A history of modern political thought : the question of interpretation Introduction. Part 1 Interpretive schemes : Hegel and Marx: political culture economy and ideology Oakeshott Collingwood and the historical turn Quentin Skinner the Cambridge School and contextualism Derrida: deconstructing the canon Foucault: politics history and discourse Gadamer and Hermeneutics. Part 2 Interpretations of modern political thinkers : Machiavelli: modernity and the Renaissance man Hobbes: the politics of absolutism Locke: history and political thought Rousseau: nature and society Kant: morality politics and cosmopolitanism Hegel: the politics of modernity Karl Marx: one or many Jeremy Bentham: Enlightenment politics John Stuart Mill: then and now Nietzsche: politics power and philosophy Simone de Beauvoir: the politics of sex Conclusion: political thought and history. Bibliography Index How are we to understand past political thinkers Is it a matter simply of reading their texts again and again Do we have to relate past texts of political thought to the contexts in which ideas were composed and in which the aims of past thinkers were formulated Or should past political theories be deconstructed so as to uncover not what their authors maintain but what the texts reveal In this book theories of interpreting past political thinkers are examined and the interpretive methods of a range of theories are reviewed including those of Hegel Marx Oakeshott Collingwood the Cambridge School Foucault Derrida and Gadamer. The application of these theories of interpretation to notable modern political theorists Machiavelli Hobbes Locke Rousseau Kant Hegel Marx Bentham Mill Nietzsche and Beauvoir is then used as a way of understanding modern political thought and of assessing interpretive theories of past political thought. The result is a book which sees the history of modern political thought as more than a procession of political theories but rather as a reflection on the meaning of past political thought and its interpretation. It provides a way of reading the history of modern political thought in which the question of interpretation matters both for understanding how we interpret the past but also for considering what it means to undertake political thinking