"Intertextual Intercontextual": An Inquiry Into The Skinner's Method Of History Of Political Thoughts

The Western history had set up a "paradigm" revolution of the field of history of political thoughts in 20th Century 1970s. The leader of the revolution is Quentin Skinner who is the Regius Professor of Modern History in the Cambridge University. So the "paradigm" Revolution is also known as the "Skinner-style revolution." His methods of history of political thoughts had profound changes on the choice of the text, deciphering and the entire history of political thoughts and made numerous "component" of research results. Skinner's methods of history of political thoughts are so profoundly different from the previous methods that fundamentally because he constructed his research methods which took the logic of question and answer of Collingwood as the basis of the philosophic foundation. The research methods of history of political thoughts prior to Skinner's are based on two assumptions that are simply denied by the logic of question and answer. The two assumptions are that the problems faced by mankind are eternal and that text in self-sufficiency. The logic of question and answer regards questions and answers as an indivisible entity, and only with two together can truly understand the meaning of the answer. The key to combining questions and answers is the author's intention. It means that grasping the intention when the author answers the questions is the key to understand the unity of question and answer. Different eras have different questions; each answer corresponds each question, and only answering the same question the answer can be contradictory; the significance of the same answers to the different questions. Skinner considers the text that is the research Object of the history of political thoughts as the answers to the questions concerned by history Political ideology. According to the requirements of the Logic of question and answer, Skinner believed that the text must be combined with their questions that they want to answer, which can truly be understand as an organic unity being studied. Correct understanding of the text is the key to understand the writer's intentions, the intentions of the writer's understanding of the text must be understood by the answer to the question, and reconstructing context of the text is the key to reconstructing the question the text answers to.Embarking from such understanding, Skinner believed the research results with the previous methods are not the historical works, but the made"myth". He pointed that there are three type of these myth:"mythology of doctrines","mythology of coherence"and"mythology of prolepsis"."Mythology of doctrines"refers to every classic writer must make some doctrines in every thesis constituted in some subject, and regardless of whether it is, the researchers can"come out"the doctrine system."Mythology of coherence"means that researchers must"achieve"the continuity at all cost, which is no matter whether the classical writers intended to create a closed and logic rigorous theoretical system and regardless of the consistent efforts are successful if the writers had the intention."Mythology of prolepsis"means researchers were not concerned about the significance of their works, but trying to"explore"the significance to the era of researchers and emphasized some classic writers had"foreseen"some modern problems. Skinner particularly emphasized the reason of the three mythology in the view of the methods is that the text was regarded as self-sufficiency object. He believes that the text regarded as self-contained object in the history can not solve these two problems: First, different times of ideologists used the same words, such as freedom, rights etc, which actually the meaning of them were different. Only reading the so-called classics can not explain the same words but different meaning. Secondly, it couldn't correctly understand the research objects in the way of reading the classics, because of its inability to explain some classic writer's rhetoric strategy.According to the logic of question and answer of Collingwood, correct understanding of the text is the key to understanding the writer's intention. However, Skinner believes that it is not necessary and possible to grasp the writer's intention in the way of restore the thinking process of the writer's. Skinner insisted that the restoration of the feasibility of the way writers brought into effect caused by"the speech"by text to understand the writer's intention. The majority critics thought that skinner took way of restoration of writer's intention Collingwood advocated as his core method of history of political thoughts and fiercely criticized him, saying that he used an old"idealism"history method. In fact, Skinner had made improvement. He brought ordinary languages of the later and the theory of speech acts of Austin into the study in method of history of political Thoughts. The later Wittgensteinian insisted language was produced in the"Forms of life"and used in it. Understanding the using speech should be in the"Language games". We must pay attention to that language games have the features of purpose, diversity, and variability complexity and language grammar is divided to superficial grammar and deep grammar. The theory of"ordinary languages of"Wittgensteinian had effects on skinner's research of history of Political Thoughts with two-dimensional of locutionary and illocutionary of the language, especially latter is important. The theory urges Skinner to change the concerning object from"the thought to politics"to"the thought to the political method"and thereby the research perspective of history of Political thoughts was changed. The family-resemblance of language games made Skinner maintain the instinct vigilance to phenomenon of the uniformity of the research object. He divided the use of language into three-dimensional:"locutionary act","illocutionary act","perlocutionary act". Combining these three aspects, we can achieve the correct understanding of the text.; However, we need to pay attention to the context of the text and the way and the time of the text intervening to the context. Skinner opposes any separation between"text"and"context"and he is an"Intertextual and Intercontextual"researcher.