A collection of very competent, very recondite essays in
intellectual history, reprinted from various journals and
anthologies; they are bracketed by two new articles which attempt
to adapt Thomas Kuhn's treatment of the development of scientific
theory in terms of its language and paradigms to the study of
political thought. The six reprinted essays make no striking use of
this approach: the article on ancient Chinese philosophy deals in
passing with what the philosophers themselves said about language,
and with their central ideas, in a conventional, not pre-eminently
linguistic way; similarly, the article on the role of "civic
humanism" in Anglo-American thought discusses, as anyone would, the
"conceptual vocabulary in question." The principal feature of the
other four essays is their use of a good old sort of contextual
analysis, refurbished as Namieresque research: these efforts render
incongruous Pocock's prefatory warning not to accuse him of
linguistic reductionism. The richest one deals chiefly with
Harrington and eighteenth-century English Protestant ideology,
disputing MacPherson's exaggeration of Harrington's market-society
notions of property. The other three discuss Hobbes vis-avis an
ecclesiastical medium, Burke in relation to the common law, and
traditionalism as "dialogue with and within tradition." The first
essay, in search of a politics of language and/or a linguistic view
of politics, is incoherent and moreover unrewarding; but, sorted
out among intellectual historians, political philosophers, and
stray intellectuals at large, the book will have a certain academic
demand. (Kirkus Reviews)
In his first essay, "Languages and Their Implications," J. G. A.
Pocock announces the emergence of the history of political thought
as a discipline apart from political philosophy. Traditionally,
"history" of political thought has meant a chronological ordering
of intellectual systems without attention to political languages;
but it is through the study of those languages and of their
changes, Pocock claims, that political thought will at last be
studied historically.
Pocock argues that the solution has already been approached by,
first, the linguistic philosophers, with their emphasis on the
importance of language study to understanding human thought, and,
second, by Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,"
with its notion of controlling intellectual paradigms. Those
paradigms within and through which the scientist organizes his
intellectual enterprise may well be seen as analogous to the worlds
of political discourse in which political problems are posed and
political solutions are proffered. Using this notion of successive
paradigms, Pocock demonstrates its effectiveness by analyzing a
wide range of subjects, from ancient Chinese philosophy to
Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Burke.
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