Professor Quentin Skinner

Emeritus Professor of Humanities

Profile
Research
Publications
Supervision
Public Engagement

Profile

I have broad interests in modern intellectual history, and have also published on a number of philosophical themes, including the nature of interpretation and historical explanation, and on several issues in contemporary political theory, including the concept of political liberty and the character of the State.

Q. Skinner CV 2023 [PDF 277KB]

Research

Research Interests:

I have written extensively on questions about historical method and historical explanation, and many of these essays have been collected in the volume edited by James Tully, Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (1988) and in my book Regarding Method (2001).

My historical research centres on early-modern Europe, and one of my principal interests lies in the Italian Renaissance. I have published books on Machiavelli, on early Renaissance political painting, on ideals of civic virtue, and I have edited Machiavelli’s The Prince. The other main focus of my research is on seventeenth century England. I have written on the relations between rhetoric and philosophy, including a book on Shakespeare’s use of classical rhetoric, and on debates about political liberty in the English revolution. I have also published three books on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. My best-known work, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, attempts to span the whole early-modern period.

• Philosophical interests: speech-act theory; the nature of interpretation and historical explanation

• Political-theoretical interests: the concept of representation; theories of political liberty; the character of the State.

• Historical interests. European intellectual history of the early-modern period. Special interests: classical rhetoric in the Renaissance; the political theories of Machiavelli, Hobbes and others.

Publications

Books

1. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume I: The Renaissance (link is external)xxiv + 305pp., Cambridge University Press, 1978. Translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Greek, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish.

2. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume II:The Age of Reformation (link is external) vi + 405pp., Cambridge University Press, 1978. Translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish.

3. (a) Machiavelli (link is external) vii + 102pp., Oxford University Press, 1981.

(b) Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (link is external)[A revised version of 3 (a)] x + 110pp., Oxford University Press, 2000.Translated into Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Malay, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish.

(c) Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction, second edition xvii+ 120pp., Oxford University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-0-19-883757-2.

4. Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (link is external)xvi + 477pp., Cambridge University Press, 1996. Translated into Chinese, Italian, Portuguese.

5. Liberty before Liberalism (link is external)xiv + 142pp., Cambridge University Press, 1998. Translated into Chinese, Farsi, French, Greek, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.

6. [with Yves-Charles Zarka], Hobbes: The Amsterdam Debate (link is external), ed. Hans Blom 87pp., George Olms, Hildesheim, 2001.

7. Visions of Politics: Volume I:Regarding Method (link is external) xvi + 209pp., Cambridge University Press, 2002. Translated into Chinese, Farsi, French, Italian, Korean; Polish, Portuguese and Spanish translations forthcoming

8.Visions of Politics: Volume II:Renaissance Virtues (link is external)xix + 461pp. (with 12 colour plates), Cambridge University Press, 2002. Translated into Italian; Chinese and French translations forthcoming

9. Visions of Politics: Volume III:Hobbes and Civil Science (link is external) xvii + 386pp., Cambridge University Press. Chinese and French translations forthcoming.

10. L’artiste en philosophie politique (link is external)187pp. (with 8 colour plates), Editions de Seuil, Paris [Raisons d’agir Éditions], 2003.

11. Hobbes and Republican Liberty (link is external)xxiii+245pp. (with 19 illustrations), Cambridge University Press, 2008. Translated into Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish. Japanese and Romanian translations forthcoming.

12. Die drei Körper des Staates (link is external)112pp., Wallstein, Göttingen, 2012.

13. La verité et l’historien (link is external),ed. Christopher Hamel 67pp., Editions EHESS, Paris, 2011.

14. Forensic Shakespeare (link is external), xii+356pp., Oxford University Press, 2014.

15. From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics, xiii+432pp., Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Books Edited

1. (Co-editor and contributor), Philosophy, Politics and Society (link is external): Fourth Series Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1972.

2. (Co-editor and contributor), Philosophy in History (link is external) Cambridge University Press, 1984. Translated into Spanish.

3. (Editor and contributor), The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (link is external)Cambridge University Press, 1985. Translated into Greek, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish.

4. (Co-editor and contributor), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (link is external) Cambridge University Press, 1988.

5. (Co-editor), Machiavelli, The Prince (link is external) (trans. Russell Price) Cambridge University Press, 1988.

6. (Co-editor and contributor), Machiavelli and Republicanism (link is external) Cambridge University Press, 1990. Translated into Chinese.

7. (Co-editor and contributor), Political Discourse in Early-modern Britain (link is external) Cambridge University Press, 1993 Translated into Chinese.

8. (Co-editor) Milton and Republicanism (link is external) Cambridge University Press, 1995.

9. (Co-editor and contributor), Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage (link is external) Volume I: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe (link is external)Cambridge University Press, 2002.

10. (Co-editor and contributor), Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage (link is external) Volume II: The Values of Republicanism in Early Modern Europe (link is external) Cambridge University Press, 2002.

11. (Co-editor and contributor), States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects (link is external)Cambridge University Press, 2003. Translated into Chinese.

12. (Co-editor), Thomas Hobbes: Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right (link is external) Edited by Alan Cromartie and Quentin Skinner (The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, Volume XI) The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2005.

13. (Co-editor and contributor) Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept (link is external) Cambridge University Press, 2010.

14. (Editor) Families and States in Western Europe (link is external) Cambridge University Press 2011

15. (Co-editor) Freedom and the Construction of Europe, Volume I: Religious and constitutional liberties Cambridge University Press, 2013.

16. (Co-editor) Freedom and the Construction of Europe Volume II: Free Persons and Free States, Cambridge University Press, 2013.

17. (Co-editor) Popular sovereignty in historical perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Editorial Positions

General Editor, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (link is external)

Member of Editorial Board of the Clarendon Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas Hobbes (link is external)

Member of the Editorial Board of

Supervision

I am no longer accepting PhD students.

Previous PhD students (degree awarded) at Queen Mary:

Elliott Karstadt, Private Interests and the Common Good in early-modern England.
Lorenzo Sabbadini, Property, Liberty and Self-Ownership in the English Revolution.
Joanne Paul, Counsel and Command in Anglophone Political Thought, 1485-1651.
Clare Whitehead, Power and Performance at the early Jacobean court.
Alexandra Chadwick, Mind, action and politics: Thinking through Hobbes
Signy Gutnick Allen, Crime and Punishment in the Work of Thomas Hobbes
Vanessa Lim, Shakespeare's Strategies of Deliberation
Katie Ebner-Landy, The Theophrastan Character-Sketch as moral and political philosophy.