Language, Politics & Paradigms: Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

Author(s): David Boucher

Source: Polity, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer, 1985), pp. 761-776
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3234573
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Language, Politics &

Paradigms: Pocock & the

Study of Political Thought*

David Boucher

La Trobe University

J. G. A. Pocock's methodological proposals for studying the history of

political thought have received considerable attention. In this article,

David Boucher examines Pocock's use of the idea of paradigms in build-

ing a theory of the linkages between language and political action. He

suggests that inner contradictions in Pocock's theory weaken its con-

clusiveness.

David Boucher teaches political theory at La Trobe University in

Bundoora, Melbourne, Australia.

J. G. A. Pocock is well known for his work in the history of political

thought. But it may not be as well understood that his ideas have impli-

cations for the study of politics in general. He believes that political ac-

tivity is essentially linguistic in character, conducted within the ambit of

languages and vocabularies, which severely limit the range of acts which

can be performed. Those who have influence over the nature and con-

tent of language are in a position to affect the perceptions of others who

have to conceptualize the world in terms of the concepts made available

to them. The ability to define and manipulate concepts is a form of po-

litical power. In any society, past or present, there are languages of poli-

tics and politics of language. Pocock draws together a wide variety of

intellectual sources-including the ideas of R. G. Collingwood, J. L.

Austin, T. S. Kuhn, and K. R. Popper-in formulating a theory of politi-

cal activity. He divides his time between developing the theory and il-

lustrating it in historical enquiries.

Criticism of Pocock has largely been directed at his substantive his-

* I am indebted to Dr. Joseph Femia for reading and commenting upon earlier

drafts of this essay.

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762 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

torical claims,1 but his theoretical position has invited little scrutiny.2 I

propose to outline below the salient features of Pocock's theory, and

then to suggest that it is fraught with contradictions that undermine its

prescriptions. In conclusion I will attempt to articulate some of the diffi-

culties that future methodological alternatives will have to overcome.

I. Pocock's Theory

Pocock's primary aim is to establish the autonomy of the historical mode

of enquiry and identify the questions appropriate to it. In this respect he

follows two British idealists whom he admires, namely, Collingwood and

Oakeshott.3 The political thinker, he says, has to be understood as a

social being whose thoughts are social actions or linguistic events. The

words and concepts he uses, being part of a shared inheritance, con-

strain his ability freely to conceptualize and theorize. It is the shared

inheritance-variously named traditions, universes of discourse, lan-

guages of legitimation, vocabularies and paradigms-which must pro-

vide the context in which individual thinkers perform their social actions.

Within this inheritance, Pocock contends, we can identify and demarcate

numerous languages in terms of which the political is articulated and

discussed. They comprise a number of concepts or vocabularies, some of

which are appropriated from specialized fields, such as law, and which

cohere to form a structure that acts as a conceptual lens through which

the world and its problems are perceived and explained. It is well known

that Pocock relies heavily upon Kuhn's idea of a paradigm in order to

1. See, for example, J. H. Hexter, review of the Machiavellian Moment, in

History and Theory 16 (1977): 306-337; Cesare Vasoli, "The Machiavellian Mo-

ment: A Grand Ideological Synthesis," Journal of Modern History 49 (1977):

661-670; J. Moore, "A Comment on Pocock," in Theories of Property: Aristotle

to the Present, ed. Anthony Parel and Thomas Flanagan (Waterloo, Ontario:

Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1979), pp. 167-177; John H. Geerken, "Pocock

and Machiavelli: Structuralist Explanation in History," Journal of the History of

Philosophy 17 (1979): 309-318; Andrew Lockyer, "Pocock's Harrington," Po-

litical Studies 28 (1980): 458-464; J. R. Goodale, "J. G. A. Pocock's Neo-

Harringtonians: A Reconsideration," History of Political Thought 1 (1980): 237-

259. Methodological issues do, of course, enter into some of the above discussions.

2. See Richard Buel, Jr., review of Politics, Language and Time, in History and

Theory 21 (1973): 251-264; Tarlton, "Historicity, Meaning and Revisionism,"

308-328; Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., "Reply to Pocock," Political Theory 3 (1975):

402-405. Also see the references to Goodin and Gunnell in note 1.

3. J. G. A. Pocock, "Working on Ideas in Time," in The Historian's Workshop,

ed. L. P. Curtis, Jr. (New York: Knopf, 1970), p. 159; J. G. A. Pocock, "Time

Institutions and Action; An Essay on Traditions and Their Understanding," in his

Politics, Language and Time (London: Methuen, 1972), passim.

