Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.

1163/187226311X555455
Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 brill.nl/jph
Conceptual History and the Philosophy of the
Later Wittgenstein:
A Critique of Quentin Skinners Contextualist Method
Anthony Burns
University of Nottingham
tony.burns@nottingham.ac.uk
Abstract
Although rst published in 1969, the methodological views advanced in Quentin
Skinners Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas remain relevant
today. In his article Skinner suggests that it would be inappropriate to even attempt
to write the history of any idea or concept. In support of this view, Skinner
advances two arguments, one derived from the philosophy of the later Wittgen-
stein and the other from that of J. L. Austin.
In this paper I focus on the rst of these arguments. I claim that the conclusion
which Skinner draws from this particular argument does not necessarily follow
and that an alternative assessment of the methodological signicance of Wittgen-
steins philosophy for historians of ideas is possible. On this alternative view, far
from ruling out conceptual history, an appeal to the view of meaning set out in
Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations leads to a quite dierent conclusion,
namely that the writing of such a history is arguably a necessary precondition for
the elucidation of the meaning of a number of the core concepts in the canon of
the history of political thought.
Skinners views have changed somewhat since 1969. Indeed, from the mid 1970s
onwards he came to relax the strict opposition to the idea of conceptual history to
which he was then committed. Te paper concludes by noting that this evolution
in Skinners thinking has made him much more sympathetic than anybody reading
Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas would have imagined to the
research project of the Begrigeschichte School of conceptual history.
Keywords
Quentin Skinner, Wittgenstein, Conceptual History, History of Ideas, Natural
Law, Begrisgeschichte School
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 55
Introduction
Tis year is the 40th anniversary of the publication of Quentin Skinners
Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, which in the view
of many revolutionized the way in which political theorists and historians
of ideas thought about their respective disciplines.
1
In a recent interview
(2007) Professor Skinner stated that he is nowadays worried that his early
methodological articles might now look like mere antiques.
2
In the
same interview, however, he also rearmed his commitment to the basic
principles which these early articles contain. Skinners claim that the views
on method which he rst advocated in Meaning and Understanding
continue to be relevant today is supported by the publication in 2009 of
a Special Issue of Te Journal of the Philosophy of History devoted to this
very subject.
3
As one of the contributors, Robert Lamb, argues there it
is readily apparent to anybody who reads the rst volume of Skinners
Visions of Politics (published in 2002), which contains a selection of these
early methodological pieces, that even today Skinner has not dropped the
strong methodological claims that characterized his early work.
4
In this paper I will examine the claim which Skinner makes in Mean-
ing and Understanding that it is not possible to write the history of any
idea or concept (which two terms I shall use interchangeably). Tis is of
course a strong claim, and a paradoxical one for somebody who professes
to be making a philosophical contribution to the history of ideas to make.
Professor Skinner has dierent reasons for making it, some of which possess
1)
Quentin Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, History and
Teory, 8 (1969), 353; reprinted in Quentin Skinner, Regarding Method, Visions of Poli-
tics, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5789.
2)
Javier Fernandez Sebastian & Quentin Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty and
Republicanism: An Interview with Quentin Skinner, Contributions to the History of Con-
cepts, 3 (2007), 103.
3)
See Journal of the Philosophy of History, 3, 3 (2009), Special Issue on Rethinking Contex-
tualism. Contributions include the following: Mark Bevir, Contextualism: From Mod-
ernist Method to Post-Analytic Historicism, 21124; A. P. Martinich, Four Senses of
Meaning in the History of Ideas, 22545; Robert Lamb, Recent Developments in the
Tought of Quentin Skinner and the Ambitions of Contextualism, 24665; Toby
Reiner, Texts as Performances: How to Reconstruct Webs of Belief from Expressed
Utterances, 26689; Karsten R. Stueber, Intentionalism, Intentional Realism and
Empathy, 290307.
4)
Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 250.
56 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
greater force than others. Tese reasons fall into two broad categories. Te
rst of these is associated with the philosophy laid out by the later Witt-
genstein in his Philosophical Investigations.
5
Te second is associated with J.
L. Austins theory of speech acts.
6
In what follows I shall focus exclusively
on the former and argue that the Wittgensteinian argument which Skin-
ner uses to defend his claim is not well founded.
Te view that it is not possible to write the history of any idea or con-
cept has often been attributed to Skinner by his critics. Indeed, as Skinner
himself has noted,
7
this was one of the main objections to his proposed
new method for the history of ideas presented at the time. To mention
some examples, J. G. A. Pocock, Melvin Richter and Robert Lamb have
all maintained that according to Skinner it is not, strictly speaking, pos-
sible to write a history of concepts or that the history of concepts cannot
be studied at all.
8
John Gunnell has written that according to Skinner
there can be no histories of concepts as such.
9
Iain Hampsher-Monk has
noted, more cautiously, that from the standpoint of Skinners method the
continuing identity of a concept through time, and hence the possibil-
ity of writing the history of that concept as it evolves over time, if it is not
actually rule out of court altogether on methodological grounds, is never-
theless in danger of being sacriced to the particular purposes for which
it is employed at any particular time.
10
Finally, Mark Bevir has claimed
5)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, transl. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1972).
6)
J. L. Austin, How to do Tings with Words, 2nd ed. Eds. J. O. Urmson & Marina Sbisa
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978 [1962]).
7)
Quentin Skinner, some Problems in the Analysis of Political Tought and Action,
Political Teory, 2, 3 (1974), 277303, 287.
8)
J. G. A. Pocock, Concepts and Discourses: A Dierence in Culture? Comment on a
Paper by Melvin Richter, in Te Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studies
on Begrisgeschichte, eds. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington, 1996), 52;
Melvin Richter, A German Version of the Linguistic Turn: Reinhart Koselleck and the
History of Political and Social Concepts (Begrisgeschichte), in Te History of Political
Tought in National Context, eds. Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 78; Lamb, Recent Developments in the
Tought of Quentin Skinner, 259.
9)
J. G. Gunnell, Time and Interpretation: Understanding Concepts and Conceptual
Change, History of Political Tought, 19, 4 (1998), 656, 651.
10)
Iain Hampsher-Monk, Political Languages in Time: Te Work of J. G. A. Pocock,
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 57
that Skinners method cannot account for change.
11
Acknowledging
that Skinner has in the past written histories that trace conceptual and lin-
guistic change, nevertheless Bevir insists that when he did so his accounts
of change were not and could not have been based on his own stated
methods.
12
In his rst Response to My Critics, published in 1974, Skinner pro-
fessed to be astonished to be told that my approach would make it
impossible to map out any kind of conceptual innovation and change.
13

Tis criticism, he suggested, rests upon a confusion between the unex-
ceptionable claim that any agent who is engaged in an intended act of
communication must be limited by the prevailing conventions of dis-
course, and the further claim that he must be limited to following those
conventions. I have obviously never intended to commit myself to the
absurdity of denying that it is open to any writer to indicate that his aim is
to extend, to subvert, or in some other way to alter a prevailing set of
accepted conventions.
14
Similarly, almost thirty years later, in his Regard-
ing Method (2002) Skinner asserts that I strongly endorse the belief that
we must be ready as historians of philosophy not merely to admit the fact
of conceptual change but to make it central to our research.
