2
History and the Interpretation of Texts
TERENCE BALL
Hermeneutics - the art of interpretatjon - takes its
name from Hermes. In Greek mythology Hermes
was the winged-foot messenger of the gods and
sometrung of a trickster to boot. Like the Sphinx
and the Orac le at Delphi, he relayed messages from
the gods in an encoded and allusive way. typica lly
in the form of riddles, leaving it to his human hearers
to interpret the meaning and significance of any
message (Palmer. 1969: 13 ). Somenmes they got it
right, and sometimes not - oflen with disastrous
resu Its.
Students of political theory do not attempt 10
decode and interpret the meaning of messages of
divine origin But we do, of necc~sity, attempt to
understand messages sent to us by long-dead and
all-too-human thinkers whose wo1ks we read and
ponder and mine for meaning. Thus political theory
is in imponnnt ways a backward-looking enterprise.
A very considerable purt of its subject-muller is its
own history, which consists of classic works from
Plato onward. In this respect poliucal theory is quite
unlike (say) physics. One can be a very line physi-
cist without ever having studied the history of
physics or having read Aristotle's Physics or the
Ionian nature philosophers or. for that matter, the
works of Gah leo and Newton. The same cannot be
said of political theory. A student or political theory
must have read. reread and renectcd upon the works
of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, Marx, Mill and many others if she is to
be competent in her chosen vocation.
But there is more than one way to read, interpret,
and understand the works that comprise the canon -
changing and contested as it is - ofpoliLical theory.
My aim in this chapter is 10 say something about the
v:inety and diversity of approaches to the interpre-
tation of texts in political theory. I shall begin by
noting that interpretation is not an opl1011 but a
necessity for the meaning-seeking creatures that we
are. Next I shall sketch briefly the chief tenets of
various 'schools' of (or, less formally, approaches
to) interpretation Marxian, ' totaliLUrian·. Freudian,
feminist, Straussian. new historical. and postmod-
ernist and the interpretive controversies between
and among them. Along the way 1shall supply sev-
eral cautionary talcs about how not to interpret par-
ticular passages from important thinkers. And
finally I conclude by presenting and defending my
0\\11 'pluni listic' and ·problem-driven' approach lo
the interpretation of texts in political theory. I want
thmughout Lo emphasi,e two points in purticulur
that nut all in1erprc1a1ium, arc equa lly valid or valu-
able; and thc1t interpretations arc rationally critici;,-
able and corrigible.
THE INDISPENSABILITY
OF INTERPRETATION
lntcrpretation comes with the territory or being
human. It is an acuvity from which humans cannot
escape. Our prehistoric ancestors interpreted the
meaning of animal entrails, omens and other signs
that might make their world more intelligible and
perhaps portend their future . They, like modem
meteorologists, attempted to foreca!.t the weather
by looking at clouds and observing the behaviour of
birds and other creatures. With the coming of liter-
acy came the primacy of the written over the spoken
word. Religious people, then as now, interpret the
meaning of sacred scripture. Judges, lawyers ond
ordinary clli.:cns read and interpret constitutions
and other texts. And students of political theory
read and adjudicate among nval interpretations of
texts in poli11ca l theory.
 History and the Interpretation of Texts
How one interpreLS Lhc meaning of any Lext has
implications for what one docs with it. Hermeneutics
can be. and often is. a deadly serious and some-
umes simply deauly business (Ball, 1987). If you
doubt iL, you need only think of how Torquemada
and the Spanish Inquisition interpreted lhc Bible, or
Lenin and Stalin (not 10 mention Mao and Pol Pol)
the works of Marx, or Hiller and the Nazi::, the writ-
ing~ ofNiet,sche, or Osama bin Laden and Islamic
fundamentalists the Koran, to see what carnage can
result from interpretations of tex ts tnkcn to be foun-
dational for mass movements. IL is therefore impor-
tant for students of political theory Lo treat the texts
they study not a::, sacred scripture. but as the handi-
work of human beings who, although follible, have
much 10 leach their critical readers.
The vocation of political theory is in large pan
defined by its perennial fascination witJ1 and atten-
tion to ·ctassic' works. Each generation reads iliem
anew aod from their own vantage point. These
authors ond their works comprise an important
aspect ofour politica l tradition. which we renew and
enrich by reading, reflecting upon and critici1.ing
the::,e works And yet to read and allempt 10 under-
stand a work wriuen a long time ago, perhaps in a
difTcrenl language, by an author whose n,e11talitl!
differs remarkably from our own, is a duunting ta~k.
The reader finds herself in a po!>ition akin 10 tJ1at or
an anthropologist studying un alien culture (Rony,
Schncewin<l and Skinner, 1984: 6- 7). As readers of
works by Plato and other long-dead authors, we find
ourselves in on alien age or culture with whose con-
cepts, categories, cuMoms. und practices wc arc
largely unfamiliar. In such situations we are often at
o loss to know w/mr is being said, much less why it
is being said or what its meaning may be. We there-
fore need a 'lran..,lation' not only of the words of
the text but of ils meaning. I\ good translation or
interpretation is one that diminishes the strangeness
of the text, making ii murc fomiliarand accessible 10
an otherwise pualed or perplexed observer. The
artifilcts or texts producc<.I in political cultures pre-
ceding and differing from our own do not readily
rcvcul ilicir meanings even lo the mo:.t careful
reader. To read a tex 1 'over and over again', as some
(e.g. Plamcnatt, 1963 : I, x) advise, is no doubt nec-
essary. But it is hurdly sufficient to enable us 10
orrivc ot anything like an adequate undcrstunding of
what (soy) Plato meant by advocating the use of
'noble lies' or what Machiavel li meant by compar-
ing •fortune' Uort1111a) lo a woman who must be
beaten and bullied. To try to make sense of such
puzzling tem1s and speech acts requires that we
interpret their meaning. There is no undcn,tand1ng
without 1n1crprc1ation, and no intcrprctuti~)n without
the p{lSSibility of multiple (mis)underslandings.
Nori~ there a neutral Mandpoint or Archimcdcan
point from which to interpret and appraise any text.
19
classic or otherwise. A II interpretation implies, and
originates in, some vantage point or standpoint.
Every mterpretation. io shof4 implies an interest
iliat provides the ground for ond possibility of an
interpretation - a standpoint from which inquiry
can begin and 1111crprctation proceed. These inter-
ests arc, moreover, multiple and varied. One's
interests can be contemporary: what (for example)
can Mill still teach u:. about liberty? Or they may be
more historical: why did Mill's arguments in 011
Liberty take ilie form they <liJ? Who were Mill's
main targets and his intended audience'? Or one's
interests may be more narrowly linguistic or liter-
ary: what metaphors did Mill employ, and with
what effect? Or one's intercsLS may be logical or
philosophical: is Mill's argument in 011 Libcny log-
ically consistent? /\re there gaps or lacunae in the
argument? Is ilie argument convincing? None of
these intcrc!ilS necessarily excludes the others But
they do dictate what will count as a problem, what
constitutes an interesting or important question, and
what method might be most appropriate and fruitful
for answering such questions One would not, for
example, a-.scss the logical adequacy ofMill's argu-
ment b} examining the mctuphors he uses. Nor
woulu one be able lo answer questions posed from
a historical perspective by looking only at the logi-
cal structure of bis argument.
