chapter 8
...................................................................................................................................................THEORY IN
HISTORY:
PROBLEMS OF
CONTEXT AND
NARRATIVE
...................................................................................................................................................j. g. a. pocock
1 The Problems of Terminology
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
To construct a study of the relations between ‘‘political theory’’ and ‘‘history’’—
as conceptualized phenomena or as disciplines we practice—it is necessary to
study these terms and, if possible, to reduce them to manageable forms. The
term ‘‘political theory’’ is imprecise; it has been used in a diversity of ways, and
the contributors to thisHandbookare probably not agreed on any single usage.
From the standpoint from which this chapter is written, it is observable that
‘‘political theory’’ is often used as if it were interchangeable with ‘‘political
thought,’’ a term equally inexact. In theWrst half of the twentieth century, there
were written a number of ‘‘histories of political thought,’’ or of ‘‘political