15
He also
asserts that he has even attempted to write some such histories myself
and that there is no reason to think that these studies are in tension with
anything I have written about the need to understand what can be done
British Journal of Political Science, 14, 1 (1984), p, 104, fn. 2; see also Iain Hampsher-Monk,
speech Acts, Languages or Conceptual History? in History of Concepts: Comparative Per-
spectives, eds. Iain Hamspher-Monk, Karin Tilmans and Frank Van Vree (Amsterdam,
1998), 47; J. A. W. Gunn, After Sabine, After Lovejoy: Te Languages of Political
thought, Journal of History and Politics, 6 (198889), 145, 2930; and Gunnell, Time
and Interpretation: Understanding Concepts and Conceptual Change, 651.
11)
Mark Bevir, Te Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 48. See also Mark Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory, Polit-
ical Studies, 42 (1994), 668.
12)
Bevir, Te Logic of the History of Ideas, 49; see also Hampsher-Monk, Political Lan-
guages in Time, 104.
13)
Skinner, Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Tought and Action, 287.
14)
Skinner, Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Tought and Action, 287.
15)
Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, in Regarding
Method, 17587, 178.
58 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
with concepts as an element in the process of recovering their meaning and
signicance.
16
Nevertheless, despite these disclaimers, there is evidence in Meaning
and Understanding which supports the claims made by Skinners then
critics. For example Skinner maintains in his article that there is an under-
lying conceptual confusion in any attempt to focus on an idea itself as an
appropriate unit of historical investigation. He claims that the project
of studying histories of ideas, tout court, must rest on a fundamental
philosophical mistake. And he also claims that in his opinion to attempt
to write the history of any idea must result in an historical absurdity.
17

Given these explicit statements, it is arguable that Skinners early critics
were quite right to argue that in his view it is not possible to write the
history of any concept. Te really interesting question here is not whether
Skinner did in fact take this view in 1969, but why he took it?
Te structure of the paper is as follows. In Section 1 I begin by oering
a brief account of the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein focusing on
the theory of meaning in use developed in his Philosophical Investigations.
I also say something about the relevance of these ideas for those interested
in the question of whether it is possible to write the history of ideas or
concepts. In Section 2 I show how this understanding of what a Wittgen-
steinian approach to conceptual history might be used to oer a partial
criticism of the method recommended by Quentin Skinner in Meaning
and Understanding in the History of Ideas, insofar as that method relies
on a particular application of Wittgensteins later philosophy. In his arti-
cle Skinner refers to the concepts of the great chain of being, utopia,
progress, equality, sovereignty, justice, and natural law as examples of con-
cepts of which the history cannot be written.
18
I will throughout refer to
the concept of natural law when illustrating the general points being
made. My reason for doing so is simply that this is one of the concepts
with the history of which I am most familiar.
16)
Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, in Regarding
Method, 17587, 178.
17)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 7, 35, 37.
18)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 3839.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 59
Section 1: Te Philosophy of the Later Wittgenstein and Conceptual
History
Let us begin by imagining a situation in which there is a linguistic com-
munity which already possesses a particular concept, that of natural law,
together with a phrase to express it. Tis is the community whose mem-
bers used the Latin language in Western Europe between, say, the time of
Cicero and that of Hobbes, and who expressed this concept by employing
the Latin phrase lex naturalis. Furthermore, following the later Wittgen-
stein, let us assume that possessing a concept is, if not always then at
least in a large number of cases, equivalently a matter of knowing the
meaning of a word.
19
In the case of the concept of natural law this
involves knowing the meaning which the expression lex naturalis had for
those who used it in the period in question. It is to understand the lin-
guistic rule or convention which regulated the use of the phrase lex natu-
ralis within that linguistic community. Tis, in turn, amounts to being
able to recognize correct and incorrect instances of its use.
Tis Wittgensteinian view of what it is to possess a concept may be
usefully contrasted, as Wittgenstein himself contrasts it, with a more tra-
ditional theory of meaning. Tis is the essentialist view which states that
concepts, and the words used to express them in a particular natural lan-
guage, are meaningful because they are associated with a denition which
xes their meaning. On this view the denition of a concept, for exam-
ple the concept of a natural law theory, captures the essence of the
things or entities which are denoted by the concept in question, that is to
say the characteristic features which are considered to be necessary to
them, such that if a system of beliefs lacked (or lost) even one of these
features it would not be appropriate to describe it as a natural law the-
ory at all. Tese are the features which we look for when deciding
whether the political thought of a specic individual falls under the con-
cept of natural law theory or not, and which from this point of view
all natural law theories possess in common. When characterizing these
features it is necessary to employ other concepts which might be said to
19)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 20; Skinner, Language and Political
Change, 7. See also P. L. Heath, Concept, Te Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul
Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 177.
60 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
constitute the component elements of the more complex concept of a nat-
ural law theory. It is also necessary to refer to the beliefs with which these
other concepts have been associated either by natural law theorists them-
selves, or by those who write about natural law theory. Te relationshsip
between concepts and beliefs, here, is a complex one. In what follows I
shall assume that there can be no beliefs without concepts, and that
concepts are the component elements of beliefs a vehicle for the expres-
sion of beliefs. On the other hand, however, it is possible for beliefs and the
simpler concepts with which they are associated to be themselves the com-
ponent elements of more complex or higher level concepts, such as the
concept of a natural law theory.
20
According to Wittgenstein, the idea that in order to get clear about
the meaning of a general term one had to nd the common element in all
its applications has shackled philosophical investigation up to the
present.
21
Wittgenstein refers to those who think that this is what is
required for a particular concept to be meaningful as possessing a craving
for generality.
22
To take Wittgensteins well known example of the con-
cept of a game, such people assume in advance that there must be some-
thing in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the
justication for applying the general term game to the various games.
23
From the standpoint of this traditional view of meaning, then, the con-
cepts of natural law and of natural law theory are meaningful because they
can be dened. In the case of the latter concept it is assumed that there
is a closed list of essential features, or characteristic beliefs, the pres-
ence of each of which is necessary, and the presence of all of which is suf-
cient, to justify the classication of a particular individual as a natural
law theorist. Richard Wollheim provides a good illustration of this way of
thinking about natural law theory. Wollheim appreciates that, through-
out its long history, the doctrine of natural law has changed considerably,
and has engendered a number of dierent variants and modications.
Accordingly, he suggests, if we are to speak meaningfully about the doc-
20)
I would like to thank an anonymous referee for drawing to my attention the need to
clarify the relationship which exists between concepts and beliefs.
21)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies For the Philosoph-
ical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 20.
22)
Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books, 18.
23)
Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books, 18.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 61
trine of law it is necessary for us to isolate those features which all of these
dierent varieties of natural law theory have in common. We must oer
a minimal characterization of the doctrine of natural law. Wollheim
does not question whether it is actually possible to do this. He simply
assumes that it is possible, as in his view the term natural law or its
linguistic equivalent, in the case of our example the Latin lex naturalis,
has been used over the centuries to designate a remarkably persistent
doctrine.
24
Wollheim then oers what he claims is such a minimal char-
acterization of the concept of natural law or, more accurately, of a natu-
ral law theory. According to this account, there are three characteristics
which are necessarily associated with and denitive of any genuine natu-
ral law theory, and therefore three component elements of the concept of
a natural law theory. Tese elements are associated with the following
beliefs: (a) that there are certain principles of morality or justice which are
universally valid, applying in all societies, in all places and at all times;
(b) that these principles are apprehensible by the faculty of reason of the
individual moral agent; and (c) most important of all, that these principles
constitute a higher standard of justice or law which might be used by
individuals to critically evaluate the laws (positive laws) of the society in
which they live. From the standpoint of the traditional theory of meaning,
then, when we describe someone as a natural law theorist what we must
have in mind is that they subscribe to these three core beliefs and deploy
the concepts associated with them.