What one's guiding interests might be - and how
one goes about answering 10 them is as likely as
not lo depend on the interpretive ·scbool' 10 which
one belongs.
'SCHOOLS' OF INTERPRETATION
There are today a number of in0ucntinl schools of,
or approaches 10. interpretation. Each takes a di!.-
LincLivc npprooch 10 lhe history of political thought
and each is highly critical of the others. Disputes
between and among these schools are heated and
often protracted I want now 10 ofTer bricrthumbnnil
sketches of several approaches 10 inlcrprctalion.
Marxian Interpretation
I begin by considering the Marxian approach 10
textual interpretation. Marx furnously remarked
that · the ideas or the ruling class arc in every epoch
the ru ling ideas' (Marx and Engels, 1947: 39). That
is. the Jominant or mainstream ideas of any era arc
those that serve the interests or the dominant class,
largely by legitimating their pre-eminent position
in s1>cicty. So it come::. Ill> no l>Urprisc, Marxists say,
that tn slave-owning societies slavery is ponrayed
and widely regarded as normal and natural·
Aristotle said so in fourth-century 1-1c. Greece, a::,
 20 Handbook of Political Theory
did George FiLLhugh and other apologists for
American slavery before the Civil War. ln capitalist
societies tJ1c free market is portrayed in tllc main-
stream media books, mass-circulation magazines
and newspapers. television, movies - as the most
oonnal, natural and efficient way to organize and run
an economy. Other alternatives. such as socialism,
arc always portrayed negative!), as abnormal. unnat-
ural and inefficient Ideas including tJ10sc to be
found in works of political theory - combine 10 fom1
a more or less consistent set or system or ideas that
Marx calls an 'ideology'. The point and purpose of
any ideology is to lend legitimacy to tJ1e rule of the
domim:1111 class. Thus it.leologies serve as smuke-
!\creen~. hiding tawdry reality from a credulous
public, and presenting a rosy - albeit false - picture
of o society that treats all its members fairly, tJ1at
rewards the deserving and punishes the undeserving,
and distributes valued goods in a just and equitable
manner.
For a Marxist. then, the task oftcxtual interpreta-
tion is 10 get behind appearances. to uncover the
reality Lhcy obscure, and to expose what Marx calls
'lhe illusion oft/wt epoch' ( 1947: 30). This general
approach. which is now sometimes called 'the her-
meneutics of suspicion', takes no sta tement at face
value but view~ it as a stratagem or move in a game
whose point is to obscure reality and legitimize
existing power relations. An adequate or good imer-
prctation is one that performs the funcLion of
'ideology critique· - that h., penetrates the veil of
illusion and brings us clo!.cr to unveiling and expos-
ing a heretofore hidden socio-economic reality. An
example may serve to illustrate what this might
mean in actua l interpretive prncticc.
One particularly important Marxian imerprctation
of key works in political theory is C. B. Macpherson's
n,c Politict1/ 11,eo,y of Possessive J,,divitl1wlis111
( 1962). By ·possessive individuali~m' Macpherson
means the political theory that serves to support and
legitimize those muinst.uys of modern capitalism -
economic self-interest and tllc im,titution of private
property. I le finds llobbcs and Locke. in particular,
to be ideologists and apologi!il:. for capitalism <11'a11t erty); hence the most we may conclude is that
la /eure. Thus Locke, for example, ceases to be lhe
good, grey, tolerant, proto-democratic thinker we
thought we kne,,, and becomci. in!.lead an extraor-
dinarily clever propagandist for the then-emerging
capitalist order. Mucpherson makes much, for
example, of Locke's discussion of private property
in Lhe Second Trcalisc of Go1·cm111c111 (I 690).
Locke's problem was to justify the instituuon of
private property. particularly since the Scriptures
say that God hnd given the earth lo nil mankind.
I low then could any individual make any portion of
that common property his own'! Locke fomously
answers thaL one scparntes one's own part from the
common by mixing one's labour with it:
27. Though thi.: Earlh. and nit inferior Cren1ures be
common to nll men, yet every Man hn• a Pmpe11y 1n hi•
own Person. Tlus no Body has nny R1gh110 bu1 h1mse1r:
The labo11rofh1& Body, and the 1Vorkofh1s hands, we
may sny. are properly ltis. Whatsoever I.hen he removes
out of the State that Nntun: hath provided. and Jen LI in.
he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyoed to 11 some-
thing that is h1 ~ own. and thereby make~ 11 his Propertv.
Even so, Locke adds, there remain restrictions on
how much one might justifiably remove from the
common store namely, one may not take more
than one can 'use' without iis ·spoiling·. You might
make apples from a commonly owned tree your
own property by expending your labour - by climb-
ing tllc tree, picking Lhc apple~. sorting and washing
them. etc. - but you arc entitled to take no more
apples than you can use without their spoiling.
These 'use' and ·spoilage' limitations arc over-
come, however, with the introduction of mo11ev.
47. And lhlll, came in t11e use of Money. some to~ting
thing 1Jrn1 Men rnighl keep without spo1hng, and that by
mu1unl consen1 Men would take in exchange for the
Lruly useful. bu1 penshnble Supports or L1 Ii!.
48. And a~ dif1crcn1 degrees of Industry were apt to
give Men Possei.sion!t in dilTerent Proponiom , so thi~
l11,•c1111011 ofM011cy gnw them the opportunity 10 con-
tinue to enlarge them.
Macpherson mukes much of these passages, wh.ich
he takes 10 represent a key juncture in Locke's jus-
11ficn1ion of capitalist accumulation uod ever-
greater inequalities of wealth ( 1962: 2()3 11.
233 5). Macpherson's critics contend lhat it is any-
thing but: thut Locke was a devout Christian who
had deep misgivings about money (the love of
which is said in tllc Seri ptures to be · tlle root of a 11
evil'): that the word Locke uses in parngruph 48 is
not 'property' - 1h01 which is properly and by right
your own - but ·possc:,sion' (which is mere fact
without moral or legal import: a thief may posi,ess
your wallet but it is not properly his. i.e. his prop-
money, and therefore presumably cupital itse lf, is 'a
human institution about whose moral status Locke
felt deeply ambivalent' (Dunn, 1984: 40).
A Marxian approach to textual interpretation
encounters II number of di fliculties, among them
the following. We have seen already that Marxists
assume that the ruling ideas of an epoch arc those
that serve Lhc interests of tllc ruling class; and since
most political thinkers have belonged to an edu-
cated and li1cratc elite. their ideas serve the ruling
class. Blll then Marx und Engels {and Lenin,
Trotsky. Bukhann, Lukac!i, and many other promi-
nent Murxists) have not belonged to the class of
oppressed labourers but to a learned und literate
 History and the Interpretation of Texts
eli1e. By Marxiun lights their ideas should serve Lhe
interests of the ruling capitnlis1 class. not those of
the labouring proletariat. How can the ideas of 1hesc
Marxists serve tJ1e interests of a class 1,0 which they
do not belong? All attempts (by Marx and others) to
answer this question - that there are some who
1hro111gh will or intellec1 rransccnd their 'objective'
class basis. that the workers cannot theorize for
themselves because they arc afllicted with 'false
consciousness' whilst midc.llc-class intc !lcctuals are
not, etc. - arc merely ad hoc rationali,ations and arc
clearly unsatisfactory. Moreover, how Marxists can
interpret all political theories, past and present, ai.
ideological masks concealing and justi fying the
domination of one claM, by another - and yet exempt
their own theorizing as an exception to this rule - is
not explained (or even explainable) in any satisfac-
tory way. And, not least. Marxian interpretations
have n formulaic, cookie-culler quality: the inter-
preter has preset ideas about what she will find
namely ideological trickery or obfuscation in the
service of the ruling class and, presto. she finds
it lurking in even the most innocent-sounding
passages.
