46 The Nature of Political Theorybeyond the context, whereas, for Strauss, the context and intentions are themselves
thesourceof moral universals. Thus, on the same body of basic arguments, Skinner
denies and Strauss affirms perennial problems. Yet, the denial of perennial problems
raises difficult issues.
The first concerns how we identify a linguistic context? There is little agreement
on what is meant by context in the various new histories and how precisely it relates
to texts. Thus, how long does a context have to exist before it becomes a context?
How does a context hold together? How does one know a context, as opposed to a
series of texts? How would one know if something was alien or integral to a context?
A context looks more like an arbitrary composite, derived from multiple sources,
which is given an honorific unifying title. However, one might still argue that a
context is constituted by secondary and tertiary literature. However, by the same
revisionist logic, this literature needs a context to be understood; yet, each bit of
further literature needs a context, thus, we have areductio ad absurdum. To deny this
logic would be self-contradictory. The term context, as such, has no reality and is
more of a convenient sociological abstraction. Further, can a full account be given
ofanyhistorical context? How one would know when it was complete, or when
it was deficient? If we paused for a moment and reflected on the question—what
is the context of European or American thought at this present moment? Surely,
the issue of identifying a satisfactory context is just very weird, except on the most
impressionistic level?
A second range of problems with the second wave relate to the problem of self-
reference. By the logic of their own arguments, second wave textsmustthemselves be
historically contingent—unless they have attained an ahistoricalsub specie aeternitatis
position, which they also contend is logically impossible. To grasp the meaning of this
second wave of theory we would therefore need to reconstruct the conventions and
linguistic context of their own contexualizing histories, before we could trust their
judgements about how to do history. Furthermore, their own historical judgements
would have no reference beyond their own linguistic context, wherever that begins
or ends. One would need to ask what were they trying to say in terms of linguistic
conventions, who were their intended audience, and what was the secondary and
tertiary literature in their era? The full context of second wave argument is, of course,
virtually impossible to identify, thus, things do not look very hopeful in this direction.
If it is said that it is too soon to identify their context, then, we should, by their logic,
believe nothing that they say, since we havenopossibility of understanding it or
validating it. Further, by their own definitions, their textual work could not provide
any insight into the past or future. We could not expectanyuniversal methodological
truths about how to do the history of political theory. Each piece of methodological
writing is only understandable within a particular set of contingent conventions.
If one reversed the reflexive logic here and argued, in effect, that we can actually
make philosophical judgements, which have an atemporal reference, qua perennial
problems, then certain consequences flow. We might speak, for example, about lit-
erature in the past, even in a different context to our own. Yet, this is done inour
language. What else could it be? Even trying to share the linguistic context of a past