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 David Boucher 763

theorize about language structures, but many of the ideas he encountered

in Kuhn were already familiar to him from his reading of Vico, Croce,

Meinecke, Collingwood, and Oakeshott. Before Pocock appropriates the

notion of a paradigm, he employs the idea of a Weltanschaung4 to sug-

gest that the languages of political discourse are not only a means of

expression, but that they also circumscribe what we are able to experi-

ence. Here he appears to be in agreement with Dilthey's conception of a

world view which takes the "form of a system in which questions about

the meaning and significance of the world are answered in terms of a

conception of the world." 5

Pocock, following many idealists, maintains that language is far from

being a "simple mirror of unmediated experience or aspiration." The

mere acceptance of the vocabulary through which data is conveyed is to

commit oneself to a world of interrelated ideas, or to the "paradigmatic

structure which defines and circumscribes them." Thus, "the paradigms

that order reality are part of the reality they order," and consequently

men can only think, do and say what they have the means to "verbalize."

An articulate society, then, creates linguistic and mental structures which

"authoritatively determine the patterns in which men think." 6 This ten-

dency toward idealism is, nevertheless, tempered by Pocock's insistence

that the language of the historian does not affect his ability to know the

past as it "really happened." 7 In other words, Pocock wants to postulate

an independent reality which the historian can come to know. The ideas

4. For examples of Pocock's familiarity with idealists and historicists see J. G. A.

Pocock, review of Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, in The Cambridge

Review, November 23, 1957, pp. 199-201; J. G. A. Pocock, "A Branch of the

Subject," The Cambridge Review, March 8, 1958, pp. 423-425; J. G. A. Pocock,

The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Bath: Cedric Chivers, 1974), pp.

246-248; Pocock, "The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Enquiry,"

in Philosophy Politics and Society, Second Series, eds. P. Laslett and W. C. Runci-

man (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), pp. 184-185.

5. W. Dilthey, Selected Writings, ed., trans., and intro. by H. P. Rickman (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 137.

6. Pocock, "The History of Political Thought," p. 199; Pocock, Politics Lan-

guage and Time, pp. 285 and 38; J. G. A. Pocock, "Authority and Property: The

Question of Liberal Origins," in After the Reformation: Essays in Honour of J. H.

Hexter, ed. Barbara C. Malament (Manchester: Manchester University Press,

1981), p. 338; J. G. A. Pocock, "British History: A Plea for a New Subject,"

Journal of Modern History 47 (1975): 612, respectively.

7. J. G. A. Pocock, "Early Modern Capitalism: The Augustan Perception,"

Feudalism, Capitalism and Beyond, ed. Eugene Kamenda and R. S. Neale (Can-

berra: Australian National University Press, 1975), p. 63. Cf. J. G. A. Pocock,

"Political Theory, History and Myth: A Salute to John Gunnell," Annals of

Scholarship 1 (1980): 10, 11, 18, and 23.

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 764 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

of others are the historical objects which the historian can know as they

really were. His vocabulary does not impinge upon, nor impair, the

meanings retrieved from the past. The implications of Pocock's attempt

to reconcile idealism and realism will be examined later.

Pocock maintains that we live in a "linguistically structured world," 8

and that the world will be different for us when "structured" in terms of

different conceptual vocabularies. The linguistic structures may be called

paradigms. But, what exactly does he mean by the term paradigm? No

simple definition can be given because he often uses the term inter-

changeably with many others. At the same time that Pocock talks of

paradigms, he also refers to discursive utterances, or linguistic action,

taking place in the context of a "universe of discourse"; "a diversity of

language styles"; a "common language system"; "speech structures"; a

"communications universe"; "conceptual universes"; a "tradition of dis-

course"; a "continuum of behaviour"; "vocabularies and idioms"; a

"mental culture"; and, "matrices of language and rhetoric." 9 Do all

these terms, then, convey the idea of a paradigm? Pocock would seem

to be saying that, yes, they do. Even combinations of them can cohere

and form a paradigm. And, paradigms can fuse together to make new

paradigms. But note that languages, vocabularies, and universes of dis-

course are not necessarily, but always potentially, paradigms. This is be-

cause a paradigm is not identified solely in terms of the language it

encompasses. For any of these identifiable units of language to be desig-

nated a paradigm certain features, functions, and properties have to be

present. In other words, a unit of language is a paradigm when it is

acting paradigmatically.10

A paradigm, for Pocock, has certain law-like features. It is transhis-

torical in that, regardless of context, it will exhibit the same features and

perform the same function. The details may differ but the properties re-

main the same."l A paradigm is a social institution that exerts authority

over those who fall within its ambit. It "invokes values, it suppresses the

inconvenient." The questions we ask and the range of answers we are

8. Pocock, "Authority and Property," p. 338.

9. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, pp. 10, 28, 29, and 284; J. G. A.

