We Have a Firm Foundation 47is ‘sharing’ something common. We do notbecomethe past or talk to the dead in
the language of the dead. We remain in the present. Further, we appear to be able
to understand a past, but still not agree with it regardless. Thus, if we can under-
stand, interpret, and articulate a past idea, we can also disagree or agree with it. We
can dismiss it or employ it as valuable. We can therefore use present standards to
make judgements about past concepts or values. We have, in other words, a perennial
concept, which the new wave theories standardly deny. The alternative to this is the
contextual logic of the second wave arguments: to insist on past linguistic contexts
(which can only be understood within those past linguistic contexts, and never in
terms of our present terms). This means that the past is always impossible to under-
stand or judge. By definition, we would have no linguistic access to it. We have, in
fact, a battery of arguments, deployed by second wave theories, to convince us of the
irrelevance of past thought for present political theory. This was the root of Skinner’s
critique of Plamenatz and Sabine. As John Dunn put it, ‘I simply cannot conceive
of constructing an analysis of any issue in contemporary political theory around the
affirmation or negation of anything which Locke says about political matters’ (quoted
in Tuck 1985: 82). John Locke’s thoughts on property or natural rights are therefore
irrelevant to the present. Dunn has now performed avolte-faceon this issue; however,
his earlier strange views are still not without support.^30
However, Skinner’s erstwhile admirers, James Tully and Richard Tuck, in their
writings have also forced some distance from him on this issue, Tuck remarking in
hisPhilosophy and Government(1993) book that ‘the better our historical sense of
what those [seventeenth century] conflicts were, the more often they seem to resemble
modern ones’ (Tuck 1993: xii). Surrounding such debates are also a series of problems
concerning the role of history. The core issue is focused on the question: can political
theorists really disentangle themselves from the complex histories and structures of
their own political cultures and would they even want to disentangle themselves? It is
clear, for example, that the bulk of what may be termed normative political theory in
the twentieth century, to the present moment, is prepared to plunder mercilessly past
texts for arguments or values, without the slightest blush for methodological rectitude.
John Rawls associated himself with Kant, Nozick with Locke, and Hayek with Adam
Smith and David Hume. This is a well-tried strategy. What can the methodologically
purist historian of political theory say to this strategy? The usual response is to say
that history and normative political theory are different activities and neither the
twain shall meet. Ironically, this more or less agrees with the judgement of many
conceptualist analytic philosophers. However, the cost of denying any possibility of
perennial problems can be high.^31
However, should one be concerned about the truth of what one studies? In one
sense, those ‘impurists’ (those who plunder past thinkers for present arguments)are
concerned about truth. The ‘purist’ historian of political theory does not seem so
concerned with this question. However, why are certain thinkers or texts chosen in
the first place by the purist? What is it about these texts or thinkers, which should
focus our attention? Furthermore, what is the present status ofourarguments, even
our methodological arguments? What truth-status do they have? Every argument