'Totalitarian ' Interpretations
The twentieth century saw the rise tu power and
prominence of various totalitarian regimes and
ideologies, among which fascism and communism
were particularly prominent. One important and
innucntial approach 10 textual interprcuuion , iews
thc:,e ideologies as rooted in the thinking of earlier
poli1i1ca l theorists going as far back as Plato. These
earlier theories. when put into modern political
practice, alleged ly produced llit lcr and the
I lolocnust and Stalin and tJ1e Gulag. It was there-
fore deemed important 10 detect and expose the
philoi;ophica l 'origins' or 'rooti.' of mo<lem 101ali-
turiu111i:.m by rereading and reinterpreting earlier
thinkers in light or the !utter-day · fruits' of their
1heori1.ing.
Once one begini. to look for proto-totu litarian
themes and tendencies in earlier theorist:., they
seem to be everywhere. Whal is Plato 'i. perfect
republic, ruled by u philosopher-king who employs
censon,hip and ' noble hes'. if not a blueprint for a
Nu.ti regime ru led by an all-knowing Fiihrer,
backed by propaganda and tbe Big Lie, or for a
Soviet-style communist utopia ruled by a Lenin or
a Sta lin'? Much the same might be said about
Machiavelli 's ruthlci.s pn nce or Hobbes's all-
powcrtul Sovereign or Rou!!Senu's all-wii.c Legislator.
Indeed, Rousseau's Social Contmct has come in for
special censure. Rousseau's critics have \lewed
him as a precursor or lotalirnriani!.m for four main
reasons. The li1st is hi11 notion of the Gcncrul Will.
21
which is 'ulways. right' and ·cannot err' . The second
is Rousseau's chilling assertion that would-be dissi-
dents must be · forced to be free·. The Lhi rd is the
ominous figure of tJtc omniscient and god-like
Legislator. The founh and most frightening feature
of Rousseau's ideal republic is tJtc civil religion that
supplies a religious rationale for its Jraconian law!>
and institutions. Tukcn together, these four feature!>
constitute a bill o f indictment of Rousseau's 10111li-
tarian intentions (Talmon. 1952: Burker, 195 1;
Crocker, 1968).' Other later thinker:. - particularly
Hegel and Marx - have been subjected to simila r
criticii.ms.
Among the most prominent representatives oflhe
'101aliwrian' approach to tex tual interpretation was
the late Sir KarE Popper, whose The Open Society
and Its Enemies ( 1963 [ 1945]) is the most sustained
and systematic attempt to trace the roots or modem
totahtariunism to ideas advanced by ·enemies' of
"the open society' from Plato through to Marx. An
Austrian Jew who fled from tJtc Nazis and emi -
grated to New Zealand in the 1930s, Popper
regarded his research for and wriung of Tl,c Open
Society as his 'war cffort" ( 1976: 11 5 ). It may be
instructive to revisit PQpper's Open Society to show
how si ncere ly held present-day concerns can
inform - or mi sinform our interpretation of
·classic' works in political theory Let us choose from
the preceding rogues' ga llery a i.ingle example for
closer examination: Hege l's remark in Pl,i/osoplry
of Right tJtat ·whut i:, rational is actual and \\ hot ~s
actual is rutionar ( 1952: I0).
Popper <.jUotes Hegel's rema1 kin English Lrnnsla-
tion and then glosses it as follows: ' liege! muin-
toinrsl that everything that is reasonable must be
real, and everythi ng that is real must be reasonable .'
Thus I legcl holds that 'everything tJ1at 1s now real
or actual exists by necessity. and must be reason-
able as well oc; good. (Particularly good is ... the
existing Prussian state)' (Popper, 1963: II , 41 ). The
Prussian state or· Hegel 's lime woi. un authoritanun
police state thot practi~etl censorship, arbitrary
arrest and imprisonment without due process of
law. That :.talc was real; therefore, in Hegel's view,
that state wa:. rational or reasonable and thus good.
In this w.iy, Popper claims, flegcl gave his philo-
sophical blessing to the Prussian prototype of the
modem totalitarian state, and so must himself be
accounted a ·totalitarian· thinker and apologist.
Hegel is, in shon, an ·enemy' of the 'open society'.
But is Hegel guilty as charged? The i.hort onJ>wcr
is no. Let us sec: why. Herc i::; Hegel's own stole-
mcnt in the original German: ' Was vemunl11 g 1st.
dos ist wirkhch; und was wirklich ist, das isl vcr-
nunl11g.' The closest English equivalent is: ' What is
rational is actual. and what is actuu l is rational •
NOlc that wirklid1 as translated not ns ' real ' but os
·actual'. In everyday German, as in English, there i!I
 22 Handbook of Political Theory
ordinarily no sharp distinction between 'real' and
'actual'. Poppcr(whose first language was German)
fails 10 note I.hat Hegel was writing not in ordinary
non-technical German but in a technical-philosophical
idiom. He draws and maintains a sharp distinction
between wirkfic/1 (actual) and reef/ (rea l). In
Hegel's philosophical nomenclature an acorn (for
example) is real; but it is not actual until its poten-
tial is fully actuali.i:ed. that is, when it becomes a
full-grown oak. In other words, Hegel uses wirklic/1
to mean 'fully actuali,-ed'; he contrnsts ·actual',
not wi1h unreal. but with ·potential". Thus llcgel's
(in)famous statement means something like. ·What
is rational is that which fully actuali.tcs its potential;
and that which fully actualizes its potemiul is rutio-
nal. · This is far from being the sinister statement
that Popper makes it out 10 be and which he takes to
be evidence of Hegel 's ·totalitarian' tendcncics. 2
There is a larger hcrmcneutical lesson 10 be
learned from Popper's (and many others') misread-
ing of Hegel (and Plato, Rousseau, and other theo-
rists). First. it is important to place statements in
I.heir proper context conceptual-phi losophical or
otherwise. In this instance that means taking note of
how I legcl uses an apparently ordinary term in a
non-ordinary or technical way. Second, one should
bewi1rc of any interpreter who, like Popper, has a
preset thesis that he lhcn ·proves' by selectively
quoting und stitching togeLhcr statements taken out
of their textual and linguistic context - a penchant
Popper shares, ironically, with the Marxists he so
detests.
Psychoanalytlc Interpretation
In Tl,e /11terpreratio11 of Dreams, The Psycl,o-
parl,o/ogy of Eve,yday life, and other works.
Sigmund Freud famously argued that our aclions
arc oficn motivated by wishes, desires, or fears of
which we arc not consciously aware. Psycho-
una lytic interpretations, like Marxinn ones, full
under the heading of 'the hermeneutics of suspi-
cion'. My apparently accidental slips of the tongue
(or pen). for example, may reveal to a trained psy-
choanalyst aspects of my ' unconscious' that are not
evident to me. So loo with my dreams. Suppose T
dreum that I am al bat in a baseball game, bottom of
the ninth inning, w11h my team losing, all bases
loaded. one ball and two strikes. Herc comes the
pitch. As I begin to swing, my bat suddenly turns
rubbery and noppy, like one that a circus clown
might swing. The ball whizzes past my ineffectual
but and I strike out, losing the game for my team.
and bringing embarrassment and disgrace upon
myself. I low to interpret what I've dreamed'! Well,
if! were a baseball player who's afraid of cracking
under pressure, the meaning of my dream would be
pretty Lransparenl. But, alas, rm not a baseball
player. I'm merely a 50-somet.hing male academic.
