Burns - A Critique of Skinner's Contextualism

7/22/2019 Burns - A Critique of Skinner's Contextualism

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Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/187226311X555455

Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 brill.nl/jph

Conceptual History and the Philosophy of theLater Wittgenstein:

A Critique of Quentin Skinners Contextualist Method

Anthony BurnsUniversity of Nottingham

[email protected]

Abstract

Although first published in 1969, the methodological views advanced in Quentin

Skinners Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas remain relevant

today. In his article Skinner suggests that it would be inappropriate to even attempt

to write the history of any idea or concept. In support of this view, Skinner

advances two arguments, one derived from the philosophy of the later Wittgen-

stein and the other from that of J. L. Austin.

In this paper I focus on the first of these arguments. I claim that the conclusion

which Skinner draws from this particular argument does not necessarily follow

and that an alternative assessment of the methodological significance of Wittgen-

steins philosophy for historians of ideas is possible. On this alternative view, far

from ruling out conceptual history, an appeal to the view of meaning set out in

Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations leads to a quite different conclusion,namely that the writing of such a history is arguably a necessary precondition for

the elucidation of the meaning of a number of the core concepts in the canon of

the history of political thought.

Skinners views have changed somewhat since 1969. Indeed, from the mid 1970s

onwards he came to relax the strict opposition to the idea of conceptual history to

which he was then committed. Te paper concludes by noting that this evolution

in Skinners thinking has made him much more sympathetic than anybody reading

Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas would have imagined to the

research project of the BegriffgeschichteSchool of conceptual history.

Keywords

Quentin Skinner, Wittgenstein, Conceptual History, History of Ideas, NaturalLaw, Begriffsgeschichte School


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A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 55

Introduction

Tis year is the 40th anniversary of the publication of Quentin SkinnersMeaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, which in the viewof many revolutionized the way in which political theorists and historiansof ideas thought about their respective disciplines.1In a recent interview(2007) Professor Skinner stated that he is nowadays worried that his earlymethodological articles might now look like mere antiques.2 In the

same interview, however, he also reaffirmed his commitment to the basicprinciples which these early articles contain. Skinners claim that the viewson method which he first advocated in Meaning and Understanding

continue to be relevant today is supported by the publication in 2009 ofa Special Issue of Te Journal of the Philosophy of History devoted to thisvery subject.3As one of the contributors, Robert Lamb, argues there itis readily apparent to anybody who reads the first volume of Skinners

Visions of Politics (published in 2002), which contains a selection of theseearly methodological pieces, that even today Skinner has not dropped the

strong methodological claims that characterized his early work.4

In this paper I will examine the claim which Skinner makes in Mean-

ing and Understanding that it is not possible to write the history of anyidea or concept (which two terms I shall use interchangeably). Tis is of

course a strong claim, and a paradoxical one for somebody who professesto be making a philosophical contribution to the history of ideas to make.Professor Skinner has different reasons for making it, some of which possess

1) Quentin Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, History and

Teory, 8 (1969), 353; reprinted in Quentin Skinner, Regarding Method,Visions of Poli-

tics, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5789.2) Javier Fernandez Sebastian & Quentin Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty andRepublicanism: An Interview with Quentin Skinner, Contributions to the History of Con-

cepts, 3 (2007), 103.3) SeeJournal of the Philosophy of History, 3, 3 (2009), Special Issue on Rethinking Contex-

tualism. Contributions include the following: Mark Bevir, Contextualism: From Mod-

ernist Method to Post-Analytic Historicism, 21124; A. P. Martinich, Four Senses of

Meaning in the History of Ideas, 22545; Robert Lamb, Recent Developments in the

Tought of Quentin Skinner and the Ambitions of Contextualism, 24665; oby

Reiner, exts as Performances: How to Reconstruct Webs of Belief from Expressed

Utterances, 26689; Karsten R. Stueber, Intentionalism, Intentional Realism and

Empathy, 290307.4) Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 250.


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56 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483

greater force than others. Tese reasons fall into two broad categories. Te

first of these is associated with the philosophy laid out by the later Witt-

genstein in his Philosophical Investigations.5Te second is associated with J.L. Austins theory of speech acts.6In what follows I shall focus exclusivelyon the former and argue that the Wittgensteinian argument which Skin-

ner uses to defend his claim is not well founded.Te view that it is not possible to write the history of any idea or con-

cept has often been attributed to Skinner by his critics. Indeed, as Skinnerhimself has noted,7this was one of the main objections to his proposed

new method for the history of ideas presented at the time. o mention

some examples, J. G. A. Pocock, Melvin Richter and Robert Lamb haveall maintained that according to Skinner it is not, strictly speaking, pos-sible to write a history of concepts or that the history of concepts cannotbe studied at all.8 John Gunnell has written that according to Skinner

there can be no histories of concepts as such.9Iain Hampsher-Monk hasnoted, more cautiously, that from the standpoint of Skinners method thecontinuing identity of a concept through time, and hence the possibil-ity of writing the history of that concept as it evolves over time, if it is not

actually rule out of court altogether on methodological grounds, is never-

theless in danger of being sacrificed to the particular purposes for whichit is employed at any particular time.10Finally, Mark Bevir has claimed

5) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,transl. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1972). 6) J. L. Austin, How to do Tings with Words, 2nd ed. Eds. J. O. Urmson & Marina Sbisa

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978 [1962]). 7) Quentin Skinner, some Problems in the Analysis of Political Tought and Action,

Political Teory, 2, 3 (1974), 277303, 287. 8) J. G. A. Pocock, Concepts and Discourses: A Difference in Culture? Comment on aPaper by Melvin Richter, in Te Meaning of Historical erms and Concepts: New Studies

on Begriffsgeschichte, eds. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington, 1996), 52;

Melvin Richter, A German Version of the Linguistic urn: Reinhart Koselleck and the

History of Political and Social Concepts (Begriffsgeschichte), in Te History of Political

Tought in National Context, eds. Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 78; Lamb, Recent Developments in the

Tought of Quentin Skinner, 259. 9) J. G. Gunnell, ime and Interpretation: Understanding Concepts and Conceptual

Change, History of Political Tought, 19, 4 (1998), 656, 651.10) Iain Hampsher-Monk, Political Languages in ime: Te Work of J. G. A. Pocock,


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that Skinners method cannot account for change.11 Acknowledging

that Skinner has in the past written histories that trace conceptual and lin-

guistic change, nevertheless Bevir insists that when he did so his accountsof change were not and could not have been based on his own statedmethods.12