Against the traditional view of meaning, Wittgenstein argues that there
are many words in the English language which are meaningful despite the
fact that like the word game, they cannot be dened.
25
Such words are
meaningful despite the fact that there are no strict rules which regulate
their use.
26
Many words, Wittgenstein argues, dont have a strict mean-
ing, in this sense, but, he goes on, this is not a defect.
27
All this
amounts to is that the meaning of many words or phrases is vague rather
than precise. However, to say that the meaning of concepts like natural law
and natural law theory, or the phrases which express them in a particular
24)
Richard Wollheim, Natural Law, Te Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards
(New York, 1967), 5, 405.
25)
Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books, 25.
26)
Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books, 25.
27)
Wittgenstein, Te Blue and Brown Books, 27.
62 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
language, is vague is not the same as saying that that they are meaningless.
It remains the case that, in a particular linguistic community at a particular
time, there is at least some rule which regulates their use, and hence some
possibility, in particular cases, of dierentiating between appropriate and
inappropriate applications of the concept or word in question. It is simply
that this rule or its application will be exible rather than rigid or mechan-
ical. In other words, once we have allowed that, for example, the concept
of a natural law theory cannot be dened, there are always going to be
hard cases, on the margin, where a decision has to be made whether the
rule which regulates the use of this concept entails that the political thought
of an individual theorist, such as for example Aristotle, does or does not
fall under it.
To summarize, the dierence between the later Wittgensteins view of
meaning and the more traditional essentialist view is not that Wittgen-
stein associates meaning with the existence of linguistic rules or conven-
tions which regulate the use of concepts or words, whereas the traditional
view does not. Rather, it is that Wittgenstein associates the meaning of a
concept with the existence of exible rules which cannot be mechanically
applied, whereas the traditional view, to the contrary, associates the mean-
ing of a concept with the existence of strict rules which are applied inex-
ibly or mechanically, without attention being paid to the dierent
circumstances associated with particular cases.
Te traditional way of thinking about natural law theory and about the
meaning of the concept of natural law is illustrated in Table 1 below
(inspired by a reading of the work of Renford Bamborough).
28
Let us sup-
pose that in the situation presented by our example there are four indi-
vidual theorists, namely A, B, C and D, all of whom are members of our
hypothetical linguistic community at a particular moment in time, t
1
. All
four employ the phrase lex naturalis in their writings. According to the
traditional theory of meaning, alluded to by Wollheim, if this is the case
then it can only be so because A, B, C and D all subscribe to the three
core beliefs characterized by the letters a, b and c above. So the classica-
tion of A, B, C and D as natural law theorists can be seen as an example
of following a strict rule, as follows.
28)
Renford Bambrough, Universals and Family Resemblances, in George Pitcher ed.,
Wittgenstein: Te Philosophical Investigations (London: Macmillan, 1969), 186204.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 63
Table 1: Te Traditional View of Meaning and the
Concept of Natural Law
Individual A B C D
Time t
1
t
1
t
1
t
1
Concept natural law natural law natural law natural law
Expression lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis
Beliefs a,b,c a,b,c a,b,c a,b,c
Classication natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
Let us now consider the meaning of the concept of natural law, and the
associated way of thinking about natural law theory, from the standpoint
of the later Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use. Here it is assumed
that the concept is not one which can be given a denition. Like the con-
cept of a game, it does not have a clear or precisely delineated meaning but
a vague one. Tis concept is meaningful because there is indeed a rule
which regulates its use. However, this rule is a exible one which cannot be
applied mechanically. Bearing this in mind, the example presented in Table
1 above might be adapted in the following way. First let us imagine that for
whatever reason, by means of what Saul Kripke has referred to as an ini-
tial baptism,
29
an individual A (for example Cicero) is considered by the
members of a linguistic community to be a paradigmatic example of some-
one who should be considered to be a natural law theorist, so As creden-
tials as such at time t
1
are not in question. Additionally, let us imagine that
As political thought might be adequately characterized by reference to the
three core beliefs a, b and c above. Tese are the beliefs which A associates
with the linguistic expression lex naturalis and with the concept of natural
law as he or she understands it.
Now let us introduce a temporal or historical element to our example
by considering the case of an individual, B, who is a member of the same
linguistic community as A, but who is living and writing in a later time
period, t
2
. And let us imagine that the other members of the linguistic
community in question are attempting to decide whether B should or
should not be regarded as a natural law theorist, like A. In order to decide
29)
Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980 [1972]), 96.
64 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
this question the members of the community examine the political thought
of B and discover that it also consists of just three core beliefs, namely b, c
and d, and their component concepts. In other words, the political thought
of B does resemble that of A quite closely, although it is not identical with
that of A, and there are some dierences, or at least one important dier-
ence, between the political thought of B and that of A. In this situation the
decisive question to be answered is this. Should B be classied along with
A as a natural law theorist, despite the dierences which exist between the
beliefs of B and those of A? Or, alternatively, should B be classied as
someone who is not a natural law theorist, despite the similarities which
exist between their beliefs?
30
Further, let us also imagine that the outcome of the debate about this
issue is the conclusion that in this case the similarities are suciently great
to outweigh the dierences, hence it is legitimate to classify B as a natural
law theorist as well as A, despite the fact that their beliefs dier in certain
respects. It should be noted that this conclusion is arrived at not because
there are no dierences at all between the concepts employed by B and A,
but simply because although such dierences do exist nevertheless they
are considered to be relatively unimportant in comparison with the simi-
larities which also exist between them. Finally, let us apply a similar argu-
ment to the cases of individuals C and D. What we get, when we do so, is
the following picture:
Table 2: Te Later Wittgensteins View of Meaning and the
Concept of Natural Law
Individual A B C D
Time t
1
t
2
t
3
t
4
Concept natural law natural law natural law natural law
Expression lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis
Beliefs a,b,c b,c,d c,d,e d,e,f
Classication natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
30)
It is also possible, of course, that A and B live together in the same or dierent societ-
ies at the same time. I am grateful to an anaonymous referee for pointing this out to me.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 65
Te outcome of the line of argument developed above is that if, in this
adapted example, theorist A is for whatever reason considered to be a par-
adigmatic example of a natural law theorist then it follows that individual
D might legitimately be considered to be a natural law theorist also. Tis
is so despite the fact that A and D hold no beliefs at all in common. In
this situation the same classicatory label, namely the expression natural
law theorist, is applied to both A and D and yet, contrary to the tradi-
tional view of meaning, this is not because the political thought of A and
D share exactly the same (core) beliefs.
It is clear that the ascription of the classicatory label natural law theo-
rist to D as well as to A in the above example would not be an arbitrary or
random event. Tere is a denite logic to it, although the reasoning
involved is analogical and not deductive reasoning. It is an instance of the
application of a rule, the rule which gives the concept of natural law its
meaning, despite the fact that this concept cannot be dened. Tis example
demonstrates how hard cases might arise in which it is not clear at rst
how a linguistic rule ought is to be applied, and an element of pragmatic
decision making (associated with some act of legislative will) must inevita-
bly come into play, in a situation where ex hypothesi there is no obviously
correct or rational solution to the problem of how this is to be done.
