The question-and-answer logic of historical context

Fear, Christopher

Abstract

Quentin Skinner has enduringly insisted that a past text cannot be 'understood' without the reader knowing something about its historical and linguistic context. But since the 1970s he has been attacked on this central point of all his work by authors maintaining that the text itself is the fundamental guide to the author's intention, and that a separate study of the context cannot tell the historian anything that the text itself could not. Mark Bevir has spent much of the last 20 years repeating a similar counter-argument. Although 'study the linguistic context' might be a useful heuristic maxim, Bevir says, it does not express a necessary or sufficient condition for understanding. But Skinner is right, and one of the figures he has consistently identified as a formative inspiration, R. G. Collingwood, has already (in his work of the 1930s) shown why. What Collingwood calls his 'logic of question and answer' explains why the historian cannot answer his characteristic 'intention' question about past texts without knowing the context of problems to which authors think they are offering solutions. The study of context is neither 'prior' (as Bevir incorrectly supposes) nor 'separate' (as Skinner inaccurately says), but it is, as Skinner maintains, nevertheless impossible to grasp an author's intention without it. This 'logic of question and answer' also explains why, in history, dismissing the study of context is in fact a pre-judgement of evidence yet unseen. © The Author(s) 2013.

Citation

Fear, C. (2013). The question-and-answer logic of historical context. History of the Human Sciences, 26(3), 68-81. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695113491757

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jun 21, 2013
• Publication Date: 2013-07
• Deposit Date: Jul 16, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 16, 2019
• Journal: History of the Human Sciences
• Print ISSN: 0952-6951
• Electronic ISSN: 1461-720X
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 68-81
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695113491757
• Keywords: Mark Bevir; R. G. Collingwood; Context; History of ideas; Methodology; Quentin Skinner
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/2194074
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0952695113491757
• Additional Information: This is the accepted manuscript of an article published in History of the human sciences, 2013. The version of record is available at the DOI link in this record.