In his first Response to My Critics, published in 1974, Skinner pro-fessed to be astonished to be told that my approach would make itimpossible to map out any kind of conceptual innovation and change.13Tis criticism, he suggested, rests upon a confusion between the unex-

ceptionable claim that any agent who is engaged in an intended act of

communication must be limited by the prevailing conventions of dis-course, and the further claim that he must be limited to following thoseconventions. I have obviously never intended to commit myself to theabsurdity of denying that it is open to any writer to indicate that his aim is

to extend, to subvert, or in some other way to alter a prevailing set ofaccepted conventions.14Similarly, almost thirty years later, in his Regard-ing Method(2002) Skinner asserts that I strongly endorse the belief thatwe must be ready as historians of philosophy not merely to admit the fact

of conceptual change but to make it central to our research.15He also

asserts that he has even attempted to write some such histories myselfand that there is no reason to think that these studies are in tension with

anything I have written about the need to understand what can be done

British Journal of Political Science, 14, 1 (1984), p, 104, fn. 2; see also Iain Hampsher-Monk,

speech Acts, Languages or Conceptual History? in History of Concepts: Comparative Per-

spectives, eds. Iain Hamspher-Monk, Karin ilmans and Frank Van Vree (Amsterdam,

1998), 47; J. A. W. Gunn, After Sabine, After Lovejoy: Te Languages of Political

thought,Journal of History and Politics,6 (198889), 145, 2930; and Gunnell, imeand Interpretation: Understanding Concepts and Conceptual Change, 651.11) Mark Bevir, Te Logic of the History of Ideas(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1999), 48. See also Mark Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory, Polit-

ical Studies, 42 (1994), 668.12) Bevir, Te Logic of the History of Ideas, 49; see also Hampsher-Monk, Political Lan-

guages in ime, 104.13) Skinner, Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Tought and Action, 287.14) Skinner, Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Tought and Action, 287.15) Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, in Regarding

Method,17587, 178.


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with concepts as an element in the process of recovering their meaning and

significance.16

Nevertheless, despite these disclaimers, there is evidence in Meaningand Understanding which supports the claims made by Skinners thencritics. For example Skinner maintains in his article that there is an under-

lying conceptual confusion in any attempt to focus on an idea itself as anappropriate unit of historical investigation. He claims that the projectof studying histories of ideas, tout court, must rest on a fundamentalphilosophical mistake. And he also claims that in his opinion to attempt

to write the history of any idea must result in an historical absurdity.17

Given these explicit statements, it is arguable that Skinners early criticswere quite right to argue that in his view it is not possible to write thehistory of any concept. Te really interesting question here is not whetherSkinner did in fact take this view in 1969, but whyhe took it?

Te structure of the paper is as follows. In Section 1 I begin by offeringa brief account of the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein focusing onthe theory of meaning in use developed in his Philosophical Investigations.I also say something about the relevance of these ideas for those interested

in the question of whether it is possible to write the history of ideas or

concepts. In Section 2 I show how this understanding of what a Wittgen-steinian approach to conceptual history might be used to offer a partialcriticism of the method recommended by Quentin Skinner in Meaningand Understanding in the History of Ideas, insofar as that method relies

on a particular application of Wittgensteins later philosophy. In his arti-cle Skinner refers to the concepts of the great chain of being, utopia,progress, equality, sovereignty, justice, and natural law as examples of con-cepts of which the history cannot be written.18I will throughout refer to

the concept of natural law when illustrating the general points beingmade. My reason for doing so is simply that this is one of the conceptswith the history of which I am most familiar.

16) Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, in Regarding

Method,17587, 178.17) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 7, 35, 37.18) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 3839.


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Section 1: Te Philosophy of the Later Wittgenstein and ConceptualHistory

Let us begin by imagining a situation in which there is a linguistic com-munity which already possesses a particular concept, that of natural law,together with a phrase to express it. Tis is the community whose mem-bers used the Latin language in Western Europe between, say, the time ofCicero and that of Hobbes, and who expressed this concept by employing

the Latin phrase lex naturalis. Furthermore, following the later Wittgen-stein, let us assume that possessing a concept is, if not always then atleast in a large number of cases, equivalently a matter of knowing the

meaning of a word.19 In the case of the concept of natural law thisinvolves knowing the meaning which the expression lex naturalishad forthose who used it in the period in question. It is to understand the lin-guistic rule or convention which regulated the use of the phrase lex natu-raliswithin that linguistic community. Tis, in turn, amounts to beingable to recognize correct and incorrect instances of its use.

Tis Wittgensteinian view of what it is to possess a concept may beusefully contrasted, as Wittgenstein himself contrasts it, with a more tra-

ditional theory of meaning. Tis is the essentialist view which states thatconcepts, and the words used to express them in a particular natural lan-

guage, are meaningful because they are associated with a definition whichfixes their meaning. On this view the definition of a concept, for exam-ple the concept of a natural law theory, captures the essence of thethings or entities which are denoted by the concept in question, that is to

say the characteristic features which are considered to be necessary tothem, such that if a system of beliefs lacked (or lost) even one of thesefeatures it would not be appropriate to describe it as a natural law the-ory at all. Tese are the features which we look for when decidingwhether the political thought of a specific individual falls under the con-

cept of natural law theory or not, and which from this point of viewall natural law theories possess in common. When characterizing thesefeatures it is necessary to employ other concepts which might be said to

19) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,20; Skinner, Language and Political

Change, 7. See also P. L. Heath, Concept, Te Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,ed. Paul

Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 177.


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constitute the component elements of the more complex concept of a nat-

ural law theory. It is also necessary to refer to the beliefs with which these

other concepts have been associated either by natural law theorists them-selves, or by those who write about natural law theory. Te relationshsipbetween concepts and beliefs, here, is a complex one. In what follows I

shall assume that there can be no beliefs without concepts, and thatconcepts are the component elements of beliefs a vehicle for the expres-sion of beliefs. On the other hand, however, it is possible for beliefs and thesimpler concepts with which they are associated to be themselves the com-

ponent elements of more complex or higher level concepts, such as the

concept of a natural law theory.20

According to Wittgenstein, the idea that in order to get clear aboutthemeaning of a general term one had to find the common element in allits applications has shackled philosophical investigation up to the

present.21 Wittgenstein refers to those who think that this is what isrequired for a particular concept to be meaningful as possessing a cravingfor generality.22o take Wittgensteins well known example of the con-cept of a game, such people assume in advance that there mustbe some-thing in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the

justification for applying the general term game to the various games.23

From the standpoint of this traditional view of meaning, then, the con-cepts of natural law and of natural law theory are meaningful because theycan be defined. In the case of the latter concept it is assumed that there

is a closed list of essential features, or characteristic beliefs, the pres-ence of eachof which is necessary, and the presence of all of which is suf-ficient, to justify the classification of a particular individual as a naturallaw theorist. Richard Wollheim provides a good illustration of this way of

thinking about natural law theory. Wollheim appreciates that, through-out its long history, the doctrine of natural law has changed considerably,and has engendered a number of different variants and modifications.Accordingly, he suggests, if we are to speak meaningfully about thedoc-

20) I would like to thank an anonymous referee for drawing to my attention the need to

clarify the relationship which exists between concepts and beliefs.21) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies For the Philosoph-

ical Investigations(Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 20.22) Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books,18.23) Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books,18.


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trine of law it is necessary for us to isolate those features which all of these

different varieties of natural law theory have in common. We must offer

a minimal characterization of the doctrine of natural law. Wollheimdoes not question whether it is actually possible to do this. He simplyassumes that it is possible, as in his view the term natural law or its

linguistic equivalent, in the case of our example the Latin lex naturalis,has been used over the centuries to designate a remarkably persistentdoctrine.24Wollheim then offers what he claims is such a minimal char-acterization of the concept of natural law or, more accurately, of a natu-

ral law theory. According to this account, there are three characteristics

which are necessarily associated with and definitive of any genuine natu-ral law theory, and therefore three component elements of the concept ofa natural law theory. Tese elements are associated with the followingbeliefs: (a) that there are certain principles of morality or justice which are

universally valid, applying in all societies, in all places and at all times;(b) that these principles are apprehensible by the faculty of reason of theindividual moral agent; and (c) most important of all, that these principlesconstitute a higher standard of justice or law which might be used by

individuals to critically evaluate the laws (positive laws) of the society in

which they live. From the standpoint of the traditional theory of meaning,then, when we describe someone as a natural law theorist what we musthave in mind is that they subscribe to these three core beliefs and deploythe concepts associated with them.

