Politics, Language, and Time

Essays on Political Thought and History

By: J. G. A. Pocock

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Paperback | 1 January 1989 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
299 Pages

Edition Type
New edition

Dimensions(cm)
20.4 x 13.4 x 1.8

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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.

Industry Reviews

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)

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