An analyst might interpret tbis dream as a fear of
losing sexual potency, particularly when there arc
high expectations and lots of pressure 10 ·perform'.
In I.his case, lhc baseball game is not a game aad lhc
Ltmp bat is not a bat but a symbol standing for some-
thing else ... Well. you get the idea.J
One can supply psychoanalytic interpretations
not only of dreams bul of all sorts of Lex ts - including
those in political theory. This has been done in the
case of Machia,clli (Pitkin, 1984), Edmund Burke
(Kramnick, 1977), Martin Luther (Eri kson, 1958)
and Mahatma Gandhi {Eri kson. 1969), among
others. I want to look, more particularly, at Bruce
Mazlish's ( 1975) psychoanulytic interpretation of
themes in the work of John Stuart Mill. Mill is most
famous as the author of On liberty ( 1859) in which
he argues in favour of a very wide sphere of per-
sonal freedom to li ve one·s life as oae wishes. with-
out undue interference from others, no mailer how
well-meaning those others may be. Now as Mill
tells us in his Autobiography, his stern Scots father
James Mill did not permit his first -born son 10 live
and net as he wished. Young John was 1101 allowed
10 associate with other children, lo play games, or to
do anything except to read and be exactingly exum-
incd on books assigned by his father. The elder
Mill's strict educational regimen was constnicted
and carried out with the best of intentions. This
tightly regimented upbringing produced impressh c
results, but also took its toll. At age 20 John su f-
fered o mental breakdown from which he recovered
only slowly and in part through the rcuding of
romantic poetry (chicny Wordsworth and
Coleridge) of which his father heunily disapproved.
From that point on Mill ceased 10 be his fa1J1er's
intellectual clone; he became a tl1inkcr wit.h a mind
of his own. and an author more prolific and more
famous than his father.
Mazlish interprets On liberty less as a work of
liberal political theory than as u cri de coeur and a
declaration of pcrsonul independence that is more
autobiographical Lhun analytical (perhaps that's
what Niew,che meant when he soid that all theory
is autobiography). This is 1101what Mill consciously
intended; but he was led by unconscious desires lo
dech1rc himself independent of his father and, some
23 years after his fatJ1cr's death, to justify his own
independence and aut011omy (Ma.dish, 1975:
ch 15). As Freud theorized, soas subconsciously
wish 10 kill their fa thers anJ possess their mothers.
this he called the 'Oedipus complex'. Mill was
locked in an Oedipal struggle with his father. whom
he defeated in argumcm. What 1hen of his relations
with his mother'! I!er nume was Harriet. Signiticuntly,
as Ma1lish notes, Mill had an illicit affair with a
married woman und mother named {you guessed it)
 History and the Interpretation of Texts
Harriet, who afler her husband died, became Harriet
Taylor Mill. From a psychoanalytic perspective,
this is strong stuff~ and Mazlish makes the most of
it (1975: 283- 93).
Al1bough often suggesti ve and sometimes
insightful, psychoanalytic interpretations face stiff
cvidcnliury clrnllcngcs. They arc open to criticisms
that tJ1ey arc specu lative. impressionistic and non-
falsifiablc. and mistake coincidences for causes. To
the claim that Mill symbolically defeated his father
and married his mother. for example, a sceptic
might answer that ·Harriet' was a very common
woman'l> name in nineteenth-century Britain
(indeed Mill had a younger :.bter named Harriet}
and that Mill's affair with and marriage to Harriet
Taylor was a coincidence of no importance, sym-
bolic or otherwise. As for Mill's motivation in writ-
ing 011 Liberty. one can note that motivations are
typically multiple and varied and while Mazlish
may have correctly pinpointed one source, that is
largely beside the point if one wishes to understand
the aim and arg11me11t of 011 liherrv. Psycho-
anulytic interpretations direct our attention away
from the 1cx1 and toward iL-; author: which is fine, if
what we wish 10 unucrstllnd is the latter instead of
the former. But textual interpretation 1s not the
"ame thing as limning authorial motivation. Mill
begins 011 liberry by snying 1ha1 'The subject of
this assay is .. , the mature ond limits of the power
which can be legilimately exercised by society over
the individual.' He does not say 'by fathers over
sons' . To assert, a:. Mnzli!>h does, that the latter ii.
the 'rea l', ulbcit hidden, meaning is merely 10 :.pec-
ulate about Mill's motives, not 10 understand tJie
argument of 011 liberty. It is perhaps because of
these evident shortcomings thal psychoanolytic
interpretations have by and large fallen out of
favour among students ofpolilical theory. 4
Femin ist Interpretation
Feminism has had a profound and lasting impact on
the way we study and interpret works in the history
of political thought. A feminist perspective puts
issue:, concerning gentler ut the forefront, und from
that vantage point one views political theory anew
und makes interesting and Sl)ll'lelimcs appalling
Jiscoverics [sec further Chapter 21] Such a sensi-
bility injects a strong strain of :.ccpticism into U,c
study of 'clu<;sic' works. For, us Susan Okin observes,
'the great trndition of political philosophy consists.
genera lly speaking, of writings by men, for men,
and about men· ( 1979: 5). To study lhis tradition
from a feminist perspective is to be struck by the
extent to which the civic and legal status of women
was long com,idcrcJ lo be a subject unworthy of
theoretical treatment or perhaps merely beneath
23
the theorists' contempt, and therefore ouisidc the
purview of historians of political tJiought, most of
whom happen to be male. The neglect of women in
tJ1e history of Western (and indeed non-Western)
political thought is a silence that. to modem cars, is
deafening. Feminist rercadings and reappraisals of
the ·canon· of·classic' works ha,·c made, oncl con-
tinue to make. startling and often unsuspected con-
nections between phenomena as apparently
disparate as a thinker's view of the family and hi:,
(yes. his) view of liberty, authority, power, equal-
ity. obligation. and other concepts in political
theory.
A feminist or gender-centred approach to the
history of political thought began in the 1960s when
women were looking for u 'usable past', a history
that connected present struggles with previous one:.
largely neglected by historians, most of whom were
male. Feminist historians of poli11cal thought
sought heroines - and heroes who had champi-
oned the cause of women's rights and related
causes. One early anthology (Schneir. 1972) included
not only selections from Mary Wollstonecraft,
Emma Goldmun. and others, but also a section on
·Men as Feminists', which placed Friedrich Engels.
John Stuart Mill. and other men in the feminist pan-
theon. Tlus transgcndcr 'popular front' sought suppon
from all available quaners.
Several specialized srndics of particular thinkers
appeared during this brief period. Theorists who
might roughly be labelled as 'liberal' were !:>inglcd
out for !:>peciul allention and homage. Melissa
Butler(l991) found the 'liberal roots' of feminism
in Locke's 'attack on patriarchalism •. Jeremy
Bentham \.\•as honoured as 'the father of feminism'
(Bornlevi, 1984: ch. 2) and John Stuart Mill as its
'patron sai nl' (Willi lord. 1975). This popu lar front
was short-lived, however, for the father was
exposed a~ n patriarch and something of a misogy-
nist and the patron saint as a closet sinner with feet
of clay (Okin, 1979: ch. 9; Pateman, 1988; 1989).