Against the traditional view of meaning, Wittgenstein argues that thereare many words in the English language which are meaningful despite thefact that like the word game, they cannot be defined.25Such words aremeaningful despite the fact that there are no strict rules which regulate

their use.26Many words, Wittgenstein argues, dont have a strictmean-ing, in this sense, but, he goes on, this is not a defect.27 All thisamounts to is that the meaning of many words or phrases is vague ratherthan precise. However, to say that the meaning of concepts like natural lawand natural law theory, or the phrases which express them in a particular

24) Richard Wollheim, Natural Law, Te Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards

(New York, 1967), 5, 405.25) Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books,25.26) Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books,25.27) Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books,27.


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language, is vague is not the same as saying that that they are meaningless.

It remains the case that, in a particular linguistic community at a particular

time, there is at least somerule which regulates their use, and hence somepossibility, in particular cases, of differentiating between appropriate andinappropriate applications of the concept or word in question. It is simply

that this rule or its application will be flexible rather than rigid or mechan-ical. In other words, once we have allowed that, for example, the conceptof a natural law theory cannot be defined, there are always going to behard cases, on the margin, where a decisionhas to be made whether therule which regulates the use of this concept entails that the political thought

of an individual theorist, such as for example Aristotle, does or does notfall under it.o summarize, the difference between the later Wittgensteins view of

meaning and the more traditional essentialist view is not that Wittgen-

stein associates meaning with the existence of linguistic rules or conven-tions which regulate the use of concepts or words, whereas the traditionalview does not. Rather, it is that Wittgenstein associates the meaning of aconcept with the existence offlexiblerules which cannot be mechanicallyapplied, whereas the traditional view, to the contrary, associates the mean-

ing of a concept with the existence of strict rules which are applied inflex-ibly or mechanically, without attention being paid to the differentcircumstances associated with particular cases.

Te traditional way of thinking about natural law theory and about themeaning of the concept of natural law is illustrated in able 1 below(inspired by a reading of the work of Renford Bamborough).28Let us sup-pose that in the situation presented by our example there are four indi-vidual theorists, namely A, B, C and D, all of whom are members of our

hypothetical linguistic community at a particular moment in time, t1. Allfour employ the phrase lex naturalis in their writings. According to thetraditional theory of meaning, alluded to by Wollheim, if this is the casethen it can only be so because A, B, C and D all subscribe to the threecore beliefs characterized by the letters a, b and c above. So the classifica-

tion of A, B, C and D as natural law theorists can be seen as an exampleof following a strict rule, as follows.

28)Renford Bambrough, Universals and Family Resemblances, in George Pitcher ed.,

Wittgenstein: Te Philosophical Investigations (London: Macmillan, 1969), 186204.


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able 1: Te raditional View of Meaning and the

Concept of Natural Law

Individual A B C D

ime t1 t1 t1 t1

Concept natural law natural law natural law natural law

Expression lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis

Beliefs a,b,c a,b,c a,b,c a,b,c

Classification natural law

theorist

natural law

theorist

natural law

theorist

natural law

theorist

Let us now consider the meaning of the concept of natural law, and theassociated way of thinking about natural law theory, from the standpoint

of the later Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use. Here it is assumedthat the concept is not one which can be given a definition. Like the con-cept of a game, it does not have a clear or precisely delineated meaning buta vague one. Tis concept is meaningful because there is indeed a rulewhich regulates its use. However, this rule is a flexible one which cannot be

applied mechanically. Bearing this in mind, the example presented in able

1 above might be adapted in the following way. First let us imagine that forwhatever reason, by means of what Saul Kripke has referred to as an ini-tial baptism,29an individual A (for example Cicero) is considered by the

members of a linguistic community to be a paradigmatic example of some-one who should be considered to be a natural law theorist, so As creden-tials as such at time t1 are not in question. Additionally, let us imagine thatAs political thought might be adequately characterized by reference to thethree core beliefs a, b and c above. Tese are the beliefs which A associates

with the linguistic expression lex naturalisand with the concept of naturallaw as he or she understands it.

Now let us introduce a temporal or historical element to our exampleby considering the case of an individual, B, who is a member of the same

linguistic community as A, but who is living and writing in a later timeperiod, t2. And let us imagine that the other members of the linguisticcommunity in question are attempting to decide whether B should orshould not be regarded as a natural law theorist, like A. In order to decide

29) Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980 [1972]), 96.


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this question the members of the community examine the political thought

of B and discover that it also consists of just three core beliefs, namely b, c

and d, and their component concepts. In other words, the political thoughtof B does resemble that of A quite closely, although it is not identical withthat of A, and there are some differences, or at least one important differ-

ence, between the political thought of B and that of A. In this situation thedecisive question to be answered is this. Should B be classified along withA as a natural law theorist, despite the differences which exist between thebeliefs of B and those of A? Or, alternatively, should B be classified as

someone who is nota natural law theorist, despite the similarities which

exist between their beliefs?30

Further, let us also imagine that the outcome of the debate about thisissue is the conclusion that in this case the similarities are sufficiently greatto outweigh the differences, hence it is legitimate to classify B as a natural

law theorist as well as A, despite the fact that their beliefs differ in certainrespects. It should be noted that this conclusion is arrived at not becausethere are no differences at all between the concepts employed by B and A,but simply because although such differences do exist nevertheless they

are considered to be relatively unimportant in comparison with the simi-

larities which also exist between them. Finally, let us apply a similar argu-ment to the cases of individuals C and D. What we get, when we do so, isthe following picture:

able 2: Te Later Wittgensteins View of Meaning and theConcept of Natural Law

Individual A B C D

ime t1 t2 t3 t4Concept natural law natural law natural law natural law

Expression lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis

Beliefs a,b,c b,c,d c,d,e d,e,f


theorist

natural law

theorist

natural law

theorist

natural law

theorist

30) It is also possible, of course, that A and B live together in the same or different societ-

ies at the same time. I am grateful to an anaonymous referee for pointing this out to me.


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Te outcome of the line of argument developed above is that if, in this

adapted example, theorist A is for whatever reason considered to be a par-

adigmatic example of a natural law theorist then it follows that individualD might legitimately be considered to be a natural law theorist also. Tisis so despite the fact that A and D hold nobeliefs at all in common. Inthis situation the same classificatory label, namely the expression naturallaw theorist, is applied to both A and D and yet, contrary to the tradi-tional view of meaning, this is not because the political thought of A andD share exactly the same (core) beliefs.

