Abstract

The relationship between the history of political thought and modern political philosophy since the late 1960s has been marked by an apparent paradox. On the one hand, a number of leading historians of political theory, such as Quentin Skinner, John Pocock and John Dunn, have at various times expressly asserted that their subject should have very little relevance for modern theory; on the other hand, many of the same historians have also been distinguished contributors to discussions among political philosophers about issues such as republicanism, democracy or justice. Moreover, these assertions have failed to discourage the philosophers, many of whom have continued the ancient practice of pillaging the classics in search of ideas and styles to be revived for their own time. (Obvious examples would be Nozick's use of Locke, Kavka's use of Hobbes and maybe even Rawls' use of Kant.) Some philosophers – notably Macintyre and Taylor – have gone so far as to argue that we cannot disentangle ourselves from the complex histories of our own culture, and that unhistorical political theory is both conceptually barren and morally hazardous. It would not have been surprising if the practitioners of positivist political science, of the kind which was widely accepted earlier in this century, had disclaimed any interest in the history of political thought; but what is disconcerting is that the positivist generation seems to have been more enthusiastic in principle about the modern relevance of studying the history of theories than the anti‐positivist generation of the period since 1960. So I will begin this paper by trying to explain the character of the methodological debate on the history of political thought which began in the 1960s, and how far the historians were really opposed to any modern exploitation of the classic texts of political theory.