Quentin Skinner

British intellectual historian who co-founded the Cambridge School of the history of political thought — arguing that political texts must be understood in their historical context of linguistic conventions and political argument.

The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: a contextual history of political thought from the Renaissance to the Reformation. Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas: texts are speech acts — understanding them requires reconstructing the context of linguistic conventions in which they were written (vs. reading them for timeless truths). Neo-Roman theory of freedom: recovered the non-domination conception of liberty from the Roman and Renaissance tradition.