It is clear that the ascription of the classificatory label natural law theo-

rist to D as well as to A in the above example would not be an arbitrary orrandom event. Tere is a definite logic to it, although the reasoninginvolved is analogical and not deductive reasoning. It is an instance of theapplication of a rule, the rule which gives the concept of natural law its

meaning, despite the fact that this concept cannot be defined. Tis exampledemonstrates how hard cases might arise in which it is not clear at firsthow a linguistic rule ought is to be applied, and an element of pragmaticdecision making (associated with some act of legislative will) must inevita-

bly come into play, in a situation where ex hypothesithere is no obviously

correct or rational solution to the problem of how this is to be done.From this point of view, classifying a member of our hypothetical lin-

guistic community as a natural law theorist might be justified even if the

individual in question did not in fact employ the expression lex naturalis(or its equivalent in another language) provided their beliefs are consideredto be sufficiently similar to those of the paradigmatic natural law theoristA, or indeed those of theorists B, C and D.31Similarly, it is possible for thisdescriptive label to be legitimately withheld from an individual theorist

even if that theorist doesemploy the expression lex naturalisif it should bedecided that the meaning which this expression has for the theorist inquestion does not resemble closely enough the meaning which the expres-sion is traditionally thought to have.

According to the later Wittgenstein, then, for a concept like that ofnatural law to be meaningful it is not necessary that this meaning shouldbe fixed by being encapsulated in a closed definition. All that is requiredis that there must be at least some rule which governs its use. Tat is tosay, there must be an open list of criteria which regulates the legitimate

31) I am grateful to my colleague Ben Holland for pointing this out to me.


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application of the concept, and which enable us to differentiate between

correct and incorrect instances of its employment. Concepts of this sort

have what Frederick Waismann has referred to as an open texture.32In thecase of the concept of natural law, if such a rule is to exist it is not necessarythat there should be certain essential features which allnatural law theoriespossess (and must possess) in common. All that is necessary is that the vari-ous different natural law theories should share at least somecharacteristicfeatures in common with other theories which have in the past themselvesbeen considered to be natural law theories. Tey should have what Witt-

genstein refers to as a family resemblance to one another.33In the words

of R. G. Collingwood,34

there should be a traceable historical process, orwhat Saul Kripke has referred to as a chain of communication,35whichconnects them together, along the lines suggested by able 2 above.

It is clear from the above that the theory of meaning in use developed

by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigationsdoes help us to under-stand the idea of conceptual change, and that it does shed some light onthe problem with which we began, that of the possibility of writing thehistory of any idea or concept. For example the analysis presented above

suggests that when talking about conceptual change what we might have

in mind is simply the slow alteration in the meaning of a particular con-cept like that of natural law over time. We could be envisaging a situationin which the same linguistic expression comes to have a somewhat differ-ent meaning for the members of the same linguistic community. In the

context of the example of the concept of natural law, this amounts to say-ing that the Latin expression lex naturaliscomes to be used in a somewhatdifferent way. It is applied at a later time in a way that it had not beenapplied in before. For if the use of this concept is extended in this way, so

that it is considered to have a legitimate application to new situations andcases, then we are justified in claiming that conceptual change of a certainkind has indeed taken place. In the terminology of Gottlb Frege, this

32) Frederick Waismann, On Verifiability, in Te Teory of Meaning, ed. G. H. R. Par-

kinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 38.33) Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books, 317; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1,

1720, 257.34) R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002 [1939]), 62.

Again my thanks to an anonymous referee for drawing this to my attention.35) Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 96, 91.


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would involve an alteration of both the sense and the reference of this

expression.36

It is evident how creative individuals, willing and able to follow lin-guistic conventions or rules in new and imaginative ways, might play apart in such a process of conceptual innovation. It is also evident that

even such a slow process of conceptual change could, eventually, lead toa situation within which the meaning of particular concept, such as thatof natural law, has changed so much that it is in fact completely differentat a later time, say t4, from what it was at some earlier time, for example

at t1, the time of its initial baptism in Kripkes sense. As Sheldon Wolin

has observed, history never exactly repeats itself. Te political experienceof one age, although no doubt similar in at least some respects to that ofanother, is never precisely the same. It is not too surprising, therefore,that we occasionally or even frequently encounter the spectacle of two

political theorists located at different points in history, using the same con-cepts [sic] but meaning very different things by them.37

Tinking of conceptual change in this way requires that we are entitledto claim that the linguistic community at the later time t4, of which indi-

vidual D is a member, can legitimately be considered to be the same lin-

guistic community as the linguistic community at the earlier time t1, ofwhich A is a member, despite the fact that the individual human beingswho together constitute the members of that community at time t4 arenot the same individuals who were its members at time t1, and despite the

fact that the expression lex naturalis, and hence also the concept of naturallaw,has ex hypothesia meaning for them which is entirelydifferent fromthe meaning which that expression and that concept had for the membersof that same linguistic community in an earlier period in its history, at

time t1. Tis implies that it is legitimate for us to maintain that the audi-ence of a given user of language in a particular linguistic community atany one time might include another member of that same linguistic com-munity living at a later time. It also implies that it makes sense for us totalk about the possibility of two such language users, even though they are

36) Gottlb Frege, On Sense and Reference, in ranslations from the Philosophical Writ-

ings of Gottlb Frege, transl. Peter Geach and Max Black (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977),

5678.37) Sheldon Wolin, radition and Innovation, in (2004 [1964]),Politics and Vision, sec-

ond expanded edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004 [1964]), pp. 2326.


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historically distant from one another, nevertheless entering into some kind

of communication with one another and perhaps having more in com-

mon with one another, conceptually speaking, than either of them haswith some of their immediate contemporaries. Andrew Lockyer, for exam-ple, has with some plausibility claimed that the views of Edmund Burke

had much more in common with the seventeenth century common lawyerMatthew Hale than they did with a contemporary figure like JeremyBentham.38

Te view of conceptual change outlined in able 2 above indicates,

as R. G. Collingwood and,39more recently, Mark Bevir have both sug-

gested, that linguistic contexts can overlap.40

Te table shows us how,when thinking about conceptual change, or the history of a concept, wemight employ the notion of overlapping linguistic contexts and howwe might relate it to the idea of an intellectual tradition.41More specifi-

cally, this understanding of conceptual change allows us to use the laterWittgensteins theory of meaning to develop the notion of an intellectualtradition within which conceptual change takes place along evolutionarylines. David Boucher, an authority on the work of Collingwood,42 has

observed that the idea of an intellectual tradition,43 understood in this

38) Andrew Lockyer, raditions as Context in the History of Political Teory, Political

Studies, 27 (1979), 20117, 210.39) As an anonymous referree notes, the idea that in philosophy concepts are not discrete

entities but rather have meanings which overlap, both synchronically and diachronically,

is central to the thought of R. G. Collingwood. See R. G. Collingwood,An Essay on Phil-

osophical Method, eds. & Intro. James Connelly and Giuseppina DOro (Oxford: Claren-

don Press, 2005 [1932]), 3031; and Collingwood,An Autobiography, 6163.40) Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory, 66841) Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory, 668.42) See David Boucher, Te Social and Political Tought of R. G. Collingwood(Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2003 [1989]); David Boucher, Life and Tought of R. G. Col-

lingwood,Special Issue of Collingwood and British Idealism Studies (Collingwood Society,

1994); David Boucher, ariq Modood and James Connelly eds., Philosophy, History and

Civilization: Essays on R. G. Collingwood (University of Wales Press, 1996).43) For the notion of an intellectual tradition and its importance for the history of political

thought more generally see Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory,

66275; Mark Bevir, Te Logic of the History of Ideas(Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1999), 17677, 195, 197, 20004, 211; Boucher, exts in Context, 10718; W. H.

