"[It] may be right to view with a certain irony those [who work as] dispassionate analysts standing above the battle. What the historical record strongly suggests is that no one is above the battle, because the battle is all there is" - Quentin Skinner, Visions (2002), I, p. 7 - ThreadSky

tomaashby.bsky.social • 45 days ago

"[It] may be right to view with a certain irony those [who work as] dispassionate analysts standing above the battle. What the historical record strongly suggests is that no one is above the battle, because the battle is all there is" - Quentin Skinner, Visions (2002), I, p. 7

Reposted from Samuel Moyn

Please don’t say that history should aim to be above the battle. History is always both political and theoretical, even if in a bad way most of the time. www.thenation.com/article/arch...

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adrianblau.bsky.social•45 days ago

The battle is clearly not *all* there is - see for example Hobbes’s mathematical arguments. And since his political arguments partly reflected his mathematical arguments, it’s hard to see his political arguments as being *only* about the battle: he clearly thought they were *also* objectively right.

thomaslalevee.bsky.social•43 days ago

Doesn’t appealing to mathematics to make political arguments provide a classic example of the illusion of “dispassionate analysis” that Skinner is talking about here? Which political theorist in HPT didn’t think their arguments were “objectively right”?

adrianblau.bsky.social•43 days ago

I was trying to say that Skinner’s “the battle is *all* there is” must be too strong. And his analysis in Hobbes and Republican Liberty shows why: Hobbes both wrote for the ages and was part of the battle.

As is often the case, Skinner’s defence of history is right but too strong!

adrianblau.bsky.social•43 days ago

So, I don’t think it’s right to describe dispassionate analysis as an “illusion”. Hobbes really thought his mathematical writings were right. (See Doug Jesseph’s superb book Squaring the Circle.)

adrianblau.bsky.social•43 days ago

But not all philosophers thought that all they wrote was objectively right. Hobbes probably massaged his religious views. Locke may well not have believed everything in the Two Treatises. Bruni’s funeral oration, Machiavelli’s Discursus Florentinarum, etc. The battle distorted much that they wrote!

thomaslalevee.bsky.social•43 days ago

Fair point - my own view is probably skewed by my focus on those who sought to construct a “science” of politics in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Thanks for the clarification

tomaashby.bsky.social•43 days ago

Exactly, it seems beside the point

adrianblau.bsky.social•45 days ago

I discuss this in my forthcoming introduction to my edited book on Skinner’s Meaning & Understanding.

See also my discussion of “above the battle” in my paper “How should we categorize approaches to the history of political thought?”, The Review of Politics (2021).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/how-should-we-categorize-approaches-to-the-history-of-political-thought/093D74957C70B1464CE39B8642C3FD4E

iwasid.bsky.social•39 days ago

The problem is that the world is too large and complex for us to encounter more than tiny fragments of it. We each encounter differently and build our knowledge, personal versions of reality, from those accreting fragments.

Hence no dispassionate view is possible, and we are doomed to battle.

iwasid.bsky.social•39 days ago

tbf Skinner wrote the book on Machievelli ...

tomaashby.bsky.social•44 days ago

Hobbes may have thought that, but so do "dispassionate analysts" - I do not see anything here that "clearly" contradicts the sentiment in the quotation?

adrianblau.bsky.social•42 days ago

Ah - you mean that they may *think* of themselves as dispassionate analysts but they are still wholly in the battle? I'd never thought of it that way before. Yes - change "wholly" to "partly" and I think I'd agree. I might have to change my account in future to address this. Thank you!

tomaashby.bsky.social•42 days ago

Yes, that was my thought - & "partly" being whenever they engage the political &, in a sense, this always means they cannot "wholly" be detached (which is sufficient, I hazard, to claim when talking about politics that the battle touches all & "is all there is" to the degree it is inescapable)

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