Logic or Rhetoric in the History of Political Thought? Comments on Mark Bevir

Abstract

I want to question Mark Bevir's approach to the history of political thought from a perspective, 'Weberian' view of knowledge. Bevir's criticism of others are often inaccurate, and I exemplify this by analysing his misreading of Quentin Skinner as a 'conventionalist'. When Bevir, furthermore, identifies the history of ideas with the study of meanings, this is a traditional view which can, with Skinner, opposed by a rhetorical perspective of 'linguistic action'. For 'objectivity' Bevir proposes an idea of coherence and consensus. This can be questioned from the Weberian viewpoint of the 'eternal youth of the historical disciplines'. There cannot be an substantive criteria of objectivity, only a plurality of competing perspectives. Bevir discusses conceptual change from the perspective of 'semantic holism'. However concepts cannot be reduced to the level of the (mere) meaning of terms or beliefs about them, but that they also include the naming and other aspects of the conceptualization. Bevir's variant of the history of ideas also seems to bracket the questions of persuasion and dissuasion as bases for changing one's beliefs. In my view the history of ideas should be analysed as a kind of 'theory politics'. Shifting one's beliefs can hardly be separated from others' beliefs or from the struggles on the topics on the agenda.