Visions of Politics

First of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading historians.

Quentin Skinner (Author)

9780521589260, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 September 2002

225 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.7 cm, 0.377 kg

' … this is a deeply impressive collection which displays Skinner's exceptional range.' The New York Review

The first of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important philosophical and methodological statements written over the past four decades, each carefully revised for publication in this form. In a series of seminal essays Professor Skinner sets forth the intellectual principles that inform his work. Writing as a practising historian, he considers the theoretical difficulties inherent in the pursuit of knowledge and interpretation, and elucidates the methodology which finds its expression in his two successive volumes. All of Professor Skinner's work is characterised by philosophical power, limpid clarity, and elegance of exposition; these essays, many of which are now recognised classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. Professor Skinner has been awarded the Balzan Prize Life Time Achievement Award for Political Thought, History and Theory. Full details of this award can be found at http://www.balzan.it/News_eng.aspx?ID=2474

General preface
Full contents: volumes 1–3
Acknowledgements
Conventions
Volume 1: Regarding Method: 1. Introduction: seeing things their way
2. The practice of history and the cult of the fact
3. Interpretation, rationality and truth
4. Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas
5. Motives, intentions and interpretation
6. Interpretation and the understanding of speech acts
7. 'Social meaning' and the explanation of social action
8. Moral principles and social change
9. The idea of a cultural lexicon
10. Retrospect: studying rhetoric and conceptual change
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Educational: History [YQH], Political science & theory [JPA], History of ideas [JFCX], Philosophy [HP], History [HB]