Greenleaf, Idealism, Modern Philosophy and Politics, in Politics and Experience: Essays

Presented to Professor Michael Oakeshott on the Occasion of His Retirement, eds. Preston


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sense, is associated with the notion of continuity in and through a proc-

ess of change.44Similarly, Andrew Lockyer has argued that the range of

problems which a particular group of political theorists writing at differenttimes have attempted to answer, together with the answers that they giveto these problems, may be said to constitute a tradition of discourse.

Tese problems and answers, and hence the tradition of discourse withwhich they are associated, have a history precisely because the conceptswhich the theorists in question use to formulate and solve these problemshave different meanings in different contexts, meanings which change

over time as a consequence of changing political and social arrange-

ments.45

On this view, as Collingwood also notes, the concept whichundergoes such a process of change can legitimately be said to be continu-ous or to retain is identity despite the fact that it lacks a fixed essence.46It is not continuous because there are some things about its meaning that

neverchange, or never couldchange but, basically, because the process inand through which its meaning alters over time is a slow one. From thispoint of view, as again David Boucher has pointed out, intellectual tradi-tions in the history of political thought are fluid. Tey undergo change

whilst at the same time retaining their identity, because all of their features

do not change at once.47

Te model of conceptual change presented above illustrates how anintellectual tradition and the core concepts associated with it coulddevelop over time in an evolutionary manner. In the case of natural law

theory this model of conceptual change indicates why it might be legiti-mate to talk about such a thing as thenatural law tradition despite theobvious diversity which exists in the ideas of those theorists who have,historically, employed the concept of natural law, whether or not they also

employ the linguistic expression lex naturalis. It shows that it is possiblefor someone to talk meaningfully in this way about the history of the con-

King and Bhiku Parekh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Bruce Had-

dock, Te History of Ideas and the Study of Politics, Political Teory, 2 (1974), 42031;

Lockyer, raditions as Context in the History of Political Teory; Wolin, radition

and Innovation, 2326.44) David Boucher, exts in Context: Revisionist Methods for Studying the History of Ideas

(Te Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), 10811, 11417.45) Lockyer, raditions as Context in the History of Political Teory, 217.46) Collingwood,An Autobiography, 6162.47) Boucher, exts in Context,11314.


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cept of natural law withoutbeing an essentialist. It also shows that we mayrefer to the existence of relatively stable concepts like that of natural law in

the history of political thought, even if at the same time we also acknowl-edge that the meaning of these concepts, at a particular moment in time,depends on the specific linguistic context in which they are used. From

this standpoint it is entirely legitimate for us to speak of such a thing as thenatural law tradition provided that, when we do so, we are not assumingthat it must be possible to offer a precise definition of the concept of natu-ral law in the traditional manner. If there are two theorists, A and B, who

live in the same society at different times, both of whom who employ the

term natural law or lex naturalis, it may be legitimate to claim that theyboth belong to the natural law tradition, even if they mean completely dif-ferent things by that expression. In such circumstances, for us to be justi-fied in talking about a continuous natural law tradition, with which both

A and B can be associated, all that is necessary, as we have seen, is that thereshould be a family resemblance (Wittgenstein), or a chain of communi-cation (Kripke), or a traceable historical process (Collingwood), betweentheir respective uses of this linguistic expression. In other words, all that is

required is that we should be able to establish some historical line of con-

nection between the beliefs which A and B associate with the concept ofnatural law.

Tere is no reason to think that the concept of natural law is unique in

this regard. As erence Ball has observed, the reason why the vast major-ity of the concepts which are of interest to the historian of politicalthought elude fixed or final definition is precisely because they possesshistorically mutable meanings,48that is to say, meanings which change inthis particular sense. It is arguable that empirically the historical develop-

ment of most of the other concepts in the lexicon of the historian of polit-ical thought can be captured by something like this evolutionary model ofconceptual change. At the very least this might be offered as an interesting,empirically testable hypothesis which could be applied to the examination

of particular cases.If we think of conceptual change along the lines indicated in able 2

above, it would in principle become possible for us to trace the evolutionof the meaning which a concept like that of natural law has for the mem-

48) Ball, ransforming Political Discourse,X.


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bers of a particular linguistic community over time. It would also become

possible in principle for us to write the history of this concept and,

thereby, of the ongoing intellectual tradition with which it is associated.It is arguable therefore that, far from ruling out the possibility of writingthe history of any idea or concept, the theory of meaning in use which

was developed by the later Wittgenstein, if it is of any value to conceptualhistorians at all, might be said to require the attempt to write such a his-tory. As we shall see in the next Section, however, this was not the conclu-sion drawn by Quentin Skinner when he appealed to Wittgensteins

Philosophical Investigationsto support his proposed new method in 1969.

Indeed, as I noted earlier, the view which Skinner then took was that ifwe take Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use seriously then we shouldabandon altogether the idea of writing the history concepts. It is to Skin-ners use of the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein that I now turn.

Section 2: Quentin Skinner and Conceptual History

In Meaning and Understanding, Skinner suggests that those who think

that it is possible to write the history of any concept, for example the con-cept of natural law, are committed to the view that the concept in ques-

tion has a meaning which can be precisely defined. In other words theyassume that there is some fixed idea associated with the correspondinglinguistic expression (e.g. lex naturalis), an idea which possesses an essen-tial meaning which could not, and therefore does not, alter over time.

Hence their commitment to the belief that it is possible to write the his-tory of a concept rests upon a prior commitment to the traditional, Aris-totelian theory of meaning referred to earlier. What Wittgenstein hasshown however, Skinner insists, is that this traditional theory of meaningis no longer tenable. In Skinners view concepts should not be reified or

hypostatized.49 Tey have a meaning only because there is some rulewhich is followed by the members of a particular linguistic communitywhich happens to use the words with which they are associated. Moreo-ver, different people living in different societies or in the same society at

different times, even if they happen to employ the same linguistic phrase,

49) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 1011.


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might (and usually do) use that phrase in different ways, perhaps in radi-

cally different ways.

In 1969 Skinner suggested that the persistence over time of a deter-minate idea with an fixed meaning is only a spurious persistence. Tealleged persistence of this idea is merely apparent rather than real, and the

fact that this is so is disguised by the fact that the same word or linguisticexpression continues to be used, by the members of a particular linguisticcommunity, at a later time, even though the meaning of the concept withwhich this word or expression is then associated is completely different

from what it was at an earlier time. In Meaning and Understanding Skin-

ner insists that there is actually no determinate idea to the examinationor discussion of which various writers contributed. Hence of course,by implication, there is no history of the idea that could possibly bewritten.50Te great mistake of those who believe that it is possible to

write the history of a concept, he says, referring directly to Wittgensteinsviews on meaning, lies not merely in looking for the essential meaningof the idea as something which must necessarily remain the same, buteven in thinking of any essential meaning (to which individual writers

contribute) at all. Te appropriate and famous formula, Skinner goes

on, is that we should study not the meanings of words, but their use.51

Tese remarks indicate that it was Skinners understanding and endorse-ment of the later Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use which led him tothe conclusion he then drew, that it is not possible to write the history of

any concept. Skinner maintained in Meaning and Understanding thatthose who think that it is possible to do this must be committed to the (inhis view) mistaken belief that concepts have a meaning which persists overtime, in the specific sense that it always remains exactly the same. Skinners

Wittgensteinian argument can be presented as follows:

1. Te belief that it is possible to write the history of an idea or conceptpresupposes that its meaning persists, unchanging over time.

