Conceptual anachronism: the sin of intellectual historian

Abstract

Conceptual anachronisms has been always considered one of the worst sins by an intellectual historian. The will to discover how the meaning of the fundamental concepts of political and social discourse was modified would demand to contextualize them. Particularly relevant in this sense is Quentin Skinner and the so-called Cambridge School´s "discursive contextualist" proposal. However, it has recently come under severe criticism. Not only has the possibility of historically of recreating the various discursive contexts and getting rid of the “presentism” of our current perspectives and presuppositions been disputed. What is at stake is whether such a historicist vocation is really relevant for the correct understanding of the texts of the past. It would lead to ignore that transcendent dimension of discourses that allows them to become transposed from their original contexts of production and project forward into time. In the face of this criticisms, the present essay reaffirms the need to historically contextualize discourses as well as the perverse consequences, in methodological terms, implicit in the positions that deny it.