Interpreting and appropriating texts in the history of political thought: Quentin Skinner and poststructuralism

Abstract

This article argues that for purposes of hermeneutics, in relation to texts in the history of political thought, it is fruitful to make a conceptual distinction between the idea of a reading, an interpretation and an appropriation of a text. The article relates these ideas to two basic approaches to hermeneutic understanding, that of Quentin Skinner, on the one hand, and that associated with the philosophy of poststructuralism on the other. It is argued that once the above conceptual distinctions have been made it can be demonstrated that these two approaches to hermeneutic understanding are not necessarily incompatible with one another. It is also argued that Skinner came to appreciate that this is the case in the later 1980s, and that this constituted a significant revision of the methodological position views which Skinner had advocated before that time, from the late 1960s onwards. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.