Pocock, "Verbalizing a Political Act: Toward a Politics of Speech," Political

Theory 1 (1973): 35, 38, and 41; J. G. A. Pocock, "Political Ideas as Historical

Events: Political Philosophers as Historical Actors," Political Theory and Political

Education, ed. Melvin Richter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); pp.

147 and 150; Pocock, "Authority and Property," p. 354, respectively.

10. See, for example, Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 28; J. G. A.

Pocock, "The Reconstruction of Discourse: Towards the Historiography of Po-

litical Thought," Modern Language Notes 96 (1981): 965.

11. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 34.

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 David Boucher 765

able to give are, thus, "authoritatively" and "paradigmatically deter-

mined." A paradigm is "historically conditioned, but tends to suppress

awareness of the conditions governing its existence." 12 However, this

resort to a version of the sociology of knowledge is modified when Po-

cock addresses himself to the nature and use of language. A paradigm

encompasses a continuum of levels of meaning and abstraction. Lan-

guage which is articulated at one level "can always be heard and re-

sponded to upon another." 13 Thus, an autllor can easily lose control of

the meanings conveyed in speech. The implications of meaning are so

"multiverse" that it is impossible for the author to maintain control over

them.

A speaker's language can always be interpreted differently by his audi-

ence, and it can be turned around to condemn him for meaning some-

thing that he did not intend to convey. This, then, is how a society, or

community, not only has a language of politics but also a politics of

language. People do things with words, and they also do things to other

people with words. The paradigmatic languages are potential instru-

ments of political power in that they can be used to inform or modify

the perceptions of those who fall within their authoritative perimeter.

But the idiom is "never free from ambiguity" and is therefore "rela-

tively uncontrollable." 14 Given that paradigms are multifaceted and op-

erate on numerous levels of abstraction, like Oakeshott's traditions, they

are tricky things to get to know, and "may even appear to be essentially

unintelligible." 15

Because language is a medium over which we have very little control,

the meanings of our statements can set in motion separate series of mul-

tiple implications which travel up and down the continuum of abstrac-

tion. An author may intend only a small aspect of meaning that a written

text may take on in the context of a paradigm. The historian cannot hope

to comprehend the whole series of implications at once; he must not only

identify the paradigmatic language being used, but also "choose the par-

ticular continuum of implication" about which to write.16 It follows that

12. Ibid., pp. 33-34; Pocock, "The Reconstruction of Discourse," p. 965. Cf.

Pocock, "British History," p. 612.

13. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 21.

14. Pocock, "Verbalizing a Political Act," pp. 33-35.

15. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London:

Methuen, 1974), p. 128.

16. J. G. A. Pocock, "Custom and Grace, Form and Matter: An Approach to

Machiavelli's Concept of Innovation," Machiavelli and the Nature of Political

Thought, ed. Martin Fleisher (London: Croom Helm, 1973), p. 155. The busi-

ness of compartmentalizing the vocabularies of books into different languages,

Pocock refers to as "decomposing the text," J. G. A. Pocock, "The Reconstruc-

tion of Discourse," p. 977.

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766 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

the historian is not compelled to elicit the meaning the author intended

to convey. For Pocock, the series of implications chosen by the historian

can be one of which an author was unaware. Writers cannot avoid per-

forming acts in excess of their intentions, and "the act performed is not

defined by the intention with which it was initiated." 17

Like the idealists, Pocock postulates that just as a fact is nothing with-

out the world of ideas in which it has a place and significance, man is

nothing without society, or without the paradigm which gives meaning to

his existence. The paradigm serves to define the individual, and acts as

a bolster to the personal ego. It supplies its adherents with a sense of

identity by providing justifications for acts performed.18 However, the

uncontrollable character of language, that Pocock posits, implies also that

subordinates can avoid total domination by using language to define

themselves in opposition, or at least in partial protest, against the defini-

tion imposed upon them by the authoritative and oppressive linguistic

institutions which perpetuate and sustain language structures within a

society.19 In this respect even slaves have some powers of resistance

against their masters.