From this point of view, classifying a member of our hypothetical lin-
guistic community as a natural law theorist might be justied even if the
individual in question did not in fact employ the expression lex naturalis
(or its equivalent in another language) provided their beliefs are considered
to be suciently similar to those of the paradigmatic natural law theorist
A, or indeed those of theorists B, C and D.
31
Similarly, it is possible for this
descriptive label to be legitimately withheld from an individual theorist
even if that theorist does employ the expression lex naturalis if it should be
decided that the meaning which this expression has for the theorist in
question does not resemble closely enough the meaning which the expres-
sion is traditionally thought to have.
According to the later Wittgenstein, then, for a concept like that of
natural law to be meaningful it is not necessary that this meaning should
be xed by being encapsulated in a closed denition. All that is required
is that there must be at least some rule which governs its use. Tat is to
say, there must be an open list of criteria which regulates the legitimate
31)
I am grateful to my colleague Ben Holland for pointing this out to me.
66 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
application of the concept, and which enable us to dierentiate between
correct and incorrect instances of its employment. Concepts of this sort
have what Frederick Waismann has referred to as an open texture.
32
In the
case of the concept of natural law, if such a rule is to exist it is not necessary
that there should be certain essential features which all natural law theories
possess (and must possess) in common. All that is necessary is that the vari-
ous dierent natural law theories should share at least some characteristic
features in common with other theories which have in the past themselves
been considered to be natural law theories. Tey should have what Witt-
genstein refers to as a family resemblance to one another.
33
In the words
of R. G. Collingwood,
34
there should be a traceable historical process, or
what Saul Kripke has referred to as a chain of communication,
35
which
connects them together, along the lines suggested by Table 2 above.
It is clear from the above that the theory of meaning in use developed
by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations does help us to under-
stand the idea of conceptual change, and that it does shed some light on
the problem with which we began, that of the possibility of writing the
history of any idea or concept. For example the analysis presented above
suggests that when talking about conceptual change what we might have
in mind is simply the slow alteration in the meaning of a particular con-
cept like that of natural law over time. We could be envisaging a situation
in which the same linguistic expression comes to have a somewhat dier-
ent meaning for the members of the same linguistic community. In the
context of the example of the concept of natural law, this amounts to say-
ing that the Latin expression lex naturalis comes to be used in a somewhat
dierent way. It is applied at a later time in a way that it had not been
applied in before. For if the use of this concept is extended in this way, so
that it is considered to have a legitimate application to new situations and
cases, then we are justied in claiming that conceptual change of a certain
kind has indeed taken place. In the terminology of Gottlb Frege, this
32)
Frederick Waismann, On Veriability, in Te Teory of Meaning, ed. G. H. R. Par-
kinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 38.
33)
Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books, 317; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1,
1720, 257.
34)
R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002 [1939]), 62.
Again my thanks to an anonymous referee for drawing this to my attention.
35)
Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 96, 91.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 67
would involve an alteration of both the sense and the reference of this
expression.
36
It is evident how creative individuals, willing and able to follow lin-
guistic conventions or rules in new and imaginative ways, might play a
part in such a process of conceptual innovation. It is also evident that
even such a slow process of conceptual change could, eventually, lead to
a situation within which the meaning of particular concept, such as that
of natural law, has changed so much that it is in fact completely dierent
at a later time, say t
4
, from what it was at some earlier time, for example
at t
1
, the time of its initial baptism in Kripkes sense. As Sheldon Wolin
has observed, history never exactly repeats itself. Te political experience
of one age, although no doubt similar in at least some respects to that of
another, is never precisely the same. It is not too surprising, therefore,
that we occasionally or even frequently encounter the spectacle of two
political theorists located at dierent points in history, using the same con-
cepts [sic] but meaning very dierent things by them.
37
Tinking of conceptual change in this way requires that we are entitled
to claim that the linguistic community at the later time t
4
, of which indi-
vidual D is a member, can legitimately be considered to be the same lin-
guistic community as the linguistic community at the earlier time t
1
, of
which A is a member, despite the fact that the individual human beings
who together constitute the members of that community at time t
4
are
not the same individuals who were its members at time t
1
, and despite the
fact that the expression lex naturalis, and hence also the concept of natural
law, has ex hypothesi a meaning for them which is entirely dierent from
the meaning which that expression and that concept had for the members
of that same linguistic community in an earlier period in its history, at
time t
1
. Tis implies that it is legitimate for us to maintain that the audi-
ence of a given user of language in a particular linguistic community at
any one time might include another member of that same linguistic com-
munity living at a later time. It also implies that it makes sense for us to
talk about the possibility of two such language users, even though they are
36)
Gottlb Frege, On Sense and Reference, in Translations from the Philosophical Writ-
ings of Gottlb Frege, transl. Peter Geach and Max Black (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977),
5678.
37)
Sheldon Wolin, Tradition and Innovation, in (2004 [1964]), Politics and Vision, sec-
ond expanded edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004 [1964]), pp. 2326.
68 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
historically distant from one another, nevertheless entering into some kind
of communication with one another and perhaps having more in com-
mon with one another, conceptually speaking, than either of them has
with some of their immediate contemporaries. Andrew Lockyer, for exam-
ple, has with some plausibility claimed that the views of Edmund Burke
had much more in common with the seventeenth century common lawyer
Matthew Hale than they did with a contemporary gure like Jeremy
Bentham.
38
Te view of conceptual change outlined in Table 2 above indicates,
as R. G. Collingwood and,
39
more recently, Mark Bevir have both sug-
gested, that linguistic contexts can overlap.
40
Te table shows us how,
when thinking about conceptual change, or the history of a concept, we
might employ the notion of overlapping linguistic contexts and how
we might relate it to the idea of an intellectual tradition.
41
More speci-
cally, this understanding of conceptual change allows us to use the later
Wittgensteins theory of meaning to develop the notion of an intellectual
tradition within which conceptual change takes place along evolutionary
lines. David Boucher, an authority on the work of Collingwood,
42
has
observed that the idea of an intellectual tradition,
43
understood in this
38)
Andrew Lockyer, Traditions as Context in the History of Political Teory, Political
Studies, 27 (1979), 20117, 210.
39)
As an anonymous referree notes, the idea that in philosophy concepts are not discrete
entities but rather have meanings which overlap, both synchronically and diachronically,
is central to the thought of R. G. Collingwood. See R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Phil-
osophical Method, eds. & Intro. James Connelly and Giuseppina DOro (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 2005 [1932]), 3031; and Collingwood, An Autobiography, 6163.
40)
Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory, 668
41)
Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory, 668.
42)
See David Boucher, Te Social and Political Tought of R. G. Collingwood (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003 [1989]); David Boucher, Life and Tought of R. G. Col-
lingwood, Special Issue of Collingwood and British Idealism Studies (Collingwood Society,
1994); David Boucher, Tariq Modood and James Connelly eds., Philosophy, History and
Civilization: Essays on R. G. Collingwood (University of Wales Press, 1996).
43)
For the notion of an intellectual tradition and its importance for the history of political
thought more generally see Bevir, Are Tere Perennial Problems in Political Teory,
66275; Mark Bevir, Te Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), 17677, 195, 197, 20004, 211; Boucher, Texts in Context, 10718; W. H.
