An Essay on Contextual Indeterminacy in Early Modern English Intellectual History: Past-Relationships, Historicity, Languages, and the Conceptual Realm

Abstract:This article discusses contextualisation in early modern, mainly English intellectual history, from which ‘Cambridge contextualist’ history arose. It argues that contextualisation is a ubiquitous aspect of understanding and that historical contexts are unstable historiographical necessities, not features of history. It explores the issues most with reference to J. G. A. Pocock’s notions of ‘past-relationships’ in tension with a sense of historicity, and the ‘languages’ he considers fundamental to intellectual history. The former provides a valuable analytic vocabulary in and beyond the early modern; the latter are problematic. Discussion of the difficulties leads directly a critique of a conceptual realm as a necessary context for intellectual history.