Another feature of a paradigm is its propensity to migrate from one

context to another. Migration takes place in two ways. First, a paradigm

can go from one area of discourse to another. The itinerant paradigm,

taking its authoritative features with it, finds a home within, and helps to

reinforce, although not always necessarily, an existing paradigm operat-

ing within the field of politics. Secondly, a paradigm can migrate from

one country to another. The migratory properties of paradigms make

them similar to A. O. Lovejoy's unit-ideas.20 The first type of migration

may include paradigms existing in all forms of human activity. Special-

ized paradigmatic languages functioning in subpolitical areas such as

law, history, and religion may migrate to the sphere of politics where

their authority is invoked in order to add further weight to the existing

vocabularies. Thus, we have paradigms within paradigms, which are

comprised of elements drawn from a wide variety of specialized activi-

17. J. G. A. Pocock, "Intentions, Traditions and Methods: Some Sounds on a

Fog-Horn," Annals of Scholarship 1 (1980): 58-59. Cf. Pocock, Politics, Lan-

guage and Time, p. 34.

18. J. G. A. Pocock, "On the Non-Revolutionary Character of Paradigms: A

Self-Criticism and Afterpiece," in Politics Language and Time, pp. 273-291.

19. This aspect is developed by Pocock in "Verbalizing a Political Act"; Po-

cock, "The Reconstruction of Discourse"; and Pocock, "Political Ideas as His-

torical Events."

20. A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an

Idea (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 16, 49,

and 139. Cf. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 22.

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 David Boucher 767

ties. The concepts interact with one another and become embodied in

different structures, and in doing so they bring about modifications. Para-

digms, then, have a tendency to take on lives of their own, and an indi-

vidual author can be viewed as "an agent (even an incident)" in their

histories. This is because the "patterns of languages and thought out-live

the authors," and are "constantly being disengaged from the texts and

contexts in which they appear," only to "reappear" in other places and

at other times.21 Paradigms are more than the sum total of the authors

who employ them because the structures inherent in paradigms embody

properties that none of the individual texts possess.

When a paradigm ceases to function effectively, a conceptual revolu-

tion may take place, bringing forth new paradigms which "assert new

modes of identity in new ways." But such a revolution will not neces-

sarily entail a political revolution. The political arrangements of a so-

ciety can remain intact if the power structure is capable of "transform-

ing its idiom" and abandoning the redundant paradigm.22 Reasons for

conceptual change, or revolution, in Pocock's paradigms are similar to

those given by Collingwood and Kuhn. "Strain" and "tensions" 23 occur

in the paradigms because new vocabularies that are not entirely com-

patible with the old have appeared, or because events overtake the ability

of the available concepts to explain them.

In summary, a variety of vocabularies function within the everyday

life of a group, nation, or civilization. A number of them together will

compose a language in terms of which political argument takes place.

The language will take the form of an intellectual paradigm, or para-

digms, which define and prescribe the limits of what a person is able to

say, and the way in which he is able to say it. The paradigm will also

provide the individual with an identity, but this does not prevent him

from engaging in criticism. In addition, a paradigm tends to migrate

from one area of discourse to another, and from one geographical con-

text to another. When the paradigm ceases to function adequately a con-

ceptual revolution will probably occur.

II. The Best of all Theoretical Worlds?

I now turn to some of the more difficult problems resulting from Po-

cock's theory. A number of these arise from his recommendations for

identifying and tracing the history of paradigms. Although Pocock does

21. J. G. A. Pocock, "The Machiavellian Moment Revisited: A Study in His-

tory and Ideology," Journal of Modern History 53 (1981): 43-44.

22. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, pp. 20 and 277-278.

23. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, p. 333.

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 768 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

not accept Macpherson's political persuasion, he regards the latter's his-

torical method as "wholly legitimate." 24 This method involves the con-

struction of hypothetical models which are then used as instruments of

historical enquiry. Note also that Pocock relies heavily upon the ideas

of Karl Popper, a firm opponent of Kuhn, in order to highlight the pro-

cedure an historian must adopt in discovering the reality of the past.