Greenleaf, Idealism, Modern Philosophy and Politics, in Politics and Experience: Essays
Presented to Professor Michael Oakeshott on the Occasion of His Retirement, eds. Preston
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 69
sense, is associated with the notion of continuity in and through a proc-
ess of change.
44
Similarly, Andrew Lockyer has argued that the range of
problems which a particular group of political theorists writing at dierent
times have attempted to answer, together with the answers that they give
to these problems, may be said to constitute a tradition of discourse.
Tese problems and answers, and hence the tradition of discourse with
which they are associated, have a history precisely because the concepts
which the theorists in question use to formulate and solve these problems
have dierent meanings in dierent contexts, meanings which change
over time as a consequence of changing political and social arrange-
ments.
45
On this view, as Collingwood also notes, the concept which
undergoes such a process of change can legitimately be said to be continu-
ous or to retain is identity despite the fact that it lacks a xed essence.
46

It is not continuous because there are some things about its meaning that
never change, or never could change but, basically, because the process in
and through which its meaning alters over time is a slow one. From this
point of view, as again David Boucher has pointed out, intellectual tradi-
tions in the history of political thought are uid. Tey undergo change
whilst at the same time retaining their identity, because all of their features
do not change at once.
47
Te model of conceptual change presented above illustrates how an
intellectual tradition and the core concepts associated with it could
develop over time in an evolutionary manner. In the case of natural law
theory this model of conceptual change indicates why it might be legiti-
mate to talk about such a thing as the natural law tradition despite the
obvious diversity which exists in the ideas of those theorists who have,
historically, employed the concept of natural law, whether or not they also
employ the linguistic expression lex naturalis. It shows that it is possible
for someone to talk meaningfully in this way about the history of the con-
King and Bhiku Parekh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Bruce Had-
dock, Te History of Ideas and the Study of Politics, Political Teory, 2 (1974), 42031;
Lockyer, Traditions as Context in the History of Political Teory; Wolin, Tradition
and Innovation, 2326.
44)
David Boucher, Texts in Context: Revisionist Methods for Studying the History of Ideas
(Te Hague: Martinus Nijho, 1985), 10811, 11417.
45)
Lockyer, Traditions as Context in the History of Political Teory, 217.
46)
Collingwood, An Autobiography, 6162.
47)
Boucher, Texts in Context, 11314.
70 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
cept of natural law without being an essentialist. It also shows that we may
refer to the existence of relatively stable concepts like that of natural law in
the history of political thought, even if at the same time we also acknowl-
edge that the meaning of these concepts, at a particular moment in time,
depends on the specic linguistic context in which they are used. From
this standpoint it is entirely legitimate for us to speak of such a thing as the
natural law tradition provided that, when we do so, we are not assuming
that it must be possible to oer a precise denition of the concept of natu-
ral law in the traditional manner. If there are two theorists, A and B, who
live in the same society at dierent times, both of whom who employ the
term natural law or lex naturalis, it may be legitimate to claim that they
both belong to the natural law tradition, even if they mean completely dif-
ferent things by that expression. In such circumstances, for us to be justi-
ed in talking about a continuous natural law tradition, with which both
A and B can be associated, all that is necessary, as we have seen, is that there
should be a family resemblance (Wittgenstein), or a chain of communi-
cation (Kripke), or a traceable historical process (Collingwood), between
their respective uses of this linguistic expression. In other words, all that is
required is that we should be able to establish some historical line of con-
nection between the beliefs which A and B associate with the concept of
natural law.
Tere is no reason to think that the concept of natural law is unique in
this regard. As Terence Ball has observed, the reason why the vast major-
ity of the concepts which are of interest to the historian of political
thought elude xed or nal denition is precisely because they possess
historically mutable meanings,
48
that is to say, meanings which change in
this particular sense. It is arguable that empirically the historical develop-
ment of most of the other concepts in the lexicon of the historian of polit-
ical thought can be captured by something like this evolutionary model of
conceptual change. At the very least this might be oered as an interesting,
empirically testable hypothesis which could be applied to the examination
of particular cases.
If we think of conceptual change along the lines indicated in Table 2
above, it would in principle become possible for us to trace the evolution
of the meaning which a concept like that of natural law has for the mem-
48)
Ball, Transforming Political Discourse, X.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 71
bers of a particular linguistic community over time. It would also become
possible in principle for us to write the history of this concept and,
thereby, of the ongoing intellectual tradition with which it is associated.
It is arguable therefore that, far from ruling out the possibility of writing
the history of any idea or concept, the theory of meaning in use which
was developed by the later Wittgenstein, if it is of any value to conceptual
historians at all, might be said to require the attempt to write such a his-
tory. As we shall see in the next Section, however, this was not the conclu-
sion drawn by Quentin Skinner when he appealed to Wittgensteins
Philosophical Investigations to support his proposed new method in 1969.
Indeed, as I noted earlier, the view which Skinner then took was that if
we take Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use seriously then we should
abandon altogether the idea of writing the history concepts. It is to Skin-
ners use of the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein that I now turn.
Section 2: Quentin Skinner and Conceptual History
In Meaning and Understanding, Skinner suggests that those who think
that it is possible to write the history of any concept, for example the con-
cept of natural law, are committed to the view that the concept in ques-
tion has a meaning which can be precisely dened. In other words they
assume that there is some xed idea associated with the corresponding
linguistic expression (e.g. lex naturalis), an idea which possesses an essen-
tial meaning which could not, and therefore does not, alter over time.
Hence their commitment to the belief that it is possible to write the his-
tory of a concept rests upon a prior commitment to the traditional, Aris-
totelian theory of meaning referred to earlier. What Wittgenstein has
shown however, Skinner insists, is that this traditional theory of meaning
is no longer tenable. In Skinners view concepts should not be reied or
hypostatized.
49
Tey have a meaning only because there is some rule
which is followed by the members of a particular linguistic community
which happens to use the words with which they are associated. Moreo-
ver, dierent people living in dierent societies or in the same society at
dierent times, even if they happen to employ the same linguistic phrase,
49)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 1011.
72 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
might (and usually do) use that phrase in dierent ways, perhaps in radi-
cally dierent ways.
In 1969 Skinner suggested that the persistence over time of a deter-
minate idea with an xed meaning is only a spurious persistence. Te
alleged persistence of this idea is merely apparent rather than real, and the
fact that this is so is disguised by the fact that the same word or linguistic
expression continues to be used, by the members of a particular linguistic
community, at a later time, even though the meaning of the concept with
which this word or expression is then associated is completely dierent
from what it was at an earlier time. In Meaning and Understanding Skin-
ner insists that there is actually no determinate idea to the examination
or discussion of which various writers contributed. Hence of course,
by implication, there is no history of the idea that could possibly be
written.
50
Te great mistake of those who believe that it is possible to
write the history of a concept, he says, referring directly to Wittgensteins
views on meaning, lies not merely in looking for the essential meaning
of the idea as something which must necessarily remain the same, but
even in thinking of any essential meaning (to which individual writers
contribute) at all. Te appropriate and famous formula, Skinner goes
on, is that we should study not the meanings of words, but their use.
