Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond

This is the first book-length analysis of Quentin Skinner’s seminal essay ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’. Skinner’s essay is one of the most influential historical articles ever published, written by one of the world’s most prominent scholars in intellectual history and a leadin...

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Päätekijä: Blau, Adrian
Aineistotyyppi: Online
Kieli:englanti
Julkaistu: The British Academy 2026
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Linkit:0068-1202
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author Blau, Adrian
author_browse Blau, Adrian
author_facet Blau, Adrian
author_sort Blau, Adrian
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description This is the first book-length analysis of Quentin Skinner’s seminal essay ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’. Skinner’s essay is one of the most influential historical articles ever published, written by one of the world’s most prominent scholars in intellectual history and a leading figure in the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ of the history of political thought. Skinner’s essay defended a strongly historical approach to interpreting historical texts: without an appropriately historical mentality and historical method, Skinner argued, the result is mythology, not history. Skinner’s contextualism has always been controversial, but many previous commentators have caricatured his position. The authors in this volume seek to be fair to Skinner, while disagreeing with him to greater or lesser extents. Chapters in this interdisciplinary collection cover many issues, including: the previously unknown first draft of Skinner’s essay; Skinner’s theoretical and philosophical foundations; how well his ideas stand up in Islamic, ancient Greek, and Indian contexts; ideology, rhetoric and language; and what Skinner’s historical method could look like in the age of digital humanities and computational text analysis. The book concludes with Skinner’s response to his commentators and critics.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1721282026-02-18T05:29:07Z Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond Blau, Adrian Meaning Understanding Quentin Skinner Contextualism Interdisciplinary Language thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas This is the first book-length analysis of Quentin Skinner’s seminal essay ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’. Skinner’s essay is one of the most influential historical articles ever published, written by one of the world’s most prominent scholars in intellectual history and a leading figure in the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ of the history of political thought. Skinner’s essay defended a strongly historical approach to interpreting historical texts: without an appropriately historical mentality and historical method, Skinner argued, the result is mythology, not history. Skinner’s contextualism has always been controversial, but many previous commentators have caricatured his position. The authors in this volume seek to be fair to Skinner, while disagreeing with him to greater or lesser extents. Chapters in this interdisciplinary collection cover many issues, including: the previously unknown first draft of Skinner’s essay; Skinner’s theoretical and philosophical foundations; how well his ideas stand up in Islamic, ancient Greek, and Indian contexts; ideology, rhetoric and language; and what Skinner’s historical method could look like in the age of digital humanities and computational text analysis. The book concludes with Skinner’s response to his commentators and critics. 2026-02-18T05:29:06Z 2026-02-18T05:29:06Z 2026-02-17T11:57:31Z 2026 book 0068-1202 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/109984 9781836245759 9781836249696 9781836249726 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/172128 eng Proceedings of the British Academy open access image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/109984/1/9781836245759.pdf The British Academy 1b2afe11-1c61-4b23-bd3f-f3958094621f 9781836245759 9781836249696 9781836249726 322 London open access
spellingShingle Meaning
Understanding
Quentin Skinner
Contextualism
Interdisciplinary
Language
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas
Blau, Adrian
Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond
title Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond
title_full Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond
title_fullStr Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond
title_full_unstemmed Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond
title_short Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas and Beyond
title_sort meaning and understanding in the history of ideas and beyond
topic Meaning
Understanding
Quentin Skinner
Contextualism
Interdisciplinary
Language
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas
topic_facet Meaning
Understanding
Quentin Skinner
Contextualism
Interdisciplinary
Language
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas
url 0068-1202
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