J. G. A. Pocock

J. G. A. Pocock
Información personal
Nacimiento	7 de marzo de 1924 ; Londres (Reino Unido)
Fallecimiento	12 de diciembre de 2023 (99 años); Baltimore (Estados Unidos)
Causa de muerte	Insuficiencia cardíaca
Nacionalidad	Neozelandesa
Educación
Educado en	Universidad de Cambridge; Universidad de Canterbury; Christ's College, Christchurch; Medbury School ;
Supervisor doctoral	Herbert Butterfield
Información profesional
Ocupación	Historiador, politólogo y profesor universitario
Área	Filosofía política
Empleador	Universidad Johns Hopkins; Universidad de Otago; Universidad de Canterbury; Universidad Washington en San Luis ;
Miembro de	Academia Estadounidense de las Artes y las Ciencias
Distinciones	Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History (2000); Oficial de la Orden del Mérito de Nueva Zelanda (2002) ;
	[editar datos en Wikidata]

John Greville Agard Pocock (Londres, 7 de marzo de 1924-12 de diciembre de 2023)^[1] fue un historiador británico, neozelandés y estadounidense. Es citado como J. G. A. Pocock. Destaca por sus estudios sobre el republicanismo en la Edad Moderna, sobre Edward Gibbon y otros historiadores de la Ilustración, y en general, sobre la historia del discurso político, su principal contribución al método histórico.

Formación y carrera

Pasó la mayor parte de su juventud en Nueva Zelanda. En 1966 emigró a los Estados Unidos. En 1975 empezó a enseñar en la Johns Hopkins University de Baltimore.

Su primer libro, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law trata sobre el tema de la mentalidad del derecho anglosajón (common law mind), mostrando cómo pensadores tales como el jurista inglés Edward Coke (1552–1634) convirtieron un análisis histórico en una epistemología del derecho y la política; construcción que los autores de mediados del siglo XVII subvirtieron. Parte de esta obra ha sido enmendada en ediciones posteriores.^[2]

En los años setenta Pocock cambió su área de interés desde la forma en que los juristas entienden la evolución del derecho hacia la forma en que lo hacen los filósofos y teólogos. En The Machiavellian Moment (1975), que se considera su magnum opus, muestra cómo florentinos, ingleses y estadounidenses han respondido y analizado la destrucción de sus estados y órdenes políticos en crisis sucesivas a través de la Edad Moderna. No tuvo una acogida unánime, pero sí se destaca su contribución, especialmente por su caracterización del teórico político James Harrington (1611–1677).^[3]

Posteriormente Pocock investigó la obra literaria de Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), historiador británico que describió el cataclismo del declive y caída del Imperio Romano como un conflicto inevitable entre la antigua virtud y el comercio moderno. Describe a Gibbon como un humanista cívico de buena fe,^[4] incluso al componer su gran "narrativa ilustrada".^[5] Los primeros dos volúmenes de la serie de seis que Pocock proyectó sobre Gibbon, Barbarism and Religion, ganaron el premio Jacques Barzun de la American Philosophical Society (1999).

La "Cambridge School"

Pocock no es sólo un historiador, sino el pionero de un nuevo tipo de método histórico: el contextualismo (el estudio de "los textos en su contexto" -texts in context). En los años sesenta y comienzos de los setenta, él (introduciendo los "lenguajes" del pensamiento político) Quentin Skinner (que se centra en la intención del autor), y John Dunn (que se centra en la biografía), compusieron el núcleo informal de lo que se ha pasado a denominar la Escuela de Cambridge de historia del pensamiento político (Cambridge School).^[6] Más allá de la Escuela de Cambridge y sus seguidores, se negaba validez al entonces mayoritario método de estudio textual, que establecía previamente, y de forma anacrónica, un canon compartido de obras políticas destacadas.

El concepto de political languages ("lenguajes" o "idiomas políticos") es la clave de la revisión histórica de Pocock. Lo define como idioms, rhetorics, specialised vocabularies and grammars considerada como a single though multiplex community of discourse,^[7] el lenguaje se "descubre" (uncovered o discovered) en los textos por los historiadores, que subsiguientemente "aprenden" de ellos en su debida forma. La resultante familiaridad produce un conocimiento de cómo el pensamiento político puede situarse en los "universos lingüísticos" descubiertos historiográficamente, y en qué forma exacta se expresa cada parte de un texto.^[8] Como ejemplos, Pocock ha citado los lenguajes políticos del common law, civil jurisprudence y classical republicanism (expresiones difícilmente traducibles de forma literal -no "derecho común", sino derecho anglosajón, "jurisprudencia civil" y "republicanismo clásico" -) con el que autores como James Harrington, Thomas Hobbes y John Locke alcanzaron sus objetivos retóricos.

Historia británica

Desde 1975, Pocock impulsó el desarrollo de una nueva materia que denominó British History ("historia británica") y que se ha etiquetado como New British History ("nueva historia británica"), una expresión que él rechaza.^[9] Incita a los historiadores a reconsiderar dos temas vinculados con el futuro de la historiografía británica: En primer lugar, advierte la necesidad de rechazar las historias de los tres reinos (Escocia, Irlanda e Inglaterra) como entidades separadas,^[10] solicitando que los estudios lleven a una confluencia de las narrativas nacionales en una empresa verdaderamente integrada.^[11] En segundo lugar, solicita a los políticos que reconsideren la "europeización" del Reino Unido que se vendría produciendo desde la entrada en el Mercado Común (1973), que ve como un abandono de una parte importante de la soberanía nacional por motivos puramente económicos.^[12]

Nueva Zelanda

Tras su trabajo sobre Gibbon, puso su atención sobre su zona de origen. En un conjunto de ensayos publicados desde 1991, Pocock exploró los mandatos históricos e implicaciones del Tratado de