Popper argues that all theoretical sciences, natural and social, proceed

by employing the same method. They frame hypotheses that they then

test by recourse to evidence. This is known as the hypothetico-deductive

model. The difference between the scientist and the historian is that the

former is predominantly interested in formulating and testing general

laws, whereas the latter takes these laws for granted and is "mainly in-

terested in finding and testing singular statements." 25 This is a position

with which Pocock finds himself in sympathy. Indeed, for Pocock, in his

theoretical moods, the paradigms have law-like qualities, and operate in

similar ways wherever and whenever they are found. In his historical

moods, he takes the general laws for granted, or assumes them, in fram-

ing his hypotheses about particular historical occurrences. A theory

about what happened is thus "prior to narrative," and "hypotheses not

yet falsified are the language of the historian." 26

It is Popper's view that a theory can never be verified because no

amount of evidence can exclude the possibility of further evidence being

discovered which will falsify it.27 But, Pocock differs from Popper in this

respect. He does not accept Popper's idea that history is always in-

terpreted from a present point of view. Popper insists that history can

never correspond to the actual sequence of events.28 Pocock sometimes

speaks of "verifying" historical hypotheses, but he never tells us how we

are able to do it.29 What status, then, does this endow upon Pocock's

own paradigm of historical enquiry? Is it the paradigm to end all para-

24. Ibid., p. 37.

25. Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1974), p. 143.

26. Pocock, "Working on Ideas in Time," p. 161. Here Pocock acknowledges

that Popper's teaching had a relevance for his own intellectual development.

27. Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific

Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 54.

28. Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1977), vol. 2, p. 266.

29. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 33; J. G. A. Pocock, "The Myth

of John Locke and the Obsession with Liberalism," John Locke: William Andrew

Clarke Memorial Library (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980),

p. 10; J. G. A. Pocock, review of J. G. Gunnell Political Theory: Tradition and

Interpretation, in Political Theory 8 (1980): 567.

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 David Boucher 769

digms? The implications are that it is, because it can do something that

no other paradigm can do. It can facilitate knowledge of a reality of

which it is not itself a part.

Pocock rejects Croce's view that all history is contemporary history,

and he also denies Oakeshott's contention that the historian constructs

the past. He would seem to subscribe to Ranke's idea that the historian

can know the past as it actually happened. But this leads to a significant

contradiction in Pocock's thought that undermines his theoretical posi-

tion. He tells us that the past comprises a number of paradigmatic lan-

guages which order reality and which constitute part of the reality they

order. In other words, there is no independent reality separate from the

language in terms of which we experience the world. He also wants us

to believe that the paradigms of the past constitute a reality independent

of his theory, and which we can come to know, by employing the appro-

priate conceptual apparatus, as it really was. In essence, he is reopening

the dichotomy between the mind and its objects which the theory of

paradigms appeared to be attempting to close.

The assertion of an independent past reality which acts as a measure

of the historian's success in approximating the actual sequence of events

asks us to accept a correspondence theory of truth. This means that the

statements we make about the past should be taken to describe, repre-

sent, or correspond to something which has an independent existence.

This contradicts the notion of truth we are initially asked to accept in

viewing the world in terms of discrete and self-contained paradigms.

Here truth is intratheoretical. The elements of a paradigm interrelate

and cohere. Truth belongs to the constellation of ideas in which a state-

ment is implicated. Truth is a property of a paradigm, and not some-

thing that stands outside of it. Experience is thought; we cannot do what

we have no means of saying we have done; there are no isolated facts

which correspond to an independent reality; or to put it in Bradley's

words, "in every case that which is called a fact is in reality a theory." 30

In all this Pocock agrees with the British idealists. Thus, for theoretical

purposes we are asked to accept the coherence theory of truth, and for

the practice of history we are asked to accept the correspondence theory

of truth, which is associated with the realist claim that the past is the in-

30. F. H. Bradley, Collected Essays (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries,

1968), p. 17. Cf. Kuhn, 'There is, I think, no theory-independent way to con-

struct phrases like 'really there'; the notion of a match between the ontology of a

theory and its 'real' counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle,"

T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago and London: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 206.

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770 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

dependent reality that history books mirror, or to which they attempt

to correspond. Let me reinforce this point. Pocock is, in essence, em-

bracing both historical relativism and historical objectivism. In describ-

ing the content of the past his relativism leads him to postulate that truth

and rationality are paradigm determined. Thus the view of one paradigm

from the constraints of another will always be in terms of distinct histori-

cally conditioned perspectives. But in advancing his own historical para-

digm Pocock does not want to include himself in this perspectivism.

What he is effectively saying is that he has managed to transcend the

problem of relativism and can give us objective accounts of the past which

in turn can be independently verified.