The differences between outrighl misogynists such
us Aristotle and Rous$cau and their more enlight-
ened liberal brother:, were merely matters of
degree, not of kind. M11le theorists marginalii'e
women by placing them outside the public or civic
sphere in which men move and act politically
(Elshtain, 1981). In the name of protecting the
weuk, men have by and large lumped women with
children and idiots and have therefore accordcJ
them decidedly less Lhan the rights and obligation:.
of full-fledged citizens. And nowhere arc these
nefarious moves more evident than in the so-called
classics of political thought.
In this angrier and arguably more accurate
second phase, feminist scholars set out 10 expose
and criticiLe the misogyny lurking in the works of
Plato, Ari:.tullc, Machiavelli, llobbes. Locke.
 24 Handbook of Political Theory
Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, and Marx. amongst many
others. The public/private dichotomy and the con-
cept of consent in liberal theory arc a sham, the
social contract is a ·fraternal' construct, and the
modem welfare state is a covertly patriarchal insti-
tution (Patcman. 1989). Not only arc misogyny and
patriarchy present in the history of political thought.
they can be found in histories of politicul thought
written by males whose interpretations of (say)
Locke reproduce the lattcr'l> scxbm by failing to
detect or critici.te its presence ( 1989: ch. 5).
A third phase followed in which the ostensibly
civic virtues of men were turned mto vices - the
hunger for power, domination. or simply ~howing
off - that women supposedly lacked. Men arc dom-
ineering. women nurturing; men competitive,
women co-opcruuve; men think and judge in
abstnict and universal categories, women in con-
crete and purticular instances; and so on. A new
phrase - 'maternal thinking' - was coined to cover
this gently militant momism (Ruddick, 1989). On
this view, men are absent fathers and domineering
patriarchs: women arc caring and concerned mothers
speaking •in a different voice' (Gilligan, 1982).
This represents something of a return to the
'biology-is-destiny' esscntialism and •functional-
ism' criticized ,o vigorously by Okin and others. It
also accepts 1hc public/private distinction criticized
by Puteman and others, upending and rei fying thal
dichotomy so th11t the 'pri vate' realm of the family
is taken 10 be superior 10 the 'public' areu of poli-
tics, power, aggression, and war (El:-hrni n, 1987).
Thus was Aristotle turned on his head, anti Antigone
reread as a heroic defence of the family against an
aggressive and unti-fumilia l political realm
(Elshtnin, 1981 ; 1982).
The oew 'maternal thinking' and the new matcr-
nalists' approach 10 the history of political thought,
in particular did not want for critics. Against the
matemalists' va lon.i:ation or the private realm and
the celebration of mothering, Mary Dict.t. ( 1985) and
other feminist critics held out the prospect of an
active and engaged civic feminism. or 'ciuzenship
with a fcmi nist face' . Thi:. prospect is precluded, or
at least dimmed considerably, by inadequate intcr-
prcta1ions of Ari:-totlc and 01her seminal rtgures
from whom feminists might yet learn something or
value about politic:. nntl citi:,enship. A 'more gener-
ous reading' of Aristotle, Sophocles, and others
yields political insightS and civic lessons that a cartoon-
Ii ke inversion cannot hope 10 match ( 1985: 29). lf
feminists arc 10 learn and apply these lessons, they
must engage in more nuanced textual analysis and
historical interpretation. The Western political tradi-
tion is not reducible 10 an abauoir or a sinkhole of
misogyny and other vices; it con. despite its various
vices and when properly understood, be a wellspring
of politica l wistlom,
'Straussian' Interpretation
Straussians followers of the late Leo Strauss
( 1899 1973) claim that a canon of works by Plato
and a handful of other authors contains the Whole
Truth about politics. a truth which is eternal.
unchanging. and accessible only to the fortunate
few (sec further Chapter 3). Gaining access to this
truth requires a special way of reading and of inter-
preting what one read'>.
Slrouss was a Jewish refugee from NaLi Germany
who emigrated 10 the United States and subse-
quently attracted an attentive and loyal band of
students and followers. He brought with him the
memory of the short-lived Weimar Republic and
the rise to power of Hitler ttnd his Nal'i thugs. He
detested modern liberalism and distrusted liberal
democracy. in no small part because Hitler had
come to power in n liberal-dcmocrotic regime by
legal und democratic means. It was therefore unsur-
prising that Strauss saw the history of modem
Western liberal political thought as a story ofdegene-
ration and enfeeblement. I le and his followers con-
trasted the , igour of classical Greek and Roman
politica l thought with the resigned e1111ui of slack-
minded modem libero! thinkers. Modern liberalism
is a philoS1.1phy without foundatio ns. llaving
eschewed any grounding tn nature or nutunrl law,
modem liberalism. from !Iobbes to the present, is
reduced to a spineless relati,ism anti is therefore
without the nonnative foundations and philosophi-
cal resources 10 resist the winds of twentieth-
century fanaticism blowing from both right and left.
The ·crisis of the West', as diagnosed by Oswald
Spengler and Carl Schmitt, amongst others, has
tlcep philosophical roots. 'The crisis of our lime,'
Strauss unnounccd. •is a consequence of the crisis
of political philosophy' ( 1972: 41 ). l-lis ant.I his dis-
ciples· historical inquiries and textua l interpreta-
tions attempted to trace the origins and diagnose if
nut l:urc the multiple maludics of lib1.:rnlism. rela-
tivism, historicism ant.I scicntism that together con-
tribute 10 ·1hc crisis of our time' . The pre!.ent being
bankrupt, student-; of political philosophy must look
LO the past for guitlance; they mu!,t be historians but
not ' historicists'. llis1oricism is the relativist tloc-
trinc that dilTcrcnt ages have different, if not intlced
incommensurable, me111a/ites and outlooks; accord-
ingly. we mlldcrns can hurdly hope to understand,
much less leum from, Pluto and other earlier
thinkers. The history of pl)litical thought. on this
historicist view, becomes a vast burial ground
instead of whut it can and shou ld be a source
of genui ne knowledge and a reliable guide for the
perplexed (Strauss, 1959).
Knowledge and guidance of the son we require
arc not easy to come by, however. They require that
we rcud these 'old books' aright - that we tlcciphcr
 History and the Interpretation of Texts
Lhe real meaning of the messages encoded by
authors fearfu l of persecution and wishing to com-
munica te with cog11osce111i through the ages
(Strauss, 1952). For philosophy is dangerous: to
espouse its truths in public - in that liberal oxy-
moron known as the ' marketplace of ideas' - is to
nsk ridicule and incomprehension, or even persecu-
tion., by /Joi pol/oi. To communicate with the great
thinlkers of antiquity is to appreciate how fur we
have fallen. The rot began io the seventeenth century,
with the advent of modern liberalism, and thnt of
Hobbes and Locke c~peciully (Strauss, 1953). They
disavowet.l the ancient wisdom and the older idea
of natura l law. favouring instead a view o f
politics fou ndet.l on security and self-interest. The
ancienl ' philosophical' quest for the good Ii fe was
1ram,m111ed into the modern ·scientific' search for
safety, security, and the accommodation ofcompet-
ing interests.
