Q. Skinner – Visions of Politics (3 Volumes)

Автор: Q. Skinner
Название книги: Visions of Politics (3 Volumes)
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Политология и Социология
Страницы: 227+495+405
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

Visions of Politics is a major collection of the principal published and unpublished essays of Quentin Skinner, one of the leading historians of ideas in the world who, over the past forty years, has pioneered a distinctive and highly influential approach to the subject. Skinner's work is characterized by philosophical power, clarity, and elegance of exposition, and these essays, many of which are now recognized classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. Each essay has been carefully revised for publication in this collection. Quentin Skinner is a Fellow of the British Academy and Regius Professor of Modern History and Pro-Vice-Chancellor University of Cambridge. Professor Skinner has been associated with institutions world-wide, including Princeton University, Northwestern University, Australian National University and Université Paris

Several of the chapters in these volumes are appearing in print for the first
time. But most of them have been published before (although generally
in a very different form) either as articles in journals or as contributions
to collective works. Revising them for re-publication, I have attempted
to tread two slightly divergent paths at the same time. On the one hand,
I have mostly allowed my original contentions and conclusions to stand
without significant change. Where I no longer entirely endorse what I
originally wrote, I usually indicate my dissent by adding an explanatory
footnote rather than by altering the text. I have assumed that, if these
essays are worth re-issuing, this can only be because they continue to be
discussed in the scholarly literature. But if that is so, then one ought not
to start moving the targets.
On the other hand, I have not hesitated to improve the presentation
of my arguments wherever possible. I have corrected numerous mistranscriptions
and factual mistakes. I have overhauled as well as standardised
my system of references. I have inserted additional illustrations to
strengthen and extend a number of specific points. I have updated my
discussions of the secondary literature, removing allusions to yesterday’s
controversies and relating my conclusions to the latest research. I have
tried to make use of the most up-to-date editions, with the result that in
many cases I have changed the editions I previously used. I have replied to
critics wherever this has seemed appropriate, sometimes qualifying and
sometimes elaboratingmy earlier judgments. Finally, I have tinkered very
extensively with my prose, particularly in the earliest essays republished
here. I have toned down the noisy polemics I used to enjoy; simplified the
long sentences, long paragraphs and stylistic curlicues I used to affect;
taken greater pains to make use of gender-neutral language wherever
possible; and above all tried to eliminate overlaps between chapters and
repetitions within them. I need to explain the basis on which I have selected the essays for
inclusion in these volumes. I have chosen and grouped them – and in
many cases supplied them with new titles – with two main goals in mind.
One has been to give each volume its own thematic unity; the other has
been to integrate the volumes in such a way as to form a larger whole.
The chapters in volume , Regarding Method, are all offered as contributions
to the articulation and defence of one particular view about the
reading and interpretation of historical texts. I argue that, if we are to
write the history of ideas in a properly historical style, we need to situate
the texts we study within such intellectual contexts and frameworks of
discourse as enable us to recognise what their authors were doing in writing
them. To speak more fashionably, I emphasise the performativity of
texts and the need to treat them intertextually. My aspiration is not of
course to perform the impossible task of getting inside the heads of longdead
thinkers; it is simply to use the ordinary techniques of historical
enquiry to grasp their concepts, to follow their distinctions, to recover
their beliefs and, so far as possible, to see things their way.
The other volumes are both concerned with leading themes in earlymodern
European political thought. In volume , Renaissance Virtues, I
focus on the fortunes of republicanism as a theory of freedom and government.
I followthe re-emergence and development fromthe thirteenth
to the sixteenth century of a theory according to which the fostering of
a virtuous and educated citizenry provides the key to upholding the liberty
of states and individuals alike. My concluding volume, Hobbes and
Civil Science, examines the evolution and character of Thomas Hobbes’s
political thought, concentrating in particular on his theory of the state.
I consider his views about the power of sovereigns, about the duties and
liberties of subjects and about the grounds and limits of political obedience.
I attempt in turn to relate these issues to Hobbes’s changing views
about the nature of civil science and its place in his more general scheme
of the sciences.
While stressing the unity of each volume, Iamanxious at the same time
to underline the interrelations between them. I have attempted in the first
place to bring out a general connection between volumes  and . As we
turn from Renaissance theories of civic virtue to Hobbes’s civil science,
we turn at the same time from the ideal of republican self-government to
its greatest philosophical adversary. Although I am mainly concerned in
volume  with the development of Hobbes’s thought, much of what he
has to say about freedom and political obligation can also be read as a critical commentary on the vision of politics outlined in volume . The
linkage in which I am chiefly interested, however, is the one I seek to
trace between the philosophical argument of volume  and the historical
materials presented in volumes  and . To put the point as simply as
possible, I see the relationship as one of theory and practice. In volume 
I preach the virtues of a particular approach; in the rest of the book I try
to practise what I preach.
As I intimate in my general title, Visions of Politics, my overarching historical
interest lies in comparing two contrasting views we have inherited
in the modernWest about the nature of our common life. One speaks of
sovereignty as a property of the people, the other sees it as the possession
of the state. One gives centrality to the figure of the virtuous citizen, the
other to the sovereign as representative of the state. One assigns priority
to the duties of citizens, the other to their rights. It hardly needs stressing
that the question of how to reconcile these divergent perspectives remains
a central problem in contemporary political thought. My highest
hope is that, by excavating the history of these rival theories, I may be
able to contribute something of more than purely historical interest to
these current debates