Without Laslett to the lost worlds: Quentin Skinner's early methodology release_jg4ky52y7rcddkojlyztn466b4

by Takuya Furuta

Published in Japanese Journal of Political Science by Cambridge University Press (CUP).

2021   p1-19

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> The aim of this paper is to suggest that the emergence of the so-called Cambridge School of history of political thought can best be understood in terms of two competing visions of the relationship between history and social science, focusing on Peter Laslett and Quentin Skinner. Although Laslett is often distinguished as a founder of the Cambridge School, this paper suggests an alternative view by emphasizing the theoretical discontinuity between Laslett and Skinner rather than their continuity. Laslett, a practitioner of Karl Manheim's ideas, promoted the idea of a comprehensive scientific social history, within which intellectual history was located. This paper argues that Skinner broke with Laslett's idea. For Skinner, (1) Laslett was a positivist who applied the natural scientific model to intellectual history; (2) Laslett's positivism was actually 'contextualism'; and (3) the alternative to Laslett's contextualism was the history of ideology. Skinner's early methodology was, in part, a rhetorical redescription of 'ideology', which opposed both Mannheim and Laslett. As such, this paper focuses on the discursive disconnection between Laslett and Skinner, thus providing a clue to construct a platform for facilitating a further discussion of the history of ideas and the social sciences.
In application/xml+jats format

Archived Files and Locations

application/pdf   277.8 kB
file_63vtqfmv6nfanitloby5jxi56y
www.cambridge.org (publisher)
web.archive.org (webarchive)
Read Archived PDF
Preserved and Accessible
Type  article-journal
Stage   published
Date   2021-06-07
Language   en ?
Journal Metadata
Not in DOAJ
In Keepers Registry
ISSN-L:  1468-1099
Work Entity
access all versions, variants, and formats of this works (eg, pre-prints)
Catalog Record
Revision: 36a51839-fb04-4faa-a9f3-30f1d7952963
API URL: JSON