The 'Sltaussian ' approach 10 the history of politi-
ciil thought requires the recovery of ancient, or at
any rate prcmodcm and prclibcral, knowledge of
'political things'. And this in tum requires that one
read not only the classics Pinto and Aristotle. in
particular but texts and authors who show us the
way buck into the labyrinth, e.g. Xenophon, Alfarubi.
Maimonides, und oLhers who arc rar,cly (1f ever)
included in the non-Straussian curriculum (Strauc;s
and Cropsey, 1972; Strauss, 1983). In this way one
b scnsiti1.ed to, and initiated into the secreL.., of.
political philosophy. Most philosophers have wriL-
ten two <loctrines - an 'cxoteric' one meant for con-
sumption by the uninitiated. and a deeper 'esoteric'
doctrine to be decoded and understood by those ini-
tiated into the mysteries. A 'Struussian' interpreta-
tion involves reading between Lhe Jines of the
wriHcn teXL, so as 10 reveal its ' real ', albeit
hidden, meaning which is communicated, us it were,
in u !ki nd of invisible ink. Strnussian i merpretution
owes much 10 the cabolisuc tradition inaugurated by
medieval rabbis and scholars, who read religious
-;crip1ure Ob texts that hud been encoded by uuthon,
fearful of persecution and wishing 10 be understood
only by readers who were clean, pure of heart, und
initiated into the inner cicle.
Struussian interprctntions have been criticized on
a number of grounc..ls. One is that they rely on the
sort of ~up posed ' insider's knowledge· that ii. a\ ai I-
able only Lo those who have been initiated into the
mysteries of SLraussiun interpretation (and who in
tum conveniently dhmis!. criticisms by non-Straussian
outsiders as being hopelc1,sly ignorant and unin-
fonncd) . Another is that they assume, withouL argu-
ment or evidence, thaL the ·real' text docs not
correspond, point for point. to the written and pub-
licly nvailablc 'cxotcric' text; the rcol or ·esoteric'
text remains hidden from public view, iL-; meaning
inaccessible to the uninitiated and unworthy.
25
Postmodernist Interpretation
The interpreti ve :.tandpoini or perspec ti ve o f
postmodernism arises out of 'the postmodern con-
dition• of fragmentation and the foi lure of system-
atic philosophies or 'grand mctanarratives' such as
Hcgclianism and Marxism that emerged from the
European Enlightenment (Lyotard, 1984).' Post-
modernism is not a single. unified perspective; nor.
still less, is it a sy!)tematic philosophy shared by all
who call Lhemselvcs postmodemists. This diffuse
group includes Mikhail Bakhtin. Paul de Mun,
Roland Banhes, Jean-Fram;ois Lyotard and Jacques
Derrida (literary critics and semioticians), Michel
Foucault (social historian and genealogist), Jacques
Lacan (psychoanalyst), Gaston Buchelur<l (historian
of science), Jean Buudrillard (cultural theorist and
critic), Richard Rorty (philosopher), and William E.
Connolly (political theorist), among many others.
All respond. in different ways, 10 Lhe postmodern
condition of fragmentati on. discontinuity, dis1Uu-
sionmcm. nnd contingency. The world is not lb
coherent, continuous und comprehensible as earlier
(and especially Enlightenment) thinkers believed
Even our most basic beliefs arc historica lly contin-
gent (Rorty, 1989) Pace Hegel und Marx. history
has no larger point or ·meaning• discernible via an
overarching philosophy of history or ·grand narra-
ti ve• (Lyotard. 1984) Nor is there progress 1n
human uffai rs. Wl1a1 is called progress is more o ficn
than not an advance in some dominant group'i,
power lo oppress another. Advances in technology -
in communications technology, say increase the
opportunity fo r surveillance and suppression
(Foucault), and mass media promote one-dimensional
views of truth. beauty, normality, und morality
tha t perpetuate and legitimize the modem
consumer socie ty and those who prolit from it
(Baudri llard).
The postmodern sensi bility is not a single. stable
thing. There arc. 10 si mplify somewhat, two muin
versions ofpostmodem1st 1nterprctution. One derives
largely from Nietzsche and Foucault; the othC'r,
from Derrida. I -;hall briefly consider the former
before describing the lauer.
A Foucaulc..lian approach to interpretation seeks
to expose and criticiLe the myriad ways in which
human beings aire ' nonnalized' or made into 'sub-
jects', i.e. willing. panicipants in their own bUbjugation
(Foucault, 1980). Thus a postmodernist perspective
on the interpretation of tex t!) typically focuses on
the ways in which earlier Lhinkers - Rousseau or
Bentham. for example contnbuted ideas to the
111c111a/i1e that p.aved the way for the creation and
legitimation or the mot.lern surveillance society.
And converse ly postmodernist intcl'J'rc1ers look for
earlier thinkers who challenged or questioned or
unc.lennincd these idea:.. This Foucauldian approach
 26 Handbook of Political Theory
is well represented by William Connolly's Poli1ica/
Theory and Moder11ily ( 1988). Connolly begins
with the genial suggestion that one ,·iew earlier
thinkers as collegial contemporaries residing down
the hall from one's office. To read their works is
like dropping by for a friendly chat ( 1988: vii).
(This is perhaps the amiably unbulloned postmodern-
egalitarian equivalent to Machiavelli 's ·entering
the ancient courts of ancient men', mi nus lhc
Florentine 's somewhat stringent dress code.) The
reader's questions arc posed. and criticisms made.
from the perspective of the presen1 - tba1 is, of
'moderni ty' and 1hc conslilution of the modem
·subject'.
Given this set of concerns Connolly proposes to
reread the history of political thoughl in a new and
presumably more fruitful way. That is, we can sec
who has contributed Lo or dissented from the project
of moJemity and the cons1ruc1ion of the modern
surveillance society. A postmodernis1 rereading
relocates and rea ligns curlier thinkers along alto-
gether different axes. A postmodernist reading of
the history of political thought 1101 only exposes
heretofore unsuspected villains, it also revea ls
heroes who have dared to resist the pressures and
processes of ' normalization'. Amongst the former
arc Hobbes and Rousseau. That the h1storieal
Rousseau was exceedingly critical of the historica l
Hobbes docs not mailer for a pm,tmodcmist rcaiJ-
ing. For we can now sec them as birds of a feather,
each havi ng extended ' the ga,e· ever more deeply
into the inner recesses of the humun psyche, thereby
aiding and 11bc1ting the subjugation of modem men
unc.l women. Amongst the latter, the Marquis de
Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche are particularly
prominent. ' We can. ' as Connolly contends, ' treat
Sade as a dissident thinker whose posi tive formula-
tions arc designed to crack the foundations upon
which the theories of Hobbes and Rousseau rest'
( 1988: 73). Wbether this design was consciously
fo nnulated and put into play by the anstocrutic
French pornographer is, at best, doub1ful ; but like
other postmodernist interpre1crs Connolly eschews
any concern with such historica l niceties as amhorial
intention.
Despite their emphasis on ' identity' and •differ-
ence', postmodernists arc not at all concerned wi th
whu1 John Dunn {1968) has termed the ' historical
identity· of works of political theory; nor are they
concerned with the differences thut curlier thinkers
saw amongst themse lves. Rousseau hardly saw
himself ai. Hobbes's sou lmatc quite the contrary,
on Rousseau's own telling - but this does not deter
postmoc.lcrni sts from lumping these theorists
togctbcr as fellow labourers on und conuibutors to
a common project. Whether, or to what extent. such
second-guessing is good history or bad remains a
matter of considerable controversy.