2. Tere is no idea or concept the meaning of which persisists, unchang-ing over time.

3. Terefore, it is not possible to write the history of any idea or concept.

50) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 389.51) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 37.


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Tere are two criticisms which might be made of this argument. Te first

has to do with its initial premise. Tere can be no objection to the view

that if we are to be able to write the history of a concept then the conceptin question must have a meaning which persists over time. If this werenot the case then, as Skinner rightly suggests, there would be no (one)

continuous idea of which the history could be written. What is objection-able, however, is the associated assumption that only those ideas or con-cepts which possess a fixed, unchanging or essential meaning could besaid to possess this quality. For as I argued earlier this is not in fact the

case. It is perfectly possible for an idea or concept to retain its identity

even though its meaning changes. It is arguable, therefore, there is a sensein which an idea might be said to persist over time which was overlookedby Skinner in Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, onewhich does not rely on the traditional theory of meaning or on the prin-

ciple of essentialism.Te second criticism is that Skinners view that those who think that it

is possible to write the history of a concept must be assuming that theconcept in question has a fixed meaning is a puzzling one. For if it were

true that a given concept did possess such an essential meaning then it

would follow that this meaning could not undergo any kind of alterationor change. But a logical consequence of this is the conclusion that theconcept in question could not then be said to have a history. As erence

Ball has noted, Nietzsche once said that only that which has no historycan be defined.52With respect to this issue, therefore, the most appropriateconclusion to draw from any endorsement of the traditional theory ofmeaning would be the one which Skinner himself draws in Meaning andUnderstanding, albeit for a different reason, namely that it is not possible

to write the history of the meaning of any idea or concept. Te reason forthis, however, would not be the one given by Skinner in his article.Against Skinner, it might be suggested that for an adherent of the tradi-tional theory of meaning it is thepresenceand not the absenceof an essen-tial meaning which makes conceptual history impossible.

Let us now turn to consider the relevance of Skinners appeal to thephilosophy of Wittgenstein for our understanding of the concept of natu-ral law. Te reader is reminded at this point that, together with the concepts

52) Ball, ransforming Political Discourse,x.


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of the great chain of being, utopia, progress, equality, sovereignty and jus-

tice, the concept of natural law is referred to explicitly by Skinner in

Meaning and Understanding as an example of a concept the history ofwhich cannot be written.53 It is arguable that if Skinners method wereapplied to the concept of natural law then the person who applied it

would probably be sympathetic to Paul Foriers and Chaim Perelmansclaim that any attempt to define natural law in an objective manner bydisengaging it from its environment, from the schools which employ theexpression, or from the political and legal organs which make use of it, is

an undertaking which is doomed from the start.54For it is simply not the

case that the concept which is associated with or expressed by this word orphrase has just one fixed meaning. On the contrary, it has as many differ-ent meanings as it has different uses. Hence to talk about themeaning of aword or phrase, or the concept which they express, just is inappropriate.

From the standpoint adopted by Skinner in 1969, the meaning which theexpression lex naturalishas for the members of a given linguistic commu-nity at one time, say t1, is indeed given by the linguistic convention whichregulates its use at that time, and similarly for the meaning of the same

linguistic expression at a later time, say t2. However, Skinner suggests that

the linguistic conventions in question are entirely different from oneanother and do not overlap at all. Te alteration in meaning of theexpression lex naturaliswhich is associated with the transition from onetime period to another is, therefore, a radical or a revolutionary one.

A. P. dEntrves once claimed that except for the name, the medievaland the modern notions of natural law have littlein common.55In 1969Skinner would I think have sympathized with this sentiment. Indeed, inMeaning and Understanding he went even further than dEntrves and

suggested that the beliefs of two thinkers who are historically or contextu-ally as far apart as, let us say, Aquinas and Hobbes, have nothing at all incommon apart from the fact that they both happen to use the same lin-guistic expression, lex naturalis, in their writings an expression which inSkinners opinion meant something completelydifferent for Hobbes fromwhat it meant for Aquinas. However, it is one thing to say that what is

53) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 3839.54) Paul Foriers and Chaim Perelman, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Dictionary of the

History of Ideas, 3 (New York: Scribner, 1973), 14.55) A. P. dEntrves, Natural Law, 2nd ed (London: Hutchinson, 1970), 15.


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novel in Hobbess employment of the concept of natural law is more

interesting than what is traditional, or that it is more important than

what Hobbes inherited from the past and simply took up without signifi-cant alteration. It is quite another to suggest, as arguably Skinner did in1969, that there are no such lines of historical connection at all between

Hobbess employment of the concept of natural law and the use to whichthis concept was put by his predecessors, including Aquinas, in the medi-eval period. Such an argument ignores the fact that, as Alasdair MacIntyrehas pointed out, there are continuities as well as breaks in the history ofmoral concepts and that just here lies the complexity of that history.56

Te view of conceptual change implicitly adopted by Skinner inMeaning and Understanding can be illustrated, using the example ofthe concept of natural law, by able 3 below.

able 3: Skinners Views on Conceptual Change

Individual A B C D

ime t1 t2 t3 t4

Concept natural law 1 natural law2 natural law3 natural law4

Expression lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalisBeliefs a,b,c d,e,f g,h,i j,k,l


theorist

natural law

theorist

natural law

theorist

natural law

theorist

In the table above individuals A, B, C and D are all assumed to be mem-bers of the same society, or linguistic community, living in different timeperiods, t1,t2,t3and t4. Tese four individuals all employ the expression

lex naturalisin their writings, but the beliefs which each of them associ-ates with this expression are quite different from the beliefs associatedwith it by the others. In each case this expression is associated with aunique and entirely different set of beliefs, designated by the symbols

a,b,c; d,e,f; g,h,i; and j,k,l. It is assumed that these individuals hold nobeliefs in common and that for each of them the expression lex naturalishas a completely different meaning from the meaning which it has for theothers. Te relationship between the beliefs of individual theorists A, B,

56) Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the

Homeric Age to the wentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1967),2.


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C and D is, therefore, based on the principle of discontinuity rather than

continuity and the transition from the beliefs associated with any one of

the time periods t1,t2andt3and t4to those associated with its successor isradical or revolutionary rather than an evolutionary one.

At first sight, it seems difficult to imagine how the scenario depicted in

this table could occur. For if it is true that the beliefs of two individualsfrom the same linguistic community (e.g. Aquinas and Hobbes) who areseparated from one another in time have nothing at all in common withone another then how could it be, or why would it be, that they both

happen to employ the same linguistic expression lex naturalis, albeit with

completely different meanings, in their writings? Tis way of thinkingabout conceptual change certainly appears at first sight to lack intuitiveplausibility. Nevertheless we saw above how such a state of affairs mightpossibly arise. It is arguable that this is the view of conceptual change

adopted, at least implicitly, by Skinner in Meaning and Understanding inthe History of Ideas.