Pocock, then, must confront a dilemma as do many other social the-

orists who argue that all thought is historically conditioned at the same

time that they assert the validity of their own theories. Marx, it is well

known, attempted to exclude himself from the theory of false conscious-

ness by claiming that the premises of his philosophy, grounded as they

were in the material conditions of life, enabled him to reach the under-

lying reality of human existence. Karl Mannheim attempts to escape the

consequences of relativism by suggesting that intellectuals in some way

manage to transcend the conditioning processes of society. Hence Mann-

heim's theory of the sociology of knowledge excludes the theory itself

from its conclusions.31 Pocock differs from these theorists in that he does

not formulate an exclusion clause; he merely assumes that his own

theory escapes the relativism propounded in the idea of historically con-

ditioned paradigms. Instead of examining how his own view of historical

methods might determine what he sees in the past, Pocock defines what

history is, and then presents us with exemplifications of his definition.

In doing so, he constructs a hypothetical model, analyses its compo-

nents, and proceeds to go in search of it in the vast amount of evidence

he encounters, abstracting only those elements which are relevant to the

model. There is something distinctly odd about constructing a model

from historical evidence and then verifying it with the very same evi-

dence. Indeed, Popper's point that "it is easy to obtain confirmations, or

verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations," 32

should serve as a salutory reminder to Pocock that models often turn out to

be self-fulfilling prophesies, and a means by which other, perhaps more

31. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of

Knowledge, trans. Edward Shils (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), pp.

11 and 138. Kuhn, of course, also finds himself in a similar dilemma.

32. K. R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowl-

edge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 36.

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 David Boucher 771

significant, aspects of thought during a period become totally eclipsed

by the paradigm the historian is seeking to confirm.

Pocock's tendency to draw upon conflicting theoretical traditions with-

out being able to reconcile the differences generates a second set of dif-

ficulties. These arise from his implicit use of two conceptions of human

nature. His historical method is said to be "truly autonomous," 33 but in

his anxiety to establish its autonomy he follows the road of many histori-

cists in reducing history to something else. In harmony with the ideas of

Kuhn, Pocock's concept of a paradigm has a strong sociological empha-

sis. As we have seen, he believes human beings to be creatures of habit

who are compelled to use the vocabulary available to them in coming to

terms with themselves and with the world. The paradigmatic language

imposes an identity upon the speaker and orders the world about which

we speak. Indeed, Pocock frequently talks as if the paradigms are social

conditioning agents that determine our mode of existence. We are "en-

closed" by languages that "authoritatively determine" what we think.

This view of the sociologically determining paradigm implies a concep-

tion of the human condition similar to what Martin Hollis calls "Plastic

Man." 34 Plastic Man comes in two basic molds. First, he is conditioned,

or shaped, by an innate and enduring human nature. Secondly, Plastic

Man can also be conceived as molded by social conditions. Pocock sub-

scribes to the latter view. He wants to make the general, or law-like,

features of a paradigm the grounds for explaining particular instances of

socialization. The paradigm in this strong historicist sense can be likened

to Popper's closed society in which social, psychological, and institu-

tional factors converge, or conspire, to encourage conformity, and dis-

courage criticism and conceptual change.

At the same time, Pocock also wants to employ a conception of man

that comes close to what Hollis terms "Autonomous Man," 35 who is the

self-made individual in control of his own destiny. This conception of

human nature enables Pocock to explain large changes in the paradig-

33. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, p. 11.

34. Martin Hollis, Models of Man: Philosophical Thoughts on Social Action

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 5. Hollis suggests that the

idea of Plastic Man postulates a passive conception of human nature. Human

actions are understood naturalistically and deterministically; "Plastic Man is a

natural creature in a rational world of cause and effect" (p. 11). While Pocock's

flirtations with idealism would exclude him for holding such a strong thesis, his

emphasis upon the conditioning and determining powers of a paradigm brings him

perilously close to presenting, at least in some moods, a thorough-going sociology

of knowledge.

35. Ibid., p. 5.

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 772 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

matic structures which would remain stable on the plastic view of man.

Pocock tells us, for example, that events in Florence prompted Machia-

velli to theorize about the problems of new princes and innovators, but

since he could never aspire to become a senator or a courtier, his "mind

was liberated to explore the absorbing topic of the new prince's relations

with his environment." Machiavelli was inspired by the problems of his

native Florence, but did not address himself to their resolution.36 In-

stead, he perpetrated an intellectual revolution in theorizing about politi-

cal innovation.

There can be no doubt that in formulating what history is, Pocock

wants the best of all theoretical worlds, that is, he wants to embrace

opposing theories, ignoring their opposition and contradictory premises.

