March 21, 2024
This document is linked to :
info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.3917/rai.093.0015
Quentin Skinner et al., « History, Political Philosophy and the Cambridge School », Open Archive of Sciences Po (Paris), ID : 10.3917/rai.093.0015
The article is a translation from a revised version of the chapter “Political Philosophy and the Uses of History” (published in Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner (eds.), History in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022). It begins by tracing the rise of the so-called “historicist” approach to the study of texts in political philosophy. The example of Thomas Hobbes’s philosophy is discussed in such a way as to illustrate what is distinctive about the historicist approach. The article then turns to consider two objections frequently raised against this approach. One claims that “a tyranny of history” has been allowed to develop, which has had the effect of cutting off the study of legal and political philosophy from a usable part. The other maintains that historicists fail to appreciate that some claims about political phenomena are transhistorical and universal in scope. After considering and largely rejecting these arguments, the article ends by examining the more recent objection that the history of political philosophy as currently written is an unduly parochial discipline, which now needs to concentrate on developing a more global approach. The article concludes with an assessment of this so-called global turn.