On the Person of the State: a Genealogy
Quentin Skinner, Professor of the Humanities, Queen Mary University of London
Currently, when political theorists talk about the state, they tend to use the term simply as a means of referring to the powers and institutions of government. As my genealogy discloses, this understanding stands in marked contrast to the way in which the state was conceptualised when it first became the central noun of Anglophone political discourse in the era of the Enlightenment. My paper traces the emergence of this very different way of thinking about public power, according to which states must be categorically distinguished from governments. I end by asking whether anything of value may have been lost as a result of the abandonment of the view that states are the names of distinct legal persons with characteristic obligations and purposes.
Skinner has broad interests in modern intellectual history. He's published works on a number of philosophical themes, including the nature of interpretation and historical explanation, as well as everal issues in contemporary political theory, including the concept of political liberty and the character of the State.
Skinner's research centers on early-modern Europe, with a principal interest in the Italian Renaissance. He has published books on Machiavelli, early Renaissance political painting, and ideals of civic virtue, in addition to editing Machiavelli's The Prince. The other focus of his research is seventeenth century England. He has published three books on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, and he just completed a book on Shakespeare and forensic eloquence. He has also written extensively on the relations between rhetoric and philosophy. His best-known work, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, attempts to span the whole early-modern period.
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Philosophical interests: speech-act theory; the nature of interpretation and historical explanation.
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Political-theoretical interests: the concept of representation; theories of political liberty; the character of the State.
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Historical interests. European intellectual history of the early-modern period. Special interests: classical rhetoric in the Renaissance; the political theories of Machiavelli, Hobbes and others.