We Have a Firm Foundation 49be a new method is really just another contestable ‘philosophical argument about
interpretation’ (Gunnell 1987: 102 and Hollis in Tully (ed.) 1988: 181). This second
wave, because of its highly significant publishing success and institutional recognition,
still has a powerful presence in the academy. However, the dangers of this are apparent
in the self-congratulatory writings of some disciples. Consequently, when a historian
of political thought comments that the contributors to an edited book ‘are committed
to the view, which this series is interested to advance, that ideas can only be studied
in what the series editors [that is Skinner et al.] call “their concrete contexts” ’, and
that ‘this is an explicit, and now familiar rejection of those older modes of intellectual
history which studied texts in terms of sources and influences’ (Pagden (ed.) 1987: 1–
2), then, one senses that many are in need of a ‘wake-up’ call. When a highly-contested
philosophical approach concerning interpretation has become so institutionalized
that it produces such statements of orthodoxy, it is time for a disruptive reformation.
There is one further, more tangential, aspect to the second wave, namely another
movement, which links in indirectly with certain dimensions of the second wave.
This is the, mainly German,Begriffsgeschichtemovement. The key theoretician here
is Rheinhardt Kosellek (Kosellek 1985). TheBegriffsgeschichtemethod sees concepts
as reflective of external events and practices. It argues that there are internal features
of language and meaning that shape the ways in which we gain access to the social
world. The method consequently involves an immensely sophisticated treatment of
concepts at both the analytical and historical levels. TheGeschichtliche Grundbegriff
task is thus to map concepts over a specified period. As yet, the focus has largely
been on the German-speaking world during a specific period—1750–1850—which
theBegriffsgeschichtegroup calls theSattelzeitperiod (see Koselleck 1985). Some
contemporary popularisers ofBegriffsgeschichte,suchasMelvinRichter,havetried,
with commendable zeal, to invoke or stimulate a dialogue between the second wave
theorists and the German writers (Richter 1995; Richter Symposium 1999). Despite
Richter’s efforts and some half-hearted attempts at exploring the links, the debate has
never really taken off in Britain and North America (Ball, Farr, and Hanson (eds.)
1989; and more significantly Ball 1988). As yet, it seems only to have had a very
marginal impact on the Anglophone academic world. For Skinner, and second wave
writers, however, there arenohistories of concepts, as such, only the uses of concepts
in contingent arguments or discourses, in specific contextualized moments. Given
that the focus of theBegriffsgeschichteis seldom contextual and tends to rely on source
materials, such as philosophical or theoretical texts, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias,
which are regarded with suspicion by the new wave theorists, the prospects for fruitful
cross-fertilization between these accounts does not look hopeful.^33
In conclusion, the history of political philosophy has served a number of different
roles and functions during the twentieth century. Some of those bear upon the status
of history itself as a discipline, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, others
are internal to the discipline itself. Initially, in terms of the external cultural and
political setting in which it developed, the history of political theory was viewed as part
of the education of the citizen, particularly the professional citizen, teaching virtue
and leadership qualities through the great classic books and providing sustenance for