem tohave been good foritsself-education, nurturingan
establishment keen to defend freedom under the rule of law. In spite of his
denunciationof theWhig interpretation of history,
Butterfieldhimselfcame
close to defending it,claiming (duringWorld War II) that"'wrong' history
was one of our assets. The Whig interpretation came at exactly the crucial
moment, and, whatever itmay have done to our history, ithad a wonderful
effecton English politics."36
Skinner is rightlysensitiveto the factthat ifthereis an executivedistinct
fromthepeople, thepeople are no longer themselvesthe executive as in
ancientormedieval republics.But his reluctanceto focuson theemancipatory
power of the state is remarkable. He does not seem to be prepared to
recognize that, thanks to the state's own political responsibility,
we can
afford to have a private life and to care not too much about politics. Ifwe
were to get rid of the state, as presupposed by liberalism, the state would
have tobe replacedwith thesocial pressureandmoral conservatismtypical
of ancientrepublics.
Oddly enough,Skinner,thedisciple of thedeeply antiutopian Machiavelli,
ends up praisingutopianism.The disciple of thepragmaticand aggressively
politicalMachiavelli turnsout tobe romanticand apolitical,without concern
for"theworld itself."37Skinnerturnsour attentiontomedieval republics,toa

35"An Interviewwith Quentin Skinner," Finnish YearbookofPolitical Thought: 59.

36H. Butterfield, The Englishman andHis History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1944), 7.
37Q. Skinner, "Political Theory after theEnlightenment Project," in JoanW. Scott and
Debra Keates, Schools ofThought (Princeton,NJ: Princeton U.P., 2001), 15.

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 117

nostalgic ideal of the typeof public participationthat the statehas made

redundant-anotherversionof this"worldwe have lost."38
Skinner'scritiqueof the state is typicalof theNew Left'snostalgia fora
renewed communityand of its profound frustration with the private/
public divide. Skinner's call for a neo-RomanMachiavellian citizenship
echoes this frustration,aggravated in the1980s by the success ofMargaret
Thatcher's top-downpolitics.39 The romanticismof theNew Left,explicitin
some of its spokesmen, like E. P. Thompson and RaymondWilliams, has
takennew shape inSkinner'srepublicanism.40
Politically,republicanismis amore sensiblealternativeto imperialismthan
a superficialcosmopolitanism.But thevery idea of representation makes
Skinneruncomfortable. He makes funof "our soi disant representatives."41
He seems to believe that "representativedemocracy" is an oxymoron.42
Skinner'srepublicanismdoes not call forthekind of patriotismthatwould
correspond to our nation-states. He could have focusedon the republican
elementspresent in English political life (emphasised byMontesquieu in
his descriptionofEngland as a republichidingbehind theformof a monar
chy),but he does not.His Machiavelli isnot thefatherof Italiannationalism,
the thinkercelebratedby Italian nationalists.His Machiavelli has lost the
traitsofwhichMussolini was fond: thepassion fora unified Italyand the
nostalgia forRome's antique greatness.43
The appeal ofMachiavelli forSkinnercentersonMachiavelli's champion
ingofpagan Roman republicanismagainst theChristianprimacyof thehea
venlycityand against theVictorian idea of theBritishEmpire.Skinnerwishes
to isolate a republican theoryof libertyinMachiavelli, butMachiavelli, as
Skinner recognizes,advocated recklessnessand expansionism: for rulers
and forpeoples.44Skinner is quite rightto seeMachiavelli as anti-Christian,
but he disregards the price to be paid for this anti-Christianmove:
Machiavelli's is an intensely
warlike political thought,
builton an unabashed
expansionism, which takesRome as theexample to imitate.Can Machiavelli's
imperialismand recklessnessbe separated fromhis republican theoryof
freedom,as Skinnerwould have it?Machiavelli is perhapsmore a theorist

38P.Laslett, TheWorld We Have Lost (London: Methuen, 1965).

