Influence in Twentieth Century Political Thought

Welburn, Dominic

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41361-3_5

Dominic Welburn²

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Abstract

There have been analogous debates on the meaning of influence within the history of political thought, and these too have been shaped by a parallel understanding of influence as Nietzschean and emanational in nature. Despite lasting acrimony from Quentin Skinner, at the height of Cambridge School revolution in the 1960s, recent scholarship in the history of political thought has reasserted the benefit to be had from examining claims of influence between thinkers. Prior to examining these claims in the penultimate chapter, it is necessary to outline the disputes within the history of political thought on the subject of influence. Methodological disputes surrounding the role of influence are nothing new, and stem from the rejection of superficial links made between distant, unrelated thinkers. The principal aim of this chapter is to examine Condren’s statement that his critique of the terms of qualitative appraisal ‘is neither an exclusive property nor is its domain restricted to a single inheritance’ within political theory.

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Notes

1.
Skinner has since recognised that the assertions made during his early career were the product of ‘frustrated rage’ against the ‘canonical and epiphenomenal’ approach to the existence of perennial problems, and ‘dateless wisdom’ of the classic texts. He thus ‘launched a terrorist attack’ that was ‘philosophically ill-judged as well as abusive.’ See P. Koikkalainen and S. Syrjämäki, ‘On Encountering the Past—Interview with Quentin Skinner,’ Redescriptions: Yearbook in Political Thought and Conceptual History, Vol. 6 (2002).
2.
Ibid. p. 90.
3.
A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA, HUP, 1936/2001), p. 15.
4.
M. Mandelbaum, ‘The History of Ideas, Intellectual History, and the History of Philosophy’, History and Theory, Vol. 5 (1965), p. 39.
5.
Whilst these sub-disciplines are sometimes used interchangeably in this thesis to denote a historical approach to political theory more generally, see R. Whatmore, What Is Intellectual History (Cambridge, CUP, 2016), pp. 26–28 for a more thorough explanation of how the sub-discipline of the history of ideas developed into intellectual history.
6.
Ibid. p. 41.
7.
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, OUP, 1994), p. 313.
8.
Ibid.
9.
Ibid. p. 215.
10.
Ibid. p. 228.
11.
Ibid. p. 214.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Ibid. p. 205.
14.
Ibid. p. 282.
15.
Ibid.
16.
Ibid. p. 300.
17.
Ibid. p. 303.
18.
Ibid. p. 302.
19.
Ibid. p. 303.
20.
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford, OUP, 1960).
21.
Ibid. pp. 128–129.
22.
Ibid. p. 128.
23.
Q. Skinner, ‘The Limits of Historical Explanation’, Philosophy, 41 (1966), p. 206.
24.
Ibid. p. 207.
25.
Ibid. p. 209.
26.
Ibid. p. 210.
27.
Ibid. p. 211.
28.
Ibid. p. 212.
29.
Ibid. p. 213.
30.
Ibid. p. 215.
31.
M. Bevir, ‘The Contextual Approach’, in G. Klosko (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (Oxford, OUP, 2011), p. 16.
32.
C. Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 5.
33.
Ibid. p. 6.
34.
Ibid. p. 4.
35.
Ibid. p. 16.
36.
Ibid. p. 48.
37.
Ibid. p. 59. Condren identifies ‘five unmistakable marks’ that form the pillars of histories of political theory (as either historical tradition or ‘myth’): the practical historical and political significance of the tradition (especially as it is ‘disseminated to the undergraduate’); the progressive nature of the canon; the fact that each great thinker makes an individual contribution to this succession; the existence of ‘universal, abstract, political issues’ addressed by the canon; the identification of ‘classics’ within the tradition, pp. 60–61.
38.
M. Levin “What Makes a classic in Political Theory: The Case of John Locke,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 88 (1973), pp. 462–476.
39.
Condren , The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts, p. 78.
40.
Ibid. p. 83.
41.
Ibid. p. 86.
42.
Ibid. p. 91.
43.
Ibid. p. 96.
44.
Ibid. p. 100.
45.
Ibid. p. 101.
46.
Ibid. p. 102.
47.
Ibid. p. 106.
48.
Ibid. p. 107.
49.
A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being in Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts, p. 108 (fn. 43).
50.
R. G. Collingwood, Autobiography (Oxford, OUP, 1967).
51.
Condren , The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts, p. 109.
52.
Ibid. p. 111.
53.
Ibid. p. 112.
54.
Ibid. p. 113.
55.
Ibid. p. 120.
56.
Ibid. p. 121.
57.
Ibid. p. 126.
58.
Ibid. p. 127.
59.
Ibid. p. 130.
60.
Ibid. p. 131.
61.
See Skinner, ‘The Limits,’ p. 212.
62.
Condren , The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts, p. 132.
63.
Ibid. pp. 132–133.
64.
Ibid. p. 134.
65.
Ibid. p. 135.
66.
Ibid. p. 138.
67.
Ibid. p. 140.
68.
Ibid. p. 284.
69.
Ibid. p. 285.

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University of Bradford, Bradford, UK
Dominic Welburn

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Welburn, D. (2020). Influence in Twentieth Century Political Thought. In: Canon Controversies in Political Thought. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41361-3_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41361-3_5
Published: 07 March 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41360-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41361-3
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