The Nature of Political Theory

48 The Nature of Political Theory

becomes historian’s fodder once spoken or written. In one sense, in judging the past
and what is relevant in the past, we are taking a stand about what is true. However,
this is something that we apparently want to deny to our forbears, that is, their views
may also have some truth content.
One final puzzling aspect of the arguments concerning the study of the history of
political theory, in the original Skinnerian sense, is exactlywhyone does it? What can
be learnt from studying it? The older practitioners of the history of political theory
had a ready answer, which the second wave would have found deeply disagreeable, that
is, studying the past is a form of civic or national education, or, a way of gaining access
to perennial debates about universal virtues. However, the second wave answers to
this question are unusually sparse. One answer is that studying the history of political
theory, although having no substantive reference to the present, can make us more
rounded or more perceptive individuals. In other words, the function of studying the
history is to advance self-understanding in the present—although presumably once
thishas been written or spoken, it also becomes a historical remark, which needs
contextualizing. It is also not exactly clear how studying the past in this manner
advances our present self-understanding, or makes us more rounded persons, or why
we ought to be concerned about it.
When one approaches the negative judgements of the second wave (on previous
histories of political thought), then the whole theory begins to look deeply shaky.
Basically the second wave theories created a straw man. As many critics have pointed
out, even the most cursory reading of the majority of historians of political thought
in the twentieth century, simply does not fit the procrustean picture drawn in the
new history. Virtually all historians of political theory have been concerned about
intentions, within, possibly looser, conceptions of context. Further, any close reader of
Skinner will immediately notice that his own ‘historical writings demonstrate,...that
heispreparedtoignoremanyofhisnegativeconclusionsinordertofacilitatehistorical
practice’ (Boucher 1984: 296). HisFoundations of Modern Political Thoughtillustrates
this point time and again. All of his negative myths of coherence, mythical writing,
prolepsis, and parochialism, the use perennial ideas and the concept of influence,
areallon show in his substantive political thought writings.^32 This is absolutely
undeniable. For example, the above two-volume work, is committed to the theme of
the ‘process by which the modern concept of the State [capitalized by Skinner] came
to be formed’. This concept of the state is conceptualized ‘in distinctively modern
terms—as the sole source of law and legitimate force within a territory’ (Skinner
1978: vol 1, x). It is this perennial, coherent, ‘evolving’ concept which underpins
his political thought books. This ‘state’ contention makes Skinner look both very
much of a traditionalist, in terms of twentieth century histories of political thought,
and also, ironically, very much of a modern contributor to theStaatslehretradition.
Essentially, he views the evolution of premodern and modern political theory through
the concept of the state. There is nothing intrinsically wrong here, except that it bears
no relation to his methodological claims.
In sum, the second wave is now a faltering wave—in fact in some ways it has
already collapsed in all but name. As others have commented, what purports to