For some purposes he wants a plastic man living in a closed society; for

others, an autonomous hero living among plastic men in a closed but

potentially open society. In order to explain the perpetuation of a para-

digm Pocock uses the language of determinism and the idea of a closed

society, but in order to explain the extension or abandonment of a para-

digm, he uses the language of choice and the idea of an open society.

Rarely in his historical work do we see writers breaking the conceptual

chains that bind them. He tells us, for example, that Harrington's Oce-

ana constituted the means by which the dominant political paradigms in

England could be wholly or partially rejected. Indeed, it is said to have

been "one of those works that transcend their immediate context in that

it signified a paradigmatic breakthrough." 37 But the more usual picture

we get is one of men laboring under severe linguistic handicaps. For

instance, Pocock argues that the epistemology of the middle ages defined

the means by which men could render secular events intelligible. But "so

limited were these means that it was possible to feel that the temporal

flux evaded men's conceptual control." 38 The term paradigm conveys

too static an impression for encompassing Pocock's relatively autono-

mous man, who is himself the shaper of circumstances. To explain how

such men as Machiavelli and Harrington are able to focus the conceptual

lens differently from their contemporaries, Pocock will take us no fur-

ther than Collingwood's idea that stresses and strains perpetually under-

mine constellations of absolute presuppositions39

36. Pocock, "Custom and Grace," p. 167.

37. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought

and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1975), p. 384.

38. Ibid., p. 114.

39. R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1969), p. 48.

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 David Boucher 773

The alleged uncontrollability of language leads to other problems that

detract from Pocock's theoretical position on paradigms. I take it that

the historian cannot use a paradigm as a device for understanding the past

unless its structure is relatively stable, its limits readily identifiable. If

there are no limits then there is no paradigm; a paradigm must have its

own differentia. But, if people constantly impart their own meanings to

concepts, often without even knowing that they have done so, and pre-

cipitate numerous chains of implication which they cannot control, then

one wonders what exactly it can mean to say that the paradigm pre-

scribes and determines. Indeed, Pocock intimates that we rarely under-

stand the meaning that an author intended to convey. To put it in

Ricoeur's terms, the text immediately becomes distanced from its author,

and thus, for Pocock, "it is probable rather than merely possible, that

the meaning [an author] intended his statement to bear was not identical

with the meaning assigned to it by any one of a chain of transmitters." 40

The implicit import of Pocock's exposition of the dynamic and frenzied

character of language is that what a person wants to say by uttering cer-

tain sentences can never be fixed or adequately identified. If a person is

not able to predict what he means when he speaks, then the chances of

someone else, including the historian, understanding him correctly are

rather remote. In this respect one wonders how the historian's imputa-

tion of meaning can be anything more than a rough and ready estimate

which will inevitably include his own nuances in attempting to convey

what he thinks other people mean. Moreover, our own understanding of

what the historian means will, by implication, be different from that

intended by him.

Pocock's languages never seem to be at rest long enough to generate

rules for their use. If each word can potentially take on new connota-

tions, how can the interpreter recognize when a writer is using a word

differently from his contemporaries, or from previous usage? There could

never be a correct or standard meaning against which to measure each

potential and actual change. In fact, I find nothing that would qualify

as criteria for judging when a writer employed one of Pocock's languages

incorrectly. It is impossible to differentiate between incorrect usage and

a modification of the language, between insincere use of a paradigm and

genuine commitment to it.

Because paradigms are so complex and multifaceted, we may find that

within a single text, or collection of texts by the same author, the vocab-

ulary of several paradigms is invoked. The historian who wants to

explore a certain aspect of a paradigm will have to take care that he ab-

40. Pocock, "The Reconstruction of Discourse," p. 963. Cf. p. 972.

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774 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

stracts only those elements from a text that are relevant to the paradig-

matic vocabulary under consideration. The texts of a writer are artifi-

cially compartmentalized and presented as manifestations of various

paradigmatic languages. What we need to know, and what Pocock never

attempts to analyse, is when and how much of a writer's vocabulary must

fall within the range of the paradigm before we can attribute to his work

the authoritative features of a paradigmatic language at work. In other

words, what criteria can we use to designate a thinker as working within

the limits of a certain paradigm? In addition, how much authority must

a language exert over individuals before we can say that it is acting

paradigmatically?

III. Conclusion

It would seem to follow from the above that the historian of political

thought cannot profit from Pocock's prescriptions because his theory is

unable to maintain what it asserts. It appears to be unsound for study-

ing both past and contemporary political discourse. He becomes trapped

in the mesh of his own concepts and perseveres with the idea of a para-

digm even when his own thoughts on the nature and use of language in-

dicate that on many occasions languages appear to be amorphous rather

than paradigmatic.

