Skinner's maxim

English Etymology en British intellectual historian Quentin Skinner =, who formulated the principle in 1969. Proper noun en history The principle that any historical account of what someone meant by a certain action or statement must in some measure conform to that person's own understanding of what they were saying or doing. en 1984 w:Richard Rorty The historiography of philosophy: four genres Richard Rorty; w:J. B. Schneewind; w:Quentin Skinner Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy 0521273307 54 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Jmi1M8BFyFMC&pg=PA54 When we respect Skinner’s maxim we shall give an account of the dead thinker ‘in his own terms’, ignoring the fact that we should think ill of anyone who still used those terms today. When we ignore Skinner’s maxim, we give an account ‘in our own terms’, ignoring the fact that the dead thinker, in his linguistic habits as he lived, would have repudiated these terms as foregn to his interests and intentions. en 1988 Stephen Makin How can we find out what Ancient Philosophers said? Phronesis (journal) Phronesis 33 2 4182300 122 Historical reconstruction obeys Skinner’s Maxim: no agent can eventually be said to have said or meant something which he could never be brought to accept as a correct description of what he said or meant. en 2020 Patrick Fessenbecker Reading Ideas in Victorian Literature: Literary Content as Artistic Experience 9781474460606 122 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=875IEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA122 Historical reconstructions will follow ‘Skinner’s maxim’, and will constrain themselves to offering only descriptions that the writer in question could in principle endorse.