Skinner's maxim

proper noun

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.

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Meanings

proper noun
  1. historyThe 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.

    Historical reconstructions will follow ‘Skinner’s maxim’, and will constrain themselves to offering only descriptions that the writer in question could in principle endorse.

    2020, Patrick Fessenbecker, Reading Ideas in Victorian Literature: Literary Content as Artistic Experience, →ISBN, page 122
    2 more examples

    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.

    1984, Richard Rorty, “The historiography of philosophy: four genres”, in Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, Quentin Skinner, editors, Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, →ISBN, page 54

    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.

    1988, Stephen Makin, “How can we find out what Ancient Philosophers said?”, in Phronesis, volume 33, number 2, →JSTOR, page 122

Origin

Named after British intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, who formulated the principle in 1969.

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Cite this entry
APA

Skinner's maxim. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Skinner's%20maxim

MLA

“Skinner's maxim.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Skinner's%20maxim. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Skinner's maxim,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Skinner's%20maxim.

Source: Skinner's maxim on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.