Frazer, Michael L. Review of J. G. Pocock's POLITICAL THOUGHT AND HISTORY. NDPR (November 2009).

Pocock, J. G. A. Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. As J. G. A. Pocock is wholly aware, Thomas Kuhn's paradigm of "paradigms" is of only limited usefulness outside the natural sciences. It can, however, help give us some sense of Pocock's place in recent intellectual history. Just as political philosophers today cannot help but understand their work in terms of its relationship with that of John Rawls, historians of political thought cannot help but understand their work in terms of its relationship with the Cambridge School, of which Pocock was a founding member. Pocock was coauthor of a paradigm -- or, as he would now put it, a "political language", a new method for talking about political phenomena. The essays collected in the volume under review were selected by their author because they "indicate what I have taken (and still take) this method and its intimations to be" (vii). The method developed by Pocock and his Cambridge colleagues now wields hegemony within its self-proclaimed domain, which includes all scholars of political thought who consider themselves historians, and pointedly excludes those who consider themselves philosophers. The Cambridge School placed a barrier between political theorists and their history. It is incumbent upon those living comfortably on their respective sides of the fence, as well as those who attempt to breach it, to understand why it was erected in the first place. As such, Political Thought and History is an indispensible volume for all of those working within and across these enclosed fields today. The essays collected in this volume span most of Pocock's career. Those in Part I -- entitled "Political Thought as History" -- are, by and large, older, the last dating from 1987. Although Part II -- "History as Political Thought" -- contains two essays from the 1960s, the other three are much more recent, as is an "intermezzo" on Quentin Skinner. For those new to Pocock's take on the Cambridge method, these essays can serve as an accessible introduction. For those already familiar with Pocock's work, the convenience of having many (if not all) of his major methodological writings together is considerable. Political Thought and History is meant not only as an elucidation of the Cambridge method, but also as an application of it. At this late stage in his career, Pocock can look back at his place in the emergence of the Cambridge School in a distinctly Cantabrigian way. While others have already begun explaining the emergence of Cambridge contextualism as a product of its historical context, there is something strange and fascinating in watching a great scholar attempt this procedure on himself and his own ideas. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18005.