From the point of view adopted by Skinner in 1969, we are justified inassuming that there would be no overlap at all between the beliefs of A, B,

C and D in the scenariobeing considered by this example. However, the

differences which exist in their beliefs is disguised by the fact that they allhappen to employ the same linguistic expression in their writings. In sucha situation, Skinner suggests, the task of the historian of ideas could only

be to attempt to establish or discover the meaning which the concept ofnatural law has for the members of a particular linguistic community in aparticular historical period (A at time t1; B at time t2; C at timet3; or D attime t4), rather than to trace the evolution of the meaning of that conceptover time. o employ the terminology of structuralist philosophy, we may

say that the approach adopted by Skinner in his article was exclusively syn-chronic and not at all diachronic. Tere is, therefore, some truth in EllenMeiksins Woods recent claim that, because of its lack of process, Skin-ners recommended method was curiously ahistorical.57

Skinners understanding of conceptual change in Meaning and Under-

standing is similar to that of . S. Kuhn.58It is also strikingly similar to

57)Ellen Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Tought

from Antiquity to the Middle Ages(London: Verso, 2008), 10.58) See . S. Kuhn, Te Structure of Scientific Revolutions,2nd ed. (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1970 [1962]).


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that of Michel Foucault in his structuralist phase, or in his archaeology of

knowledge period in the 1960s.59 I am, therefore, reluctant to endorse

Robert Lambs recent assessment of the relationship between Skinner andFoucault. According to Lamb, there appears to have been little in com-mon between the views of Foucault and those of the early Skinner.

Indeed, Foucault is a figure that is absent from his [Skinners] early work.On the other hand, however, in Skinners most recent thinking Foucaultlooms large as an intellectual influence.60 Tis judgment seemsto me to overlook the affinities which existed between the views on

method endorsed by Skinner in 1969 and those held by Foucault in his

archaeology period. Lamb associates Skinners current thinking, not onlywith the name of Foucault, but also with that of Nietzsche, and therefore(by implication) with the anti-foundationalist principles of what is usu-ally referred to as poststructuralism or postmodernism.61 He comes

very close to suggesting that the position embraced most recently by Skin-ner constitutes a significant departure from that which he advocated inhis early writings, and that the reason for this is that Skinner has fallenunder the influence of poststructuralist philosophy.62 In my view this

assessment exaggerates the extent to which Skinners current methodologi-

cal views differ from those which he came to endorse from the mid-1970sonwards.

In Meaning and Understanding Skinner argues that no concept canbe expressed by a set of words, the meaning of which can be excogitated

and traced over time.63 He concedes that the literal meanings of key

59) See, for example, Michel Foucault, Te Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge,

1972 [1968]). For a discussion of the similarity between the views of Skinner and those of

Foucault see Peter Kjellstrm, Te Narrator and the Archaeologist: Modes of Meaning

and Discourse in Quentin Skinner and Michel Foucault, Statsvetenskaplig idskrift, 98(1995), 2141; and Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner,

25657.60) Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 256.61) Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 257, 251. See also

Robert Lamb, Quentin Skinners Revised Historical Contextualism: A Critique, History

of the Human Sciences, 22, 3 (2009), 6566.62) For an examination of the relationship which exists between the views of Skinner and

poststructuralist philosophy see ony Burns, Interpreting and Appropriating exts in the

History of Political Tought: Quentin Skinner and Poststructuralism, Contemporary

Political Teory(forthcoming).63) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 37.


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terms dosometimes change over time, so that a given writer may saysomething with a quite differentsense and reference from the one which

may occur to the reader.64However, like Foucault, Skinner insists thatalthough we certainly can record the occurrence of such a change once ithas taken place nevertheless what we cannot do is trace this change as it

actually occurs. At first sight it is difficult to see how it is possible for theoccurrence of conceptual change to be recordedafterwards even though itcannot be tracedas and when it occurs. In fact, however, the apparentlyincompatible assertions which Skinner makes about this issue in Mean-

ing and Understanding can be reconciled provided we attribute to Skin-

ner in 1969 the implicit (and false) assumption that when it does happenconceptual change is always instantaneous and revolutionary, rather thanslow and evolutionary. Te view of conceptual change advanced implic-itly by Skinner in 1969 indicates that at this time he had some sympathy

for the claim, made by Kuhn in Te Structure of Scientific Revolutions(published 1962),that just like a gestalt switch, or a paradigm shift,conceptual change must occur all at once or not at all.65

Tis aspect of Skinners thinking in 1969 has been well captured by

Iain Hampsher-Monk, who has observed that in Meaning and Under-

standing Skinners strategic focus was synchronic,66and that Skinnersmethod pushes in the direction of history as a series of static snapshotsor thin sections within which the recovery of historical meaning isreduced to a series of discrete acts of understanding, each of which has

to be explicated in terms of its own intellectual context.67 Hampsher-Monk rightly points out that this way of thinking is one which has diffi-culty acknowledging the continuing identity of the idea through time.68Arguing in a similar vein, Andrew Lockyer has noted that Skinners early

views on method in 1969 neglected completely the continuity of lan-guage and concepts through time,69and Bruce Haddock has suggestedthat if it is true that the meanings of words are to be found in their use,

64) Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 31.65) Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 150.66) Hampsher-Monk, speech Acts, Languages or Conceptual History? 42.67) Hampsher-Monk, Political Languages in ime, 104.68) Hampsher-Monk, Political Languages in ime, 104.69) Haddock, Te History of Ideas and the Study of Politics, 426.


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as Skinner claims, nevertheless it is also true that their use changes through

time.70

In Meaning and Understanding, then, Skinner erroneously thoughtthat the view of conceptual change which sees it as being instantaneousand radical or revolutionary, along the lines laid down by Kuhn and

Foucault in the 1960s, is not only correct but also one which is required bythe later Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use. Earlier I gave reasons forthinking that this is not the case and that it is possible to endorse the laterWittgensteins views on meaning whilst at the same time rejecting the

views on conceptual change and conceptual history which Skinner took in

1969. In his article Skinner suggests that there is no alternative to his ownview of conceptual change and to his own views regarding the (im)possi-bility of writing conceptual history. Or rather, he suggests that there is onlyone alternative, which is to adopt the traditional essentialist view of mean-

ing. However, as we have seen, if we think about conceptual change asbeing slow and evolutionary, along the lines indicated earlier, then it canbe argued that the later Wittgensteins views on meaning can provide thetheoretical justification for a quite different approach to conceptual his-

tory. Tis is a non-essentialist approach which allows for the possibility

of the persistence or continued identity of a concept despite the fact thatits meaning does alter over time. It allows for the possibility that, unlikethe river of Heraclitus, a concept like that of natural law might retain its

identity in and through such a process of change.

Conclusion

Skinners understanding of and attitude towards conceptual change hasaltered significantly since 1969. From the mid-1970s onwards he came toallow for the possibility of a much less radical understanding of the notion

of conceptual change than that presented in Meaning and Understand-ing. According to this later view of conceptual change, which is similarin certain respects to the evolutionary approach discussed in Section 1above, although existing linguistic conventions certainly do place con-

straints upon individuals if they wish to communicate with the othermembers of a given linguistic community using concepts which those

70) Lockyer, raditions as Context in the History of Political Teory, 206.


