Histories and freedom of the present: Foucault and Skinner 외 2

 

Naja Vucina, Claus Drejer, and Peter Triantafillou, "Histories and freedom of the present: Foucault and Skinner", History of the Human Sciences, December 2011, vol.24(5), pp.124-141.

 

Abstract

This article compares the ways in which Michel Foucault’s and Quentin Skinner’s historical analyses seek to unsettle the limits on present forms of freedom. We do so by comparing their ways of analysing discourse, rationality and agency. The two authors differ significantly in the ways they deal with these three phenomena. The most significant difference lies in their ways of addressing agency and its relationship to power. Notwithstanding these differences, the historical analyses of both authors seek to problematize the ways in which past thoughts and practices limit contemporary forms of freedom. While Foucault seems to go furthest in this endeavour, a comparison may enrich both lines of historical analyses.

 

Robert Lamb, "Quentin Skinner's revised historical contextualism: a critique", History of the Human Sciences, July 2009; vol. 22(3), pp.51-73.

Abstract

Since the late 1960s Quentin Skinner has defended a highly influential form of linguistic contextualism for the history of ideas, originally devised in opposition to established methodological orthodoxies like the `great text' tradition and a mainly Marxist epiphenomenalism. In 2002, he published Regarding Method, a collection of his revised methodological essays that provides a uniquely systematic ｅxpression of his contextualist philosophy of history. Skinner's most arresting theoretical contention in that work remains his well-known claim that past works of political theory cannot be read as contributions to `perennial' debates but must instead be understood as particularistic, ideological speech acts. In this article I argue that he fails to justify these claims and that there is actually nothing wrong at all with (where appropriate) treating past works of political theory as engaged in perennial philosophical debates. Not only do Skinner's arguments not support the form of contextualism he defends, their flaws are actually akin to those he identified in his critique of previous methodological orthodoxies.

 

 

 

Ryan Walter, "Reconciling Foucault and Skinner on the state: the primacy of politics?", History of the Human Sciences, August 2008; vol. 21(3), pp. 94-114.

Abstract

Foucault and Skinner have each offered influential accounts of the emergence of the state as a defining element of modern political thought. Yet the two accounts have never been brought into dialogue; this non-encounter is made more interesting by the fact that Foucault's and Skinner's accounts are at odds with one another. There is therefore much to be gained by examining this divergence. In this article I attempt this task by first setting out the two accounts of the state, and then some of the methodological strictures each thinker has suggested. I argue that the divergence between Foucault's and Skinner's accounts of the state is indeed driven by differences in method, as we might expect; but I also argue that these differences in method can themselves be well explained by the differing political motivations each thinker has at times articulated. Thus it is possible to make politics, and not method, the privileged point of this reconciliation.