Description: The first of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important philosophical and methodological statements written over the past four decades, each carefully revised for publication in this form. In a series of seminal essays Professor Skinner sets forth the intellectual principles that inform his work. Writing as a practising historian, he considers the theoretical difficulties inherent in the pursuit of knowledge and interpretation, and elucidates the methodology which finds its expression in his two successive volumes. All of Professor Skinner's work is characterised by philosophical power, limpid clarity, and elegance of exposition; these essays, many of which are now recognised classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. Professor Skinner has been awarded the Balzan Prize Life Time Achievement Award for Political Thought, History and Theory. Full details of this award can be found at http: //www.balzan.it/News_eng.aspx?ID=2474
Brief description: QUENTIN SKINNER is Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College.
Review Quotes: "Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge since 1997, ranks among the most original, prolific, and widely admired contemporary historians of early modern political thought...[His] methodological and substantive essays are essential reading for historians of political thought..." Renaissance Quarterly