¹ I would like the reader to know at the outset that Skinner was my supervisor when I was a graduate student and he continues to be a friend.

² His early work, ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’ (1965)Google Scholar, contains all these elements. (See pp. 507–9 for a list of Skinner's principal publications.)

³ ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’.

⁴ For his adaptation of speech–act theory, see the second through to the ninth article under Interpretation and Explanation in the bibliography.

⁵ For Habermas, Jurgen, see ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’ in Communication and the Evolution of Society, tr. McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).Google Scholar

⁶ ‘“Social Meaning” and the Explanation of Social Action’, p. 146.Google Scholar

⁷ ‘Social Meaning’, pp. 144–5, 154–5Google Scholar; The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, I, p. xii.Google Scholar

⁸ See Machiavelli, pp. 31–48Google Scholar; Foundations, I, pp. 180–6.Google Scholar

⁹ See especially, ‘Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts’. (Let ‘text’ stand for any linguistic unit of analysis.)

¹⁰ ‘Social Meaning’, p. 154.Google Scholar

¹¹ ‘Social Meaning’, p. 145.Google Scholar

¹² Foundations, I, p. xiii.Google Scholar

¹³ ‘Social Meaning’, p. 142.Google Scholar

¹⁴ ‘Social Meaning’, p. 146.Google Scholar

¹⁵ ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action’, p. 287.Google Scholar

¹⁶ ‘Meaning and Understanding’; pp. 33–5Google Scholar; ‘Social Meaning’, p. 155Google Scholar; ‘Some Problems’, pp. 288–9.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Foundations, I, p. xi.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Foundations, I, pp. 113–39.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Foundations, I, p. 9.Google Scholar

²⁰ See ‘Some Problems’, pp. 289–301Google Scholar; and especially ‘Language and Social Change’.

²¹ ‘Language and Social Change’, p. 576.Google Scholar

²² ‘Language and Social Change’, p. 576.Google Scholar

²³ ‘Some Problems’, p. 294.Google Scholar

²⁴ This explicitly Weberian theme is analysed from the perspective of the legitimating agent in ‘Some Problems’ and from the perspective of the legitimating role of the language in ‘Language and Social Change’.

²⁵ ‘Some Problems’, pp. 299–300.Google Scholar See ‘The Principles and Practice of Opposition’, for a case study.

²⁶ Foundations, I, pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar

²⁷ Foundations, II, p. 64.Google Scholar

²⁸ ‘Some Problems’, pp. 294–5.Google Scholar

²⁹ ‘Language and Social Change’.

³⁰ Foundations, II, pp. 20–113.Google Scholar

³¹ Foundations, I, p. xi.Google Scholar

³² The exception is John Dunn, who alone saw clearly the challenge Skinner had launched at modern political theory. Dunn, John, ‘The Cage of Politics’, The Listener, 15 03 1979.Google Scholar

³³ Foundations, I, p. ix.Google Scholar Not precisely our concept of the state, he carefully notes.

³⁴ Foundations, II, pp. 349, 358.Google Scholar

³⁵ Foundations, I, IIGoogle Scholar, back cover of paperback edition.

³⁶ ‘Some Problems’, p. 281.Google Scholar

³⁷ This conclusion of Foundations is taken up more recently in Machiavelli and Liberty, an unpublished manuscript.

³⁸ Foucault, Michel, ‘Lecture Two: 14 January, 1976’, in Gordon, Colin, ed., Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 92–108.Google Scholar

³⁹ In Machiavelli and Liberty, Skinner pits the old republican humanist ideology against recent manipulations of the juridical ideology, including John Rawls's A Theory of Justice.

⁴⁰ Foundations, II, p. 347.Google Scholar

⁴¹ This is summarized in four major steps in the Conclusion of Foundations, II.Google Scholar

⁴² Foundations, II, pp. 302–49Google Scholar; ‘The Origins of the Calvinist Theory of Revolution’.

⁴³ ‘Meaning and Understanding’, p. 53.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Foundations, I, pp. 86–9.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Foundations, I, pp. 69–112.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ ‘Language and Social Change’.

⁴⁷ See ‘Meaning and Understanding’ for exposure of several instances of this, especially pp. 51–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, 10Google Scholar and On Certainty, 204–5.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Taylor, Charles, ‘Interpretation and the Sciences of Man’, in Dallmayr, F. R. and McCarthy, T. A., eds, Understanding and Social Inquiry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), p. 117Google Scholar; Gadamer, Hans-George, Truth and Method, tr. Glen-Doepel, William (London: Sheed and Ward, 1979), pp. 345–431.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Foundations, II, pp. 347–8Google Scholar; cf., Foucault, , ‘Lecture Two’, p. 103.Google Scholar

⁵¹ von Clausewitz, Carl, On War, ed. Rapoport, A. (Middlesex: Penguin, 1974), p. 402.Google Scholar

⁵² Foucault, Michel, ‘Truth and Power’, Power/Knowledge, p. 114.Google Scholar