51
Tese remarks indicate that it was Skinners understanding and endorse-
ment of the later Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use which led him to
the conclusion he then drew, that it is not possible to write the history of
any concept. Skinner maintained in Meaning and Understanding that
those who think that it is possible to do this must be committed to the (in
his view) mistaken belief that concepts have a meaning which persists over
time, in the specic sense that it always remains exactly the same. Skinners
Wittgensteinian argument can be presented as follows:
1. Te belief that it is possible to write the history of an idea or concept
presupposes that its meaning persists, unchanging over time.
2. Tere is no idea or concept the meaning of which persisists, unchang-
ing over time.
3. Terefore, it is not possible to write the history of any idea or concept.
50)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 389.
51)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 37.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 73
Tere are two criticisms which might be made of this argument. Te rst
has to do with its initial premise. Tere can be no objection to the view
that if we are to be able to write the history of a concept then the concept
in question must have a meaning which persists over time. If this were
not the case then, as Skinner rightly suggests, there would be no (one)
continuous idea of which the history could be written. What is objection-
able, however, is the associated assumption that only those ideas or con-
cepts which possess a xed, unchanging or essential meaning could be
said to possess this quality. For as I argued earlier this is not in fact the
case. It is perfectly possible for an idea or concept to retain its identity
even though its meaning changes. It is arguable, therefore, there is a sense
in which an idea might be said to persist over time which was overlooked
by Skinner in Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, one
which does not rely on the traditional theory of meaning or on the prin-
ciple of essentialism.
Te second criticism is that Skinners view that those who think that it
is possible to write the history of a concept must be assuming that the
concept in question has a xed meaning is a puzzling one. For if it were
true that a given concept did possess such an essential meaning then it
would follow that this meaning could not undergo any kind of alteration
or change. But a logical consequence of this is the conclusion that the
concept in question could not then be said to have a history. As Terence
Ball has noted, Nietzsche once said that only that which has no history
can be dened.
52
With respect to this issue, therefore, the most appropriate
conclusion to draw from any endorsement of the traditional theory of
meaning would be the one which Skinner himself draws in Meaning and
Understanding, albeit for a dierent reason, namely that it is not possible
to write the history of the meaning of any idea or concept. Te reason for
this, however, would not be the one given by Skinner in his article.
Against Skinner, it might be suggested that for an adherent of the tradi-
tional theory of meaning it is the presence and not the absence of an essen-
tial meaning which makes conceptual history impossible.
Let us now turn to consider the relevance of Skinners appeal to the
philosophy of Wittgenstein for our understanding of the concept of natu-
ral law. Te reader is reminded at this point that, together with the concepts
52)
Ball, Transforming Political Discourse, x.
74 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
of the great chain of being, utopia, progress, equality, sovereignty and jus-
tice, the concept of natural law is referred to explicitly by Skinner in
Meaning and Understanding as an example of a concept the history of
which cannot be written.
53
It is arguable that if Skinners method were
applied to the concept of natural law then the person who applied it
would probably be sympathetic to Paul Foriers and Chaim Perelmans
claim that any attempt to dene natural law in an objective manner by
disengaging it from its environment, from the schools which employ the
expression, or from the political and legal organs which make use of it, is
an undertaking which is doomed from the start.
54
For it is simply not the
case that the concept which is associated with or expressed by this word or
phrase has just one xed meaning. On the contrary, it has as many dier-
ent meanings as it has dierent uses. Hence to talk about the meaning of a
word or phrase, or the concept which they express, just is inappropriate.
From the standpoint adopted by Skinner in 1969, the meaning which the
expression lex naturalis has for the members of a given linguistic commu-
nity at one time, say t
1
, is indeed given by the linguistic convention which
regulates its use at that time, and similarly for the meaning of the same
linguistic expression at a later time, say t
2
. However, Skinner suggests that
the linguistic conventions in question are entirely dierent from one
another and do not overlap at all. Te alteration in meaning of the
expression lex naturalis which is associated with the transition from one
time period to another is, therefore, a radical or a revolutionary one.
A. P. dEntrves once claimed that except for the name, the medieval
and the modern notions of natural law have little in common.
55
In 1969
Skinner would I think have sympathized with this sentiment. Indeed, in
Meaning and Understanding he went even further than dEntrves and
suggested that the beliefs of two thinkers who are historically or contextu-
ally as far apart as, let us say, Aquinas and Hobbes, have nothing at all in
common apart from the fact that they both happen to use the same lin-
guistic expression, lex naturalis, in their writings an expression which in
Skinners opinion meant something completely dierent for Hobbes from
what it meant for Aquinas. However, it is one thing to say that what is
53)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 3839.
54)
Paul Foriers and Chaim Perelman, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Dictionary of the
History of Ideas, 3 (New York: Scribner, 1973), 14.
55)
A. P. dEntrves, Natural Law, 2nd ed (London: Hutchinson, 1970), 15.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 75
novel in Hobbess employment of the concept of natural law is more
interesting than what is traditional, or that it is more important than
what Hobbes inherited from the past and simply took up without signi-
cant alteration. It is quite another to suggest, as arguably Skinner did in
1969, that there are no such lines of historical connection at all between
Hobbess employment of the concept of natural law and the use to which
this concept was put by his predecessors, including Aquinas, in the medi-
eval period. Such an argument ignores the fact that, as Alasdair MacIntyre
has pointed out, there are continuities as well as breaks in the history of
moral concepts and that just here lies the complexity of that history.
56
Te view of conceptual change implicitly adopted by Skinner in
Meaning and Understanding can be illustrated, using the example of
the concept of natural law, by Table 3 below.
Table 3: Skinners Views on Conceptual Change
Individual A B C D
Time t
1
t
2
t
3
t
4
Concept natural law
1
natural law
2
natural law
3
natural law
4
Expression lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis lex naturalis
Beliefs a,b,c d,e,f g,h,i j,k,l
Classication natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
natural law
theorist
In the table above individuals A, B, C and D are all assumed to be mem-
bers of the same society, or linguistic community, living in dierent time
periods, t
1
,

t
2
,

t
3
and t
4
. Tese four individuals all employ the expression
lex naturalis in their writings, but the beliefs which each of them associ-
ates with this expression are quite dierent from the beliefs associated
with it by the others. In each case this expression is associated with a
unique and entirely dierent set of beliefs, designated by the symbols
a,b,c; d,e,f; g,h,i; and j,k,l. It is assumed that these individuals hold no
beliefs in common and that for each of them the expression lex naturalis
has a completely dierent meaning from the meaning which it has for the
others. Te relationship between the beliefs of individual theorists A, B,
56)
Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the
Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1967), 2.
76 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
C and D is, therefore, based on the principle of discontinuity rather than
continuity and the transition from the beliefs associated with any one of
the time periods t
1
,

t
2
and

t
3
and t
4
to those associated with its successor is
radical or revolutionary rather than an evolutionary one.
At rst sight, it seems dicult to imagine how the scenario depicted in
this table could occur. For if it is true that the beliefs of two individuals
from the same linguistic community (e.g. Aquinas and Hobbes) who are
separated from one another in time have nothing at all in common with
one another then how could it be, or why would it be, that they both
happen to employ the same linguistic expression lex naturalis, albeit with
completely dierent meanings, in their writings? Tis way of thinking
about conceptual change certainly appears at rst sight to lack intuitive
plausibility. Nevertheless we saw above how such a state of aairs might
possibly arise. It is arguable that this is the view of conceptual change
adopted, at least implicitly, by Skinner in Meaning and Understanding in
the History of Ideas.
