International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ
International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ
International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ
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When sociologically interested lawyers turn to the past of their discipline, they should do so with<br />
some caution, at least in order to avoid becoming (bad) amateur historians. As a minimum,<br />
familiarity with <strong>and</strong> internalization of methodological debates in the science of history is<br />
required. A leading contemporary author on the methods of writing intellectual history, Quentin<br />
Skinner, the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, has emphasized the<br />
importance of situating historical texts in their intellectual <strong>and</strong> linguistic context, in order to<br />
establish the purpose their authors had in mind when advancing their arguments. 3 In his work,<br />
Skinner has discussed several fundamental problems that arise from interpreting old texts.<br />
One such problem, for instance, is whether the historian of ideas should characterize certain<br />
beliefs or statements of historical agents as “false” or erroneous. 4 Skinner claims not <strong>and</strong> argues<br />
that the only st<strong>and</strong>ard such statements <strong>and</strong> beliefs should be measured with is some generally<br />
accepted st<strong>and</strong>ard of epistemic rationality. Historians would merely be reporting that it was not<br />
an appropriate belief for that particular agent to have espoused in that particular society at that<br />
particular time. 5 A related difficulty is the temptation to judge somebody in the past not on the<br />
basis of what he or she knew but what we subsequently know.<br />
Skinner argues that all serious utterances are characteristically intended as acts of<br />
communication: “But to argue is always to argue for or against a certain assumption or point of<br />
view or course of action. (…) To put the point in another way, there is a sense in which we need<br />
to underst<strong>and</strong> why a certain proposition has been put forward if we wish to underst<strong>and</strong> the<br />
proposition itself. We need to see it not simply as a proposition but as a move in an argument.<br />
3 Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume 1: Regarding Method, Cambridge University Press, 2002.<br />
4 For instance, Bulmerincq called Kant’s project of a Staatenstaat (today we would say: international organization) a<br />
‚mistake’ since international law had to be founded on the independence of States. Die Systematik, p. 144.<br />
5 Skinner, op. cit., p. 37-38.