We Have a Firm Foundation 45ideological context. Tully defines Skinners’ use of ideology as a ‘language of politics
defined by its conventions and employed by a number of writers’ (Tully 1988: 9). This
conventional context, of necessity, incorporates secondary and tertiary literature of
a period, to reveal the full structure of conventions. It follows, as Skinner comments,
‘if we are interested in...the process of ideological formation and change, we can-
not avoid involving ourselves in extensive historical inquiries’ (Skinner in Tully (ed.)
1988: 101). Consequently, Tully describes Skinner’sFoundations of Modern Political
Thoughtas ‘not only a map of the great political ideologies of early modern Europe,
it is also a guide to the location and the ideological and political explanation of the
incremental manipulations and grand transformations of them’ (Tully 1988: 12). This
comment alone, however, seems to undermine many of the methodological points
made earlier by Skinner. ‘Incremental manipulation’ and ‘grand transformations’ do
not quite to fit arguments, which insist on stringent contextualism and the denial of
perennial beliefs.
The relation between political ideology and political action, and what forms of
political thought and action are involved in disseminating ideological change, are also
of key importance to second wave writers. As conventions and ideological contexts
change, so do political actions. Theories can vindicate or subvert an order of con-
ventions. As Tully put it, ‘Since a political ideology represents a political action...to
change some of the conventions of the ideology is to change the way in which some
of that political action is represented. The manipulated conventions redescribe and
so recharacterize the political action’ (Tully (ed.) 1988: 11).
The other main dimension of this second wave is thenegativecritique of other
modes of doing the history of political thought. This is not only a critique of first wave
theories, but also of histories of political thought throughout the twentieth century.
It convicts its predecessors of a number serious lapses, particularly that of promoting
the idea of perennial truths. They are also accused of a ‘mythology of doctrines’, that
is, writing ‘mythologies’ not genuine history (Skinner 1969: 7). Second, they are
convicted of promoting a ‘mythology of coherence’, namely, assuming that an author
of a classic text must have had a coherent theory. Coherence will thus be supplied
by the historian of thought, if it is missing (Skinner 1969: 12ff.). Third, there is
‘mythology of prolepsis’ (Skinner 1969: 22), that is, focusing on the implications of
a text as against its authorial meaning. Fourthly, they are seen to be guilty of the
‘mythology of parochialism’ (Skinner 1969: 24), that is the familiarity of a particular
idea leads the historian to link it teleologically with one in his or her own day. It
appears, therefore, that the bulk of the history of political theory has failed miserably
during the twentieth century.
There have been many criticisms made of the general character of this second wave,
which are difficult to summarize in a short compass. However, on the positive side of
his work: the idea of recovering authorial intentions is by no means unique. The bulk
of the first wave was committed to it as an approach. Strauss, Arendt, Sabine, and
Bloom were quite explicit in using this theme to counter excessive historicism. Both
Skinner and Strauss, in fact, see the conventional linguistic context and authorial
intentions as crucial. However, for Skinner, itappearsto be impossible to move