In Derrida's version of postmodernism, the aim
of interpretation is 10 expose .ind cri1ici1,e the arbi-
1rary or constructed character of claims to truth or
knowledge, particularly by exa mining various
binary oppositions or dichotomies such as knower/
known. 0bject/rcprcscotation, tex I/interpretation,
true/false - a process that Derrida ( 1976) ca lls
'deconstruction'. According 10 Derrida. all attempts
10 'represent' reality produce, not knowledge or
truth, but only different 'representations', none of
which can be proven 10 be better or truer thun ony
other. All social phenomena and forms of human
experience wars, revolutions. relations between
the sexes. and so on - exi-;t only through 1hcir rep-
resentations or ·1cxts'. And just as a literary text has
many pos-;iblc interprctations, so. says Derrida, do
these other texts admit of multiple and contradic-
tory ' readings' or interpretation!.. And all interpre-
talions of meaning arc in the final unalysis
'inde1ermina1e· and ·undecidable'. As Derrida
famously puts it, ' there is nothing outside the text'
and even within the 1ext its consti tuti ve concept.~or
'signifiers' have no stable meaning. Ambiguuies
within the text only increase with the passage of
time und multiple and varied readings, until the
text 's significrs float freely and playfully apart. so
that the reader - not the author - constructs what-
ever mearung the text may be said to have. Thus
'the death of the author' refers not 10 a physic11I fact
but to an artifact of postmodernist interpretation.
Various criticisms can be levelled against a post-
modernist perspective on interpretation. One is that
we do sometimes ,, ish, and legitimately so, to know
whether something Marx or Mill said was 1r11e. We
will not be helped by being told that true/false is a
specious ' binary'. More perniciously, with its empha-
sis on diverse. divergent and conflicting 'readi ngs'
or interpretations there arc allegedly no facts. only
interpretation 'all the way down' postmodemism
is constitu1ionally unable to dbtinguish truth from
falsehood and propaganda from fact Thus to take
a particularly dramatic example - the di fferenccs,
between those who recognize the reality of the
Holocau<,t as reported by 'lurvivoN and chronicled
by careful historians such as Raul I lilbcrg, and
those (mainly nco-Natis) who deny it ever hap-
pened, arc, by postmodernist lights, differences
or interpretation and not or truth or fa lsity. But, as
critics of postmodernism note, some ' rcprcsen-
u11ioni. • arc misreprese ntations or, more bluntly,
lies - that serve to conceal and/or legi1imate abuses
of some human beings by others. A perspective that
professes 10 be unable 10 tell fact from fi ction or
true statements from lies is surely unsatisfactory not
only from an epistemologica l but from a moral
poim of view. Finally, though not lensl, postmod-
ernists place themse lves in a logical bind. Derrida,
for one. has complained, oflen an<l loudly, that
 History and the Interpretation of Texts
some of his critics have mi.Head, misinterpreted,
and misrepresented his view:... Bui how can that be,
if meanings arc indeterminate and authorial inten-
tions arc irrelevant in interpreting texts, including
those wriucn by Derrida?
Cambridge 'New History'
The Cambridge ·new hi!!torians' have, since the
1960s, advanced u distinctive programme of hi:..tor-
ical research and textu11I interpretation. lls originl.
may be traced in part to R. G. Collingwood's ( I978
[ 1939)) approach 10 the history of philosophy
(Skinner. 200 I). That history, he said, was not
about an eternal but finite set of questions 10 which
different philosophers have propo!>ed different
answers. It was, rather. about historica lly variable
problems to which particular philosophers proposed
panicular answers:
If tl1en: wcr.: a pcnnancnt problem P, we could nsk
'what did Kant, or Lc1bn11., or Ocrkch:y. tl1ink about PT ...
Out what is thought to he a permanent problem P is
rc:ally a number of transitory problems p 1 P! p, ...
whose: individual pi:cuh11n11es arc blum:d by Ilic: histori-
cal myopia of the pe~on who lump~ them 1oge1her
under the one name P. ( 1978 [1939] : 69)
In contrast to those who claim that there ore ·peren-
nial' questions or problems in poliucal theory (c.g
Tinder, 1979), Collingwood argued tha t the quc:.-
tions themselves chunge in subtle but signi licant ways.
ff we are to undersrnnd lhe meaning of something
that a particu lar political theorist wrote, we must
first understand the problem he was addressing and
attempting 10 solve.
Thi:. Collingwoodian approach informs Peter
Laslctt 's lengthy and leurncd introduction to his
edition of John Locke's 111'0 Treatises o/Govcmmclll
( 1960 P6901), which restored Locke's political trea-
tise to il'- politicul and historical context in the
Exclusion Crisis of the early 1680s. Fur from having
his head in the clouds of philosophical abstraction.
Locke was deeply involved in the radical politics of
the Shafle:..bury circle. By means of some brilliunt
hisLOrica l detective work, Laslett showed that
Locke's Two Treati\cs had been written nearly a
decade earlier than anyone had heretofore ~upposcd
und that, far from offering a post hue justification of
the Glorious Revolution of 1688- 9, Locke was pre-
scribi ng and lcgitimi£ingjus1 that sort of revolution-
ary action before the foci. Laslctt':, scholurly
sleuthing puved the way for subsequent interpreta-
tions of Locke (Dunn. 1969: Tully. 1980; 1993:
Ashcraft. 1986) in particular. and of other works of
political theory more generally.
If Laslctt was circumspect about articulating and
defending his method of historica l investigation and
27
tcxlllal interpretation, other.. were not. J. G. A. P(X.'OCk
( 1962), John Dunn ( 1968: I 969; 1996). and most
especially Quentin Skinner ( I969; 2002; Tully,
1989) provided deflationary critiques of traditional
' tex tbook' approaches 10 the interpretation of works
of political theory. Most of what bas heretofore
passed as the history of political U1eory has been
insu fli ciently historical. i.e. concerned with the
context and situa tion in which Locke and others
found themselves and the problems with which they
dealt [sec also Chapter 30 I.
In hi s 11w Political Thought of Jo/,11 Locke
( 1969) Dunn derides psychoanalytic. Marxian. and
Straussian interpretations. His is, he says, a 'histor-
ical ... account of what Locke was talking 11bout,
not a doctrine written (perhaps unconsciously) by
him in u sort of invisible ink which becomes appar-
enl only when held up to the light (or heat) o f the
twentieth-eentury mind'. Dunn rejects the quixo1ie
aucmpts by ·a succession of determined philo-
sophers mounting their scholal:itic Ro!>inantes and
riding forth to do bat1lc with a set of disused wind-
mill!>, or solemnly and expertly nailing thin air' .
Dunn's inquiry aims instead.
10 n:~torc the windmill it) 1b origi nal condi1ion. m ~how
how, crcakingly bu1 unmi,tnknhly. the sails USl!d to
tum. Even at the level ofpreccrving anc1.ent monumenls
ii is perhaps a service to recondition the,e hnllo,wd tar-
gets. There seems hule purpose in recording hits on n
target thot has no e"<istence outside our own mind,.