From the point of view adopted by Skinner in 1969, we are justied in
assuming that there would be no overlap at all between the beliefs of A, B,
C and D in the scenario being considered by this example. However, the
dierences which exist in their beliefs is disguised by the fact that they all
happen to employ the same linguistic expression in their writings. In such
a situation, Skinner suggests, the task of the historian of ideas could only
be to attempt to establish or discover the meaning which the concept of
natural law has for the members of a particular linguistic community in a
particular historical period (A at time t
1
; B at time t
2
; C at time

t
3
; or D at
time t
4
), rather than to trace the evolution of the meaning of that concept
over time. To employ the terminology of structuralist philosophy, we may
say that the approach adopted by Skinner in his article was exclusively syn-
chronic and not at all diachronic. Tere is, therefore, some truth in Ellen
Meiksins Woods recent claim that, because of its lack of process, Skin-
ners recommended method was curiously ahistorical.
57
Skinners understanding of conceptual change in Meaning and Under-
standing is similar to that of T. S. Kuhn.
58
It is also strikingly similar to
57)
Ellen Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Tought
from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (London: Verso, 2008), 10.
58)
See T. S. Kuhn, Te Structure of Scientic Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1970 [1962]).
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 77
that of Michel Foucault in his structuralist phase, or in his archaeology of
knowledge period in the 1960s.
59
I am, therefore, reluctant to endorse
Robert Lambs recent assessment of the relationship between Skinner and
Foucault. According to Lamb, there appears to have been little in com-
mon between the views of Foucault and those of the early Skinner.
Indeed, Foucault is a gure that is absent from his [Skinners] early work.
On the other hand, however, in Skinners most recent thinking Foucault
looms large as an intellectual inuence.
60
Tis judgment seems
to me to overlook the anities which existed between the views on
method endorsed by Skinner in 1969 and those held by Foucault in his
archaeology period. Lamb associates Skinners current thinking, not only
with the name of Foucault, but also with that of Nietzsche, and therefore
(by implication) with the anti-foundationalist principles of what is usu-
ally referred to as poststructuralism or postmodernism.
61
He comes
very close to suggesting that the position embraced most recently by Skin-
ner constitutes a signicant departure from that which he advocated in
his early writings, and that the reason for this is that Skinner has fallen
under the inuence of poststructuralist philosophy.
62
In my view this
assessment exaggerates the extent to which Skinners current methodologi-
cal views dier from those which he came to endorse from the mid-1970s
onwards.
In Meaning and Understanding Skinner argues that no concept can
be expressed by a set of words, the meaning of which can be excogitated
and traced over time.
63
He concedes that the literal meanings of key
59)
See, for example, Michel Foucault, Te Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge,
1972 [1968]). For a discussion of the similarity between the views of Skinner and those of
Foucault see Peter Kjellstrm, Te Narrator and the Archaeologist: Modes of Meaning
and Discourse in Quentin Skinner and Michel Foucault, Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift, 98
(1995), 2141; and Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner,
25657.
60)
Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 256.
61)
Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 257, 251. See also
Robert Lamb, Quentin Skinners Revised Historical Contextualism: A Critique, History
of the Human Sciences, 22, 3 (2009), 6566.
62)
For an examination of the relationship which exists between the views of Skinner and
poststructuralist philosophy see Tony Burns, Interpreting and Appropriating Texts in the
History of Political Tought: Quentin Skinner and Poststructuralism, Contemporary
Political Teory (forthcoming).
63)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 37.
78 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
terms do sometimes change over time, so that a given writer may say
something with a quite dierent sense and reference from the one which
may occur to the reader.
64
However, like Foucault, Skinner insists that
although we certainly can record the occurrence of such a change once it
has taken place nevertheless what we cannot do is trace this change as it
actually occurs. At rst sight it is dicult to see how it is possible for the
occurrence of conceptual change to be recorded afterwards even though it
cannot be traced as and when it occurs. In fact, however, the apparently
incompatible assertions which Skinner makes about this issue in Mean-
ing and Understanding can be reconciled provided we attribute to Skin-
ner in 1969 the implicit (and false) assumption that when it does happen
conceptual change is always instantaneous and revolutionary, rather than
slow and evolutionary. Te view of conceptual change advanced implic-
itly by Skinner in 1969 indicates that at this time he had some sympathy
for the claim, made by Kuhn in Te Structure of Scientic Revolutions
(published 1962), that just like a gestalt switch, or a paradigm shift,
conceptual change must occur all at once or not at all.
65
Tis aspect of Skinners thinking in 1969 has been well captured by
Iain Hampsher-Monk, who has observed that in Meaning and Under-
standing Skinners strategic focus was synchronic,
66
and that Skinners
method pushes in the direction of history as a series of static snapshots
or thin sections within which the recovery of historical meaning is
reduced to a series of discrete acts of understanding, each of which has
to be explicated in terms of its own intellectual context.
67
Hampsher-
Monk rightly points out that this way of thinking is one which has di-
culty acknowledging the continuing identity of the idea through time.
68

Arguing in a similar vein, Andrew Lockyer has noted that Skinners early
views on method in 1969 neglected completely the continuity of lan-
guage and concepts through time,
69
and Bruce Haddock has suggested
that if it is true that the meanings of words are to be found in their use,
64)
Skinner, Meaning and Understanding, 31.
65)
Kuhn, Structure of Scientic Revolutions, 150.
66)
Hampsher-Monk, speech Acts, Languages or Conceptual History? 42.
67)
Hampsher-Monk, Political Languages in Time, 104.
68)
Hampsher-Monk, Political Languages in Time, 104.
69)
Haddock, Te History of Ideas and the Study of Politics, 426.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 79
as Skinner claims, nevertheless it is also true that their use changes through
time.
70
In Meaning and Understanding, then, Skinner erroneously thought
that the view of conceptual change which sees it as being instantaneous
and radical or revolutionary, along the lines laid down by Kuhn and
Foucault in the 1960s, is not only correct but also one which is required by
the later Wittgensteins theory of meaning in use. Earlier I gave reasons for
thinking that this is not the case and that it is possible to endorse the later
Wittgensteins views on meaning whilst at the same time rejecting the
views on conceptual change and conceptual history which Skinner took in
1969. In his article Skinner suggests that there is no alternative to his own
view of conceptual change and to his own views regarding the (im)possi-
bility of writing conceptual history. Or rather, he suggests that there is only
one alternative, which is to adopt the traditional essentialist view of mean-
ing. However, as we have seen, if we think about conceptual change as
being slow and evolutionary, along the lines indicated earlier, then it can
be argued that the later Wittgensteins views on meaning can provide the
theoretical justication for a quite dierent approach to conceptual his-
tory. Tis is a non-essentialist approach which allows for the possibility
of the persistence or continued identity of a concept despite the fact that
its meaning does alter over time. It allows for the possibility that, unlike
the river of Heraclitus, a concept like that of natural law might retain its
identity in and through such a process of change.
Conclusion
Skinners understanding of and attitude towards conceptual change has
altered signicantly since 1969. From the mid-1970s onwards he came to
allow for the possibility of a much less radical understanding of the notion
of conceptual change than that presented in Meaning and Understand-
ing. According to this later view of conceptual change, which is similar
in certain respects to the evolutionary approach discussed in Section 1
above, although existing linguistic conventions certainly do place con-
straints upon individuals if they wish to communicate with the other
members of a given linguistic community using concepts which those
70)
Lockyer, Traditions as Context in the History of Political Teory, 206.