39John Dunn, The Cunning ofUnreason (London: Harper Collins, 2000), 141-79.
40E.P. Thompson, William Morris, Romantic to (London: Lawrence and
Revolutionary
Wishart, 1955). Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (1780-1950) (New York:
Columbia U.P., 1958).
41Q. Skinner, "The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty," 309.
42Those of C. P. Snow's novels that reflectthe intriguesof Christ's College (ofwhich
Skinner has been a fellow since 1962) offer a good introduction to the odd form of
direct still practiced at
democracy Cambridge.
43Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by G. Bull, with a prelude by Mussolini
(London: Folio Society, 1970).
44Q. Skinner,Machiavelli (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1981), 73-77.

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118 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

of imperialismthana theoristof republicanism.But Skinner tends to avoid

this issue:hisMachiavelli has toexplainEngland's loss of empire inwhat is
meant to be a post-Christianera. For Skinnerand many of his generation,
neitherchurchnor empirewas an object fitfor theirmoral and political
imagination.A shifthad taken place, possibilitieshad disappeared, and
ways of dreamingand livinghad gone.A vacuum needed tobe filled.

Contextualism
Decontextualized

Skinnerdefendsa radicalandmethodological contextualism,suggestingthat

littletranscendshistoricalcontext.He tends to reduce thehistoryofpolitical
As a historianofpolitical thought,
philosophy to thehistoryofpolitical life. he
ismore interested inwhat a text is doing than inwhat it is saying. He treats
philosophical argumentssolely as actions in disguise. Action, history,and
movement are everything.There is no order,no continuity, no nature that
philosopherscould analyze and contemplate.Everythingis transient.
Yet, as a republican,Skinner iskeen toassert thatthereis a continuitythat
makes Machiavelli relevant forour time. As he puts it in a quiet footnote to his
inaugural lecture,dedicated to the concept of republican freedom,Liberty
Liberalism:
before
There is unquestionably a deeper level of continuity underlying the
dispute I have been examining over the understanding of individual
liberty.... The point of considering this example has not been to plead
for the adoption of an alien value from a world we have lost; it has
been to uncover a lost reading of a value common to us and to that
vanished world."45

No politicalargumenttranscendsitscontext,save Skinner'sown uncovering

of an idea of liberty,which does transcend its context. Republicanism and
contextualismsit ill together,
but theyhave become the two trademarksof
Skinnerism, the two reactions to the predicament of the 1960s: neither
churchnor empire forEngland; neitherWhig norMarxist interpretation of
history.
Ifa thinkeris theproductof a contextthatpulls him in twodifferent
direc
tions,will his own thoughtbe pulled in these two directions?Skinnerhas
attempted to defend relativism in matters of history and the enduring
value of a concept of liberty. He criticizes the idea of perennial problems
yet ends up writing about such a problem. Skinner has not attempted to
reconcilethetwosides ofhiswork, thecontextualismand thegrandnarrative.
In that sense, he ismore a historian than a philosopher and might be right in
describing himself as "not myself a first order political theorist but merely

45Q. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 117-IS, n. 29. Cf. "Meaning and
Understanding in theHistory of Ideas" [1969], in J.Tully, ed.,Meaning and Context, 66.

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 119

(at leastmainly) a historianof the subject."46But when one's subject is

the history of political philosophy, one must make philosophical
judgments-and Skinnerdoes. His methodology, like allmethodologies, is
not a philosophicallyor morally neutral doctrine,but the reflectionof a
particularphilosophicalposition.
It isuseful toputQuentin Skinnerincontextto showhow illuminatingthe
contextcan be (as Skinnerhimselfargues) and how itcan put inperspective
some of thetensionsinhis own thought. Much more important,it isuseful to
put his thought in context to show that thehistorianof political thought
cannotprescind from making his own judgments within politicalphilosophy.
There isnothingcontroversialabout putting thoughtin context(orQuentin
Skinner in context).What is controversial is to reduce thought to its
context,tocontend thatthoughtremainsalways,deep down, fundamentally
dependenton various human (all toohuman) interests, and thatphilosophy
can be reduced topolitics.47 Skinnerargues thathe isnot offeringa transcen
dental alternativeto liberalism. He isonlydisplayingarchaeologicalfindings
and therebyalertingus topossibilitiesthatmay have been toohastilyburied
in thepast. But Iwonder whether thisa fairdescriptionofwhat Skinner is
actuallydoing.Skinnerclaims thathis contextualismisunfettered by anypol
iticalphilosophy and thathis own contextualistpractice can be abstracted
fromhis own philosophy.The contexthe recognizesas relevantis thelinguis
ticand rhetoricalone, not thephilosophical one. Skinner'sposition reflects
less thelinguisticcontexthe has been associatedwith (althoughthelanguage
available in theearly 1960swas the language of language48),or thepolitical
context of the 1960s, but a genuinely philosophical position. Skinner's
version of history cannot be separated from his own philosophical commit
ments: his theory of liberty, towhich I shall now move.
As theChurch ofEnglandwas losingitsinfluenceinEngland, theidea that
moral principlesshould be understood in relationto theAnglican tradition
seemed to be undermined.A neo-Kantian concept of autonomous reason
was seen as more appropriate, more in tune with a new liberalism and indi
vidualismwinning theday.But forrepublicanslikeSkinner,thisconceptof
autonomous reasonwas unsatisfactory:morals should be relatedneither to
traditionnor to autonomous reason,but to civic life.In thecontextof the

