The Problem of Contextualism in Intellectual History

Intellectual history is distinguished perhaps most of all by a methodological imperative to study ideas in context. This talk explores the meaning of that imperative by reconstructing some of its most recognizable forms, especially that of the so-called Cambridge School.  This  talk argues that any argument for contextualism cannot be “exhaustive,” i.e., it cannot deploy the notion of understanding a given idea “in its historical context” as if this deployment were presumed to exhaust the meaning of the idea.  The core argument of the essay is that (notwithstanding the famous imperatives governing Quentin Skinner’s injunction to historicism) any idea must exceed a given historical horizon of articulation, or it cannot count as an idea.  Gestures of contextualism are therefore necessary but necessarily incomplete.  This essay argues for this claim with recourse to theoretical insights derived primarily from critical theory, whose theorists saw the injunction to exhaustive contextualism as a form of intellectual self-erasure.