80 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
others can understand, nevertheless, within certain limits, it is always pos-
sible for creative individuals to modify those conventions to some extent
by using existing terms in new and creative ways. As Skinner points out
in a later article, from this point of view although it is undeniably true
that we are all limited by the concepts available to us if we wish to com-
municate, nevertheless it is no less true that language constitutes a
resource as well as a constraint.
71
Similarly, as we have seen, in his more recent Regarding Method (2002)
Skinner asserted that I strongly endorse the belief that we must be ready
as historians of philosophy not merely to admit the fact of conceptual
change but to make it central to our research.
72
Indeed, the fact that in
1989 Skinner was prepared to contribute a chapter to a book in which
the editors claim that conceptual histories tell stories of change within
continuity and of continuity within change, and that conceptual change
tends to be piecemeal and gradual and almost always occurs with ref-
erence to relatively and stable linguistic conventions,
73
indicates that two
decades later he was much more sympathetic than he was in 1969 to this
alternative, less iconoclastic, way of thinking about conceptual change. In
short, he had by that time become somewhat more sympathetic towards
the evolutionary view of conceptual change referred to above. Tis is not
to claim that Skinner is now an advocate of this evolutionary notion of
conceptual change. It is not the intention of this paper to provide an
account of Skinners current methodological beliefs. So far as the paper
does deals with Skinners most recent work its aim is a minimalist one. It
is simply to establish what was the view of conceptual change, and of con-
ceptual history, which was held by Skinner in 1969, and to attempt to
show that he did indeed come to modify this view in his later writings.
Despite Skinners claim, made in 1974, that the methodological views
which he expressed in Meaning and Understanding do not necessarily
imply that it is impossible to write the history of an idea or concept, we
have seen that there is some substance to the criticism, brought against
him by his critics, both then and since, that they do have such an impli-
71)
Quentin Skinner, Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts, Regarding
Method, Visions, 117.
72)
Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, 178.
73)
Ball, Farr and Hanson, Editors Introduction, Political Innovation and Conceptual
Change, 3.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 81
cation. It is evident, however, that Skinners methodological views did
change after 1969. Kari Palonen has argued that although in his early
work Skinner was not a theorist of conceptual change nevertheless an
interest in this issue begins to appear in his work in the early seventies.
74

Skinners later remarks on this subject indicate,
75
as again Palonen argues,
that it was in this period that he started to think more carefully about the
issue of conceptual change. To be more precise, it was in his reply to his
critics of 1974 that he rst started to tone down some of the more
extreme pronouncements which he had made in Meaning and Under-
standing and to alter his view of conceptual change, and hence also his
views on the viability of conceptual history.
Nevertheless, although rst planted in the 1970s, the seeds of this
revised position were not developed at that time and only began to germi-
nate from the late 1980s onwards. It is, perhaps, arguable that it was really
only in the very late 1980s and the 1990s, possibly in response to having
come into contact with the work of Reinhard Koselleck and the German
Begrisgeschichte school through the work of Melvin Richter,
76
that Skin-
ner began to develop further the views on conceptual change which he rst
advanced in 1974 and which he now associates with the notion of paradi-
astole or rhetorical redescription
77
views which have brought him closer
74)
Kari Palonen, Rhetorical and Temporal Perspectives on Conceptual Change: Teses
on Quentin Skinner and Reinhart Koselleck, Finnish Yearbook of Political Tought, 3
(1999), 419, 45. See also Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinners Rhetoric of
Conceptual Change, History of the Human Sciences, 10, 2 (1997), 6180; Kari Palonen,
Logic or Rhetoric in the History of Political Tought? Comments on Mark Bevir,
Rethinking History: Te Journal of Teory and Practice, 4, 3 (2000), 30110.
75)
Skinner, Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, 182.
76)
Skinner himself suggests this, in Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual
Change, 177. For the relationship between Skinner and the Begrisgeschichte School see
Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 25860; Melvin Rich-
ter, Pocock, Skinner and Begrisgeschichte, in Te History of Political and Social Concepts:
A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 12442; and Mark Bevir,
Begrisgeschichte, History and Teory, 39, 2 (2000), 27778, 280.
77)
For the notion of paradiastole see Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philoso-
phy of Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996), 1011, 14253, 15672, 17480; Quentin Skinner,
Retrospect: Studying Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, 18287; Quentin Skinner,
Hobbes on Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality, in Hobbes and Civil Science,
Visions of Politics, Vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 87142.
82 A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483
than some of his critics would ever have expected to one of the basic
assumptions of the Begrisgeschichte School that it might indeed be possible
to write the history of a concept after all. An account of the methodologi-
cal approach adopted by the Begrisgeschichte School is something which
lies outside of the concerns of the present paper. Here I wish simply to
draw attention to the obvious fact that those associated with this School
evidently do think that writing conceptual history is both a possible and
desirable thing to do, and that although he rejected this view in 1969 Skin-
ner later became more sympathetic towards it. As Robert Lamb has recently
observed, to anybody who has read Skinners Meaning and Understand-
ing closely this later rapprochement with conceptual history is indeed a
surprising development.
78
However, Skinners attitude towards conceptual history remains an
ambivalent one. For example in his second Reply to My Critics, pub-
lished in 1988, Skinner insisted that he was unrepentant in his belief that
there can be no histories of concepts as such.
79
And more recently, in the
2007 interview mentioned earlier, when asked to comment on Ortega y
Gassets claim that there are no eternal ideas and that there is no real
history of ideas, Skinners response was that basically I agree with it
wholeheartedly.
80
Tese remarks indicate that even today Skinner contin-
ues to view the idea of writing the history of any concept with a consider-
able degree of scepticism. His current view seems to be that although this
undertaking is indeed a possible one for an intellectual historian to engage
in, nevertheless it is not a useful or productive one. Tus, for example,
Skinner maintains in this interview that I still think that there is some-
thing unhistorical about the lists of meanings and alleged changes of mean-
ing that make up most of the entries to be found in the works associated
with the Begrisgeschichte project.
81
It is clear from this 2007 interview that
Skinners reasons for taking this position have much more to do with his
commitment to J. L. Austins theory of speech acts than it does with a
continued endorsement of or appeal to the philosophy of the later Witt-
78)
Lamb, Recent Developments in the Tought of Quentin Skinner, 259.
79)
Quentin Skinner, A Reply to My Critics, 283.
80)
Fernandez Sebastian & Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty and Republicanism: An
Interview with Quentin Skinner, 106.
81)
Fernandez Sebastian & Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty and Republicanism: An
Interview with Quentin Skinner, 11314.
A. Burns / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 5483 83
genstein. What the historian should really be doing, Skinner continues to
believe, is studying not the histories of words but the history of the uses to
which these words were put at dierent times in argument, that is to say,
the actions which were performed by those who used them.
82
Evaluating
Skinners Austinian reasons for thinking that the writing of the history
of any concept is in eect a waste of time is something which lies outside
of the remit of the present paper. Whatever the merits and demerits of
Skinners appeal to the philosophy of J. L. Austin might be, my conclusion
here is that the Wittgensteinian argument which Skinner advances in
defence of the same conclusion in Meaning and Understanding is open
to a number of objections, the details of which I have presented above.
82)
Fernandez Sebastian & Skinner, Intellectual History, Liberty and Republicanism: An
Interview with Quentin Skinner, 115.