Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric

Ideas in Context : Conversation with Quentin Skinner

Quentin Skinner is an intellectual historian known for his pioneering work on early-modern European political thought. He was educated at Bedford School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Author of such works as The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (1978) and Visions of Politics (2002) he served as the Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, and currently as t...

Rhetoric, Social History, and Contentious Politics: Reply to Critics

Aristotle’s vigorous vindication of rhetoric pairs it with dialectic. Dialectic, for Aristotle, combines logical propositions with induction from rigorous evidence in an effort to prove a case beyond doubt. Rhetoric parallels dialectic, but combines arguments with examples in an effort to persuade. Neither one amounts to science, which for Aristotle requires irrefutable establishment of general...

The politics of pain: rhetoric or reform?

The Idea of Politics in “political” Rhetoric

Th e author claims that analyses of “political discourse” or “political rhetoric” should be grounded in what it is that participants try to do politically with language. Words, actions, and events work together; words interpret events or actions, as well as constitute political facts, while actions in various ways help words gain their political effi cacy. Analyses of political rhetoric (or dis...

978 - 1 - 107 - 13040 - 1 - Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective Edited by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner

Popular sovereignty is a key component of modern political thinking, yet a history of the concept has not previously been attempted. This volume does not pretend to offer a comprehensive treatment. It arises from a collaborative project involving scholars specialising across a range of periods – spanning ancient, medieval, early modern and modern political thought. What has emerged is not a con...