46Q. Skinner, "Political Theory after the Enlightenment Project," 15. See, for
example, David Gauthier, "Reason and Rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes, by
Q. Skinner" The JournalofPhilosophy,94, no. 2 (1997): 94-97.
47"My admiration for [... Skinner's] writings is due, interalia, tomy belief thathe
writes as a rational actorwho rationally desires to find the truth.Would he wish to
deny it?"Martin Hollis, Reason inAction. Essays in thePhilosophy of Social Science
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 258. Cf. Charles Taylor, "The
Hermeneutics of Conflict," in ed., Meaning and Context, 218-28.
Tully,
48E.Gellner,Words and Things:A CriticalAccount ofLinguisticPhilosophy and a Study
in Ideology (London: Victor Gollancz, 1959).

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120 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

1960s and of theirlegacy,therewere, broadly speaking, threepossible reac

tions to thedecline of Christian churches:a liberalone, a communitarian
one, and a republican one. Communitarians recover a lost sense of tra
dition-more oftenthannot, theyreactagainst thesecularizationthesisand
emphasize how valuable it can be to belong to a religious community.49
Liberals aim to take advantage of and even contributeto the decline of
Christian traditions,inorder tonurturean individual freedombased on the
autonomy of practical reason.Republicans equate moral with civic virtue,
attemptingto avoid both liberalismand communitarianism while agreeing
with thecommunitariancritiqueof liberalismand with the liberalcritique
of communitarianism. For them,communitariansare rightabout the limits
of liberal individualism,and liberals are right to seek liberation from
Christian tradition.
Many contemporaryliberalsunderstandfreedomas an absenceofconstraint
and remainfaithfulto IsaiahBerlin'sdefenseofnegative freedom.50 But they
Berlinwas thinkingpolitically,and, in the contextof the
modify it slightly.
Cold War, saw negative freedom as a conceptual safeguard against totalitarian
ism.Contemporaryliberalsare thinkingin theaftermathof the1960s.They
tendtodefendnegative liberty
because of theirallegianceeithertomoral skep
ticism and a secular context or to a neo-Kantian idea of the autonomy of reason.
In contrast,
bothcommunitariansand republicanscriticizetheprimacyofnega
Communitariansargue thatnegativeliberty
tiveliberty. can onlymake sense in
relation to a concept of positive liberty, in the light of traditions of the good life,
which help to determine a sense of purpose forboth individuals and commu
nity.They also help in determiningthe kind of constraintsrequiredby a
theorythatdefines freedomas an absence of constraints.Republicans like
Skinner try to defend a third concept of liberty,which is neither the liberal nega
tive one nor the communitarian positive one. This third concept is instead a right
and a duty to participate in the life of the political community, yet it is also a
freedomfromdependenceon thewill of others.51 Both republicansand com
munitarians are indebted to theNew Left's reactionagainst theprimacyof
the individualsphere.As itsname suggests,theNew Leftwanted something
new: itwanted not blood and tears, but meaningful social bonds, a sense of
community, an alternative to what it understood to be the conformism and
the apathy of the Old Left. Republicanism and communitarianism answer
Both intellectualschoolsarebestunderstood
similarquestionsand difficulties.

49As an intellectual communitarianism seems more American than

phenomenon,
British. But Iwould point out that the concerns ofMaclntyre and Taylor, for instance,
go back to theBritish firstNew Left (1956-1962). See journals likeTheNew Reasoner for
Maclntyre and Universities and LeftReview forTaylor.
50Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty" [1958], in The Proper Study ofMankind,
191-242.

51Q. Skinner, "A Third Concept of Liberty," Proceedings of theBritishAcademy 117

(2002): 237-68.

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 QUENTIN SKINNER INCONTEXT 121

in thecontextof aspirationsin the1960s tocreateamore satisfactory commu

nity,one extending beyond thenarrow privacy of negative liberty.
Skinner'srepublicancritiqueof theprimacyofnegativeliberty emergesfrom
thesame contextas thecommunitariancritiqueof negative liberty. A shared
aspiration to combat individualismunites him with Alasdair Maclntyre
and Charles Taylor,who were closely involvedwith theNew Left.Unlike
Skinner,however,bothMacIntyre and Taylor are believingChristians. What
accountshouldbe givenof thegood life? According toSkinner,"thisis a ques
tionthatour theologiansas well as our philosophershave been debating for
centuries, and its does not seem at all likely that theywill manage in the near
futureto reach a finalagreement.... The historyis all thereis."52Skinner's
rhetoricand linguisticcontextualismdefine thebackground of his general
analysis of thehuman predicament:we do not know much about human
beings, there is not much to be know about human beings, human nature is
an unknown x; "thehistoryis all thereis."With his republicanism,Skinner
offersan answer to this diagnosis. It is throughpolitical commitments,
throughthecity,throughcivicvirtueand participation,thatwe will findan
identity,
a sense of purpose. Republicans focuson civic duty,because civic
duty can be relied upon even in a post-Christiancontext. In a context
where people are no longerprepared to belong to the same church,they
can at least agree that they form a single people.
Skinnerwants neitherHobbes's negative freedomnor a conceptofpositive
freedomwhich might bring him back toChristian and English traditions.
According to Skinner,"instead of tryingto evade anythingmore than 'the
minimum demands of social life'we must seek todischargeour public obli
gationsaswholeheartedlyas possible."Butwhat are thesepublic obligations,
ifneitherthedictatesof an autonomous reasonnor traditionalobligations?
Skinnerbegan by reducingpolitical ideas to the details of theircontext,
but he came to espouse a romanticrepublicanism.Since his historiesgive
weight neither to reason nor faith,one is leftwith the strong impression
thatforSkinnerall human action is ultimatelya question ofwill. Skinner's
civiccommunitarianismresemblesSartre'speculiarbrand ofpoliticalexisten
tialism:do act,do participate,commityourself.II fauts'engager.
The accountofSkinner'sintellectualbackgroundofferedherehas to remain
a hypothesis-a hypothesismade plausible by the intelligibility
and the rel
evance that itgives toSkinner'sown positions.The evidence provided for
my overall argument is limited,but it is bound to be. The young Skinner
was neither a public figure nor a garrulous writer. In the absence of archival
documents,published letters,ormemoirs, it is difficultto be more precise.
Few youngmen and women in the1960swere asking themselvesexplicitly:
"Now that church and empire are gone, what shall we do?" If anything, very
few were thinking about it at all, and there is no reason to think that Skinner

52Q. Skinner, "A Third Concept of Liberty": 265.

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122 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

ever explicitlyconsidered the issue in these terms.53

The movements associ
ated with the student revolutionand theNew Left took the end of the
empireand thedeclineofChristianityforgranted.Formany, a studied super
ficialityreflecteda refusaltoarticulateas problems thefundamentalpolitical
and religiousshiftsthathad recentlytakenplace. Sociologistsand theologians
have written on the secularization thesis,but most contemporarypolitical
philosophers have not. Historians have written excellent accounts of the
end of theBritishEmpire, but, surprisingly, no political thinkerhas yet
triedto assess indepth itsconsequences fortheUnited Kingdom.

53Presented with the argument in this article, Q. Skinner found it "plausible."

(Conversation with the author, Cambridge, July2005).

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