Questions: Contextualism: Understanding Ideas in Their Historical Setting

Question 1

A philosopher reads Locke's Second Treatise and argues it offers a timeless defense of liberal democracy applicable today. A contextualist historian calls this interpretation methodologically flawed. What is the core objection?

• A. Locke's text is too old to have reliable historical interpretation
• B. The philosopher is treating Locke as answering present questions rather than the specific political questions Locke was actually addressing in his own context
• C. The argument is historically accurate but politically biased toward liberal democracy
• D. Contextualism holds that political philosophy cannot make universal claims at all

Answer: (B)

Skinner's core critique of 'perennial questions' approaches is that they read canonical texts as contributions to ongoing, timeless debates. Locke was writing in a specific context — the Exclusion Crisis in late seventeenth-century England, responding to identifiable interlocutors, using available humanist concepts, pursuing specific political goals. To read him as answering our questions about liberal democracy imports our frameworks onto his text. The contextualist asks instead: what was Locke *doing*, for whom, and in response to what live debate?

Question 2

A student argues: 'I can understand what Machiavelli meant by reading the text carefully — the words are right there.' What is the core contextualist objection to this claim?

• A. The student is correct; close reading is the most rigorous method of textual interpretation
• B. Machiavelli's Italian is too archaic to be read without specialist translation
• C. Without context, you cannot determine the illocutionary force — what speech act the author was performing, not just what propositions were stated
• D. The words have no stable meaning regardless of context

Answer: (C)

Skinner distinguishes locutionary meaning (what words say) from illocutionary force (what the author was *doing* in saying them — arguing, ironizing, defending, attacking). Close reading recovers content but not the act. Was Machiavelli celebrating corruption, describing it neutrally, or using humanist rhetoric to criticize Florentine politics? That requires knowing the live debates, the available conceptual vocabulary, and the intended audience. The words underdetermine the speech act without contextual reconstruction.

Question 3

According to Skinner's contextualism, a text's meaning can be fully recovered by careful close reading of the text alone, without reference to its historical context.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Skinner argues that texts have not just propositional content but illocutionary force — the speech act being performed. Recovering illocutionary force requires reconstructing the linguistic context (available vocabulary, conceptual repertoire) and polemical context (live debates, identifiable interlocutors). A reader who lacks this context will inevitably import their own contemporary frameworks and questions, misidentifying what the author was doing. The text alone is insufficient; the context is constitutive of meaning.

Question 4

Contextualism does more than correct historical misreadings — it also 'de-naturalizes' our present political concepts by showing they have specific, contingent histories.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

A key payoff of contextualism is genealogical. By showing that concepts like 'sovereignty,' 'rights,' and 'liberty' were forged in specific historical conflicts and could have developed differently, contextualism undermines the assumption that these are obvious, inevitable, or natural categories of political life. This makes contextualism more than a methodological scruple — it opens space for recognizing that our own conceptual inheritance was shaped by contingent struggles and might be reshaped. This is why Skinner's project is politically as well as historically significant.

Question 5

What does Skinner mean by 'illocutionary force,' and why is recovering it essential to understanding a historical text?

Model answer: Illocutionary force is what an author was *doing* in making a statement — the speech act performed (arguing, defending, ironizing, attacking) rather than merely the proposition stated. Recovering it is essential because understanding a text means identifying not just what was said but what intervention the author was making, which cannot be read off the words alone but requires knowing the context of debate, available concepts, and intended audience.

Skinner draws on J.L. Austin's speech act theory: every utterance has locutionary content (what is said), illocutionary force (what act is performed in saying it), and perlocutionary effect (the intended impact). Historians who read only for content miss the illocution. The same proposition — say, 'a sovereign must not be constrained by natural law' — could be a straightforward assertion, a reductio of an opponent's position, or an ironic jab, depending on context. Without context, the historian can only guess what act was being performed, and guesses drawn from present concerns will typically be wrong.