We ought, I think, to be prepared to ask ourselves quite aggressively what is supposed to be the practical use, here and now, of our historical studies. It has never seemed to me adequate to reply that they satisfy a natural curiosity, and it seems to me dangerously self-indulgent to suggest, as Lord Acton once did, that 'our studies ought to be all but purposeless', especially in a culture as committed as ours has become to a banausic view of 'relevance'. The accusation of antiquarianism is, in short, one that troubles me deeply, and it is one that all professional historians ought, I think, to stand ready to answer, at least to the satisfaction of their own consciences. We must expect to be asked, and must not fail to ask ourselves, what is supposed to be the point of it all....
[O]ne of the ways - perhaps the only way - of improving our understanding will be to go back to the historical juncture at which this way of thinking about politics was first articulated and developed. We shall then be able to see how the concepts we still invoke were initially defined, what purposes they were intended to serve, what view of public power they were used to underpin. This in turn may enable us to acquire a self-conscious understanding of a set of concepts that we now employ unselfconsciously and, to some degree, even uncomprehendingly. It is arguable, in short, that we need to become intellectual historians if we are to make sense not merely of this but of many comparable aspects of our present moral and political world.
This is hardly a new thought. It is the thought animating F. W. Maitland's last and most dazzling group of essays---Quentin Skinner, (1998) Liberty Before Liberalism, pp. 107-110
βαναυσικός can be translated as 'pertaining to mechanics.' In English 'banausic' seems to have been coined as a pejorative in the middle of the nineteenth century (see here); this reflecting aristocratic prejudice. But is pretty clear that Skinner means to say that in our culture 'relevance' has a kind of practical or mundane sense. And, while he may well feel some regret over this fact, he seems to use 'banausic' in neutral fashion. It is noticeable that dictionaries often use 'utilitarian' when explaining banausic; because part of the overall argument of the book is that the purportedly liberal utilitarians (from Paley to Sidgwick) have displaced the neo-roman sense of liberty with a different sense by using less than fully convincing arguments.+
After rejecting pure antiquarianism -- a charge that arises from Skinner's early work -- and an "essentially aesthetic" (p. 107) justification for engaging in historical studies, Skinner takes up a practical justification for historical studies in his extended version of his justly famous (1997) inaugural lecture. He is unusually forthright, perhaps historicist, in suggesting that in our culture* antiquarianism (and aesthetics, perhaps) are not properly self-justifying. Strikingly, Skinner does not claim to be offering a justification to the wider or interested public (of the sort rejected recently (recall here) by Zena Hitz (and her book)), but rather he hopes to craft a response that can convince the "consciences" of his fellow "professional historians." Skinner leaves it to the reader to figure out what standards of judgment enter into such disciplined conscience.
Part of the answer can be found in the second half of the passage I quoted above. The point of historical practice of intellectual historians is to generate a species of "self-conscious understanding of a set of concepts that we now employ unselfconsciously." This is rather Socratic. Skinner wishes to provide a form of self-understanding of (to switch to Wittgenstein) fundamental concepts habituated in our form of life and, then, indirectly, to make questioning of these forms of life possible.* (I return to my 'indirectly' below.)
Skinner is cautious in the way he conveys the questioning part. He explicitly distances himself from moralising historians, who are likely to be enthusiasts or indignant when "surveying the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." (p 118) He prefers the "aloof" kind of historian. Yet, he also suggests that in our status quo, we do not understand our most fundamental concepts; we deploy them 'unselfconsciously" and "most of us do not know" what some of these may mean. (p. 109). It is worth remarking that it is left unclear if this is a typically liberal disease or, as seems more likely, a perennial, or durable, feature of political life.
So, the task of the professional historian, who wishes to improve thinking about politics for most of us not in the know, is to remove the pervasive ignorance about core even hegemonic (p. 117) moral and political concepts. So, while the justification is offered to fellow historians, it is the many, or the public, which is supposed to benefit from the exercise. One cannot help admire such philanthropic impulse!
Above I used 'indirectly' because while Skinner leaves no doubt that he thinks that within "the traditions of thought about the character of the liberal state" (p. 119), the arguments that displaced the neo-roman conception of liberty are based on fallacious reasoning; at one point he claims that "the conclusion has already been inserted into the premise." (p. 115)).+ Despite exposing the argumentative flaws in a certain kind of liberal self-understanding (recall), he leaves it to the reader's autonomous, ruminating (120) judgment to decide whether the past choices "between different possible worlds" (p. 117) were right. So, the professional historian exercises vocational self-command.
Since Skinner is a celebrated and much admired historian of our age, we can say that he has found a way to question moral and political pieties without attracting Socratic notoriety. Perhaps, this indifference to such foundational challenge is characteristic of liberal society.
I close with two thoughts. First, Skinner very adroitly prevents a certain kind of philosopher, who thinks the origin of concepts is irrelevant to present self-understanding, of raising the genetic fallacy. Skinner claims that by retracing concepts to their first definitions and use may help uncover what is now in some sense suppressed from us (recall: "how the concepts we still invoke were initially defined, what purposes they were intended to serve, what view of public power they were used to underpin. This in turn may enable us to acquire a self-conscious understanding of a set of concepts that we now employ unselfconsciously and, to some degree, even uncomprehendingly.")
Skinner doesn't offer us an argument why this is the best or the only way toward self-understanding (which he need not insist on); nor does he explain how this is supposed to work at an abstract level. He does not need to explain it because he has just exhibited/shown it in the book. I agree firmly with Skinner (who explicitly associates this with Foucaultian "archaeological analysis" (112)) that returning to the historical moment when concepts enter into practice/fashion is often very illuminating on the possibility spaces they help open up, and foreclose; and so heartily endorse his practice. This is because when concepts are first introduced, and the principles they animate, they are often explicated and contested by those who understand the foreseeable effects of uptake. This helps shed light on how concepts become part of an "ideology" (23; 59; 77) or life-affirming practice.
Second, one may wonder whether removing the lack of ignorance about core moral political concepts and principles improves thinking about politics. I am not here questioning the Enlightenment faith that removal of ignorance is conducive to better thought in some sense. Rather, what I have in mind is something more roundabout. Skinner explicitly endorses Pocock's idea that what is revealed by the "intellectual" historian (101) is "the changing political languages in which societies talk to themselves." (p. 105) One can agree that Namier's position -- that is, that how we talk politically acts "as the merest ex post facto rationalisations of political behaviour" -- is undoubtedly too narrow an understanding of such talk. Skinner is right to object to this because what one might wish "to legitimise [politically]...depends on what courses of action you can plausibly range under existing normative principles." (p. 105)
But he then goes on to claim that "professed principles...will nevertheless help to shape and limit what lines of action you can successfully pursue." (p. 105) Let's grant that this is so in some great political cultures which have a juridical sensibility. Even so, this is a peculiar claim.** I do not just mean that wholly new principles may be invented or old ones reinterpreted to legitimate and even explicate the manner of success of actions after the fact (as Namier suggested), but rather, and more importantly for one's craft as political philosopher, that in order to grasp the nature of politics we must leave open the possibility of actions devoid of legitimacy and ungrounded in principles, and yet successful, even necessary, after a fashion.
+Some time I return to the merits of Skinner's argument on this point. On the 'banausic' see Popper's Open Society and its Enemies, p. 221 and several notes, especially note 4 to chapter 11 (p. 642) in the one volume edition.
*In the final paragraph, Skinner identifies 'our' with 'we in the modern West.' (p. 119)
**δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Comments