( 1969: x)
The Cambridge historians view works of political
theory as forms of political action, grasping the
point or meaning of which requires that one recover
the intentions of the actor/author and the linguistic
resources and conventions availuble to him or her
(Skinner, 2002). A work of political theory is itself
a poliucal act or intervention consisting of a series
of interconnected actions with words ·speech
acts' in J. L. Austin's sense that arc intended to
produce certain effects in the reader: to warn, to
persuade, to crilicize, to frighten. to encourage,
to console. cte. Political thcori~ts hove not, by and
large, been armchair philosopher!! engaged in
nb:,tract thinking They huve been political actors
engaged in high-leve l propaganda and pcr~ua~ion
on behalf of this or that political cau!>e: the critique
(or defence) of democracy, the critique (01 defence)
of royal absoluti,;m; likewise for religious tolera-
tion. resh,tancc and regicide, the French (or other)
revolutions, capitali'lm, the emancipation of slaves
nnd/or women, and so on, through :i rather long list
of political causes and campaigns. Textual interpre-
tation is largely a muuer of restoring a text to the
historical context in which it was composed and the
question(s) 10 which it was offered us an answer.
 28 Handbook of Political Theory
CONCLUSION: PLURALISTIC AND
PROBLEM-DRIVEN INTERPRETATION
l come, finally and by way or conclusion, to my
own view or these matters. V cry bric lly: I do not
believe that ony single method will !)Uflice to
answer all the questions we wish lo ask of any work
of political theory. This nudges me in the direction
of eclectici5m or. better perhaps, of pluralism. A
plurality of approaches and methods i:. preferable to
a more confining mono-methodology that restricts
the range of questions we can ask and atldress. For
example, I agree with the Cambridge historians
about the importance, indeed the indispensability,
of the contexts intellectual, political and ltnguistic
in which political theorists write ond their texts
appear and Jo their work. But of course these con-
texts arc varied and multiple, encompassing not
only Lhc context tn which II text was writ1cn. but
also the successive contexts in which it was
received, rcnc.l, interpreted. cri ticiLed. reread, and
reinterpreted and perhaps put to uses very different
from those the author intended. As A Inn Ryan
ob~crvcs:
Once the cssoy or book in which we an: intcn:~tcd has
been put befol\: the J>Ublic. it tnkcs nn n li fe of i1s ow n.
Whotever thr.: copyright lows. an 11u1hur has only a
limited control over has own writing~. What h.: write~
will have implications which he did not sec implica-
tions in the narrow sense of more or le~s logical infor-
cnccs from what he soys to the consequences of what he
soys ... Works outlive their authors. and toke on laves
them writers might he perturbed to :.ee. ( 1984: 3 4)
Thus authorial intentions, although important, arc
not in every insrnnce all-imponant. For certain pur-
poses one may wish 10 discover, recover, and
rc!)latc an author'!) intentions so as 10 show what he
was Lrying 10 do in using a certain word or phrase,
or constructing a particular argument in a particular
way, or even composing an entire trco11sc. But
someti mes we arc less interested in Locke, say. thon
in what subsequent author-actors Thomas
Jefferson. for example. or some modem lcm111ists
mudc of Locke's text, and quite possibly in ways
that Locke would not or even could not have
intended. did not foresee. and almost certainly
would not have appro,cd of Because political
actions - including the act of writing - often pro-
duce unintended consequences. a focus on authorial
intention is not always appropriate or helpful.
A second feature ofmy view is that our interpre-
tive inquiries are problem-driven: that i'>, we ore
likely to be less imercstcd in authors, texts, and/or
contexts per se than in particular problems that nrisc
us we nuempt to understand them. As a rule we come
lo Locke or Rousseau not because we want to know
'a ll about' them or their texts or their Limes, but
because we ore puule<l about something. Was
Thomas More being serious or satirical in describ-
ing his fictional Utopia as 'the best :.late of the com-
monwealth'? Did Locke really meaa to defend the
property rights ofa rising bourgeoisie? How arc we
to understand the role of the 'civi l religion' in
Rousseau's Social Comract? What arc Lhe probable
sources of John Stuart Mill's feminist sympathies?
What was the nature of Marx's debt to I lcgcl und
how did it shape his view of history and human
progress'?
Such problem~ cun come from any source and be
of almost any sort. One might be interested in Mill
because one is sympathetic lo or highly critical of
the liberal trad11ion, or becau~e one believes that
libeny is under threat and that Mill might shed
some light on our modem prcd1camcnt. Or one
might wish to assess the (i n)adcquacy of the
Western and liberal conception of tolerance in light
of some contemporary question or issue and find it
both necessary and desirable to reread and reap-
praise Locke on toleration and Mill on liberty. In
short, the problem-dri\lcn 'context of' discovery' rs
wide open. even as the ·context of jusuficatioo' is
rather more restricted.' The problems can come
from anywhere and be addressed via a variety of
strategies; but the (in)adcquacy of the resulting
interpretive solutions must be assessed according to
more Mringent scholarly criteria.
The historical study of political theory is, in sum,
a problem-solving activity. It tokes other interpreta-
tions us altcmauve solution~ 10 some puule or
problem, and tJ1cn goes on to U!.SeS!) their adequncy
vis-ti-,•i.\ each other and in relation to one's own
proposed so lution. Interpretation is, so to speak. a
kind of triangulation between the text and two (or
more) interpretations of it. Hence we cannot but
rnkc others' interpretations into account, reapprais-
ing their adequacy and value. The activity o f reread-
ing, reintcrprclauon. and reappraisal is not incidental
to the practice of political theory but is instead an
indispensable indeed a defining feature of our
craft. Polil1col theory, perhaps more than uny 0U1cr
vocation. tokes 11s own past to be an essential part
of its present. It~ past includes not only a history or
theori;,ing, of great (and not-so-great) book:,, but u
history of commentary and interpretation. It i!)
through the loller that the former arc recon-.ic.lcrcd,
criticized, and re-evaluated - in short, reappraised,
The seminal works of political theory arc kept alive
and vivid - keep their 'classic' i.tatus, so to speak -
not by being worshipped at acac.lemic shrines but,
on the contrary, by being carefully reint~rpretctl and
critically reappraised from a variety of interpretive
standpoints.
 History and the Interpretation of Texts
NOTES
I For a cri1iquc nnd 11111:mptcd refu1ation of Lhis 1111cr-
pre1:11inn ofRousscau·s inh:ntions, porlit.-ularty as regards
his religion rM/e, ~cc Ball ( 1995: ch. 5).
2 For further cnticisms of Popper's (mi ~)intcrprc1111ion
of llcgel, sec Kaufmann ( 1972).
3 llappily, 1hi~ example is dmwn 1101 from pe13onal
experience hu1 frum Hall ( 1966). Sadly, he adds.
'Unpleasant dreams are more numerous than ph:asanl
om:s, and as one gets older the proportion of unplc11san1
dreams increases· ( 1966: 40).
-t This Judgement may prove prcm:11ure, as some pos1-
modemis1s practise n form of psychoon11Jy1ic 1111erpreta-
uon borrowed Ii-om Jacques Lacon. Sec e.g. Zcnlh ( 1994).
5 For a wider-ranging (and more sympathetic) d1scus-
s1on or postmodemism, see Jane Benneu III this \!Olumc
[Chapter 4]. Sec further Dew~ (2003).
6 I borrow this dis1tnc1ion from Reichenbach ( 1962:
6- 7).
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