Works on the history of political thought, written in the above manner, tend to
be microhistories rather than macrohistories, studies of particular performances,
actions, and compositions, focused on the immediate context of the action rather
than its long-term consequences. If conWned—as there is no reason why they
should not be—to a particular text or group of texts, and to the state of the
language culture at the time these were written, they will be synchronous rather
than diachronous in their emphasis; and it has been asked whether the context-
ualist approach is capable of supplying a history of contexts. This, however, can be
done in several ways. The text and its author can be shown innovating in and
acting upon the language in which the text is written, obliging the language to say
new things and modify or reverse its implications. The text can be studied as it is
read and responded to by others, becoming what it means to them as distinct
from what its author intended. Lastly, texts sometimes outlive both their authors
and the contexts in which they are written, traveling both in space and in time to
act and be acted upon in contexts of language and circumstance sharply unlike
those in which they received their original meaning. There will now be the
possibility of historical narrative, recounting both how the text underwent
changes in use and meaning, perhaps and perhaps not continuing to convey its
author’s intentions in situations he cannot have foreseen, and how the language
context underwent change for reasons not reducible to the intended perform-
ances of identiWable speech actors. It may even be possible—although it seems
that it must be questionable—to supply uniWed ‘‘histories of political thought,’’ in
which one pattern of consensus and challenge is progressively replaced by
another, although recentCambridge Historieshave tended to present several
such histories going on concurrently in contexts distinguishable from one an-
other. 3 If anything like the former canonical histories is restored, it will probably
be the work of political theorists desirous of a usable past, rather than of historians
not interested in supplying them with one.
4 The Encounter Resumed
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
To suppose a direct encounter between a political theorist and a historian,
each engaged in studying the same text, we must make two assumptions. In
3 Burns ( 1988 ); Burns with Goldie ( 1991 ); Goldie and Wokler ( 2006 ).theory in history: problems of context and narrative 169