My purpose here has been to take an influential theory and expose the

contradictions it generates. Beyond that I want to suggest that two funda-

mental difficulties highlighted by Pocock's theory need to be addressed

and overcome by future attempts to formulate methodologies for study-

ing political thought.

First, the formulation of a methodology cannot be embarked upon

without first considering the postulates of the modally distinct form of

enquiry within which it is to be employed. Pocock wants to formulate a

methodology compatible with, and intended to facilitate, historical en-

quiry. But instead of asking what can be attained within this mode, he

assumes that what history seeks to attain is in fact attainable. He as-

sumes that the goal is the understanding of the past as it really was, and

that the achievement of this goal is at once desirable and possible. The

methodology he proposes, unfortunately, does not confirm the possibility

of success.

We cannot presuppose that we can know the past as it actually was.

We have to examine this presupposition with reference to our human

capacities. We have, then, to face the ontological question posed by such

influential modern theorists as Michael Oakeshott, Hans-Georg Gadamer,

and Paul Ricoeur, namely: what is it that happens every time we attempt

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 David Boucher 775

genuinely to understand the evidence we have of past meanings. All three

theorists conclude, by means of very different arguments, that the condi-

tions of our existence are such that we can never understand the past as

it actually was.41 But this question Pocock never confronts. He assumes

that the business of formulating methods must be to penetrate better the

reality of the past. However, his failure to formulate a method that will

do so indicates that we must first examine the ontological conditions of

understanding.

Establishing what it is we do and what it is we achieve in making in-

ferences from evidence is a prerequisite to formulating methodologies.

Only when we know what is possible to achieve can we refine procedures

for attaining it. In order to do this we must begin by examining the situa-

tion in which the historian, or social theorist, finds himself. The his-

torian, for example, will see relics from the past. These serve as evidence

of acts which once happened, but which are no longer happening. In

placing together the evidence to compose the features of a meaning once

meant, or of an event that once took place, we have to establish what

it is that we achieve. Are we constructing pasts in lieu of those that did

not survive, or can we resurrect the past in the present by means of his-

torical inference? The issue boils down to this: is it the past itself which

must act as the criterion of successful history, or is it faithfulness to the

procedures and manner of enquiry currently acceptable within a disci-

pline which determines the nature and composition of the past? What-

ever one says in answer to this question it must be conceded that our

commitments to present standards and procedures of scholarship and

historical enquiry betray the time in which an interpretation is written

just as much as the language and argument of a text in political thought

reflects the time of its composition. An acknowledgement of the boun-

daries of what is attainable in historical inference would serve to restrain

the formulation of unattainable ideals.

Another lesson emerging from the foregoing consideration of Pocock

should be noted. Any methodology, to be viable, must be able to with-

stand the rigors of its own logic. Its assumptions and conclusions must

be applicable to itself. If this is not to be, compelling reasons should be

given for the formulation of an exclusion clause. In the past, most at-

tempted exclusions have not been particularly successful. Without some

41. See the arguments presented in M. Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933); H-G. Gadamer, Truth and

Method (London: Ward and Sheed, 1975); P. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the

Human Sciences, ed. and trans. by J. B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1981).

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 776 Pocock & the Study of Political Thought

consideration of the powers of their own concepts to generate particular

perspectives on the past, methodologies must be viewed as incomplete.

If, as Pocock concluded, language limits others in respect of the range of

questions and answers that can arise, and if a society's vocabulary cir-

cumscribes the reality that society is able to experience, then the con-

straints upon the historian must also be made explicit in order to deter-

mine how his own language affects the composition of what he sees.

I suggest that there are three stages to methodological theorizing, in-

terconnected, yet, distinct: First, the identification and establishment of

what it is possible to do; second, the articulation and formulation of the

methodology itself; third, the turning of the methodology back upon it-

self to see if it can withstand its own conclusions. Pocock undertakes

only the second stage. He assumes an answer to the first, presents a

methodology which contradicts it in the second, and presupposes that

his ideas escape their own consequences in the third. In order to escape

methodological irrelevance all three stages have to be considered, and

the theorist must be self-conscious of them throughout. By diving in at

the second stage good results may accrue fortuitously, but, as we saw in

Pocock's case, the resulting contradictions may be so great as to under-

mine the conclusions. In proceeding through all three stages there is no

guarantee of success, but there is at least a greater possibility of a

logically coherent methodological theory.

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