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others can understand, nevertheless, within certain limits, it is always pos-

sible for creative individuals to modify those conventions to some extent

by using existing terms in new and creative ways. As Skinner points outin a later article, from this point of view although it is undeniably truethat we are all limited by the concepts available to us if we wish to com-

municate, nevertheless it is no less true that language constitutes aresource as well as a constraint.71

Similarly, as we have seen, in his more recent Regarding Method (2002)Skinner asserted that I strongly endorse the belief that we must be ready

as historians of philosophy not merely to admit the fact of conceptual

change but to make it central to our research.72

Indeed, the fact that in1989 Skinner was prepared to contribute a chapter to a book in whichthe editors claim that conceptual histories tell stories of change withincontinuity and of continuity within change, and that conceptual change

tends to be piecemeal and gradual and almost always occurs with ref-erence to relatively and stable linguistic conventions,73indicates that twodecades later he was much more sympathetic than he was in 1969 to thisalternative, less iconoclastic, way of thinking about conceptual change. In

short, he had by that time become somewhat more sympathetic towards

the evolutionary view of conceptual change referred to above. Tis is notto claim that Skinner is now an advocate of this evolutionary notion ofconceptual change. It is not the intention of this paper to provide anaccount of Skinners current methodological beliefs. So far as the paper

does deals with Skinners most recent work its aim is a minimalist one. Itis simply to establish what was the view of conceptual change, and of con-ceptual history, which was held by Skinner in 1969, and to attempt toshow that he did indeed come to modify this view in his later writings.

Despite Skinners claim, made in 1974, that the methodological viewswhich he expressed in Meaning and Understanding do not necessarilyimply that it is impossible to write the history of an idea or concept, wehave seen that there is some substance to the criticism, brought against

him by his critics, both then and since, that they do have such an impli-

71) Quentin Skinner, Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts, Regarding

Method, Visions, 117.72) Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, 178.73)Ball, Farr and Hanson, Editors Introduction, Political Innovation and Conceptual

Change, 3.


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cation. It is evident, however, that Skinners methodological views did

change after 1969. Kari Palonen has argued that although in his early

work Skinner was not a theorist of conceptual change nevertheless aninterest in this issue begins to appear in his work in the early seventies.74Skinners later remarks on this subject indicate,75as again Palonen argues,

that it was in this period that he started to think more carefully about theissue of conceptual change. o be more precise, it was in his reply to hiscritics of 1974 that he first started to tone down some of the moreextreme pronouncements which he had made in Meaning and Under-

standing and to alter his view of conceptual change, and hence also his

views on the viability of conceptual history.Nevertheless, although first planted in the 1970s, the seeds of thisrevised position were not developed at that time and only began to germi-nate from the late 1980s onwards. It is, perhaps, arguable that it was really

only in the very late 1980s and the 1990s, possibly in response to havingcome into contact with the work of Reinhard Koselleck and the German

Begriffsgeschichteschool through the work of Melvin Richter,76that Skin-ner began to develop further the views on conceptual change which he first

advanced in 1974 and which he now associates with the notion ofparadi-

astoleor rhetorical redescription77 views which have brought him closer

74) Kari Palonen, Rhetorical and emporal Perspectives on Conceptual Change: Teses

on Quentin Skinner and Reinhart Koselleck, Finnish Yearbook of Political Tought, 3

(1999), 419, 45. See also Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric(Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinners Rhetoric of

Conceptual Change, History of the Human Sciences, 10, 2 (1997), 6180; Kari Palonen,

Logic or Rhetoric in the History of Political Tought? Comments on Mark Bevir,

Rethinking History:Te Journal of Teory and Practice, 4, 3 (2000), 30110.75) Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, 182.76) Skinner himself suggests this, in Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual

Change, 177. For the relationship between Skinner and the BegriffsgeschichteSchool see

Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 25860; Melvin Rich-

ter, Pocock, Skinner and Begriffsgeschichte, in Te History of Political and Social Concepts:

A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 12442; and Mark Bevir,

Begriffsgeschichte, History and Teory, 39, 2 (2000), 27778, 280.77) For the notion ofparadiastolesee Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philoso-

phy of Hobbes(Cambridge, 1996), 1011, 14253, 15672, 17480; Quentin Skinner,

Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, 18287; Quentin Skinner,

Hobbes on Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality, in Hobbes and Civil Science,

Visions of Politics, Vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 87142.


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than some of his critics would ever have expected to one of the basic

assumptions of the BegriffsgeschichteSchool that it might indeed be possible

to write the history of a concept after all. An account of the methodologi-cal approach adopted by the BegriffsgeschichteSchool is something whichlies outside of the concerns of the present paper. Here I wish simply to

draw attention to the obvious fact that those associated with this Schoolevidently do think that writing conceptual history is both a possible anddesirable thing to do, and that although he rejected this view in 1969 Skin-ner later became more sympathetic towards it. As Robert Lamb has recently

observed, to anybody who has read Skinners Meaning and Understand-

ing closely this later rapprochement with conceptual history is indeed asurprising development.78

However, Skinners attitude towards conceptual history remains anambivalent one. For example in his second Reply to My Critics, pub-

lished in 1988, Skinner insisted that he was unrepentant in his belief thatthere can be no histories of concepts as such.79And more recently, in the2007 interview mentioned earlier, when asked to comment on Ortega yGassets claim that there are no eternal ideas and that there is no real

history of ideas, Skinners response was that basically I agree with it

wholeheartedly.80Tese remarks indicate that even today Skinner contin-ues to view the idea of writing the history of any concept with a consider-able degree of scepticism. His current view seems to be that although thisundertaking is indeed a possible one for an intellectual historian to engage

in, nevertheless it is not a useful or productive one. Tus, for example,Skinner maintains in this interview that I still think that there is some-thing unhistorical about the lists of meanings and alleged changes of mean-ing that make up most of the entries to be found in the works associated

with the Begriffsgeschichteproject.81It is clear from this 2007 interview thatSkinners reasons for taking this position have much more to do with hiscommitment to J. L. Austins theory of speech acts than it does with acontinued endorsement of or appeal to the philosophy of the later Witt-

78) Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 259.79) Quentin Skinner, A Reply to My Critics, 283.80) Fernandez Sebastian & Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty and Republicanism: An

Interview with Quentin Skinner, 106.81) Fernandez Sebastian & Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty and Republicanism: An

Interview with Quentin Skinner, 11314.


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genstein. What the historian should really be doing, Skinner continues to

believe, is studying not the histories of words but the history of the usesto

which these words were put at different times in argument, that is to say,the actions which were performed by those who used them.82EvaluatingSkinners Austinian reasons for thinking that the writing of the history

of any concept is in effect a waste of time is something which lies outsideof the remit of the present paper. Whatever the merits and demerits ofSkinners appeal to the philosophy of J. L. Austin might be, my conclusionhere is that the Wittgensteinian argument which Skinner advances in

defence of the same conclusion in Meaning and Understanding is open

to a number of objections, the details of which I have presented above.

82) Fernandez Sebastian & Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty and Republicanism: An

Interview with Quentin Skinner, 115.

Documents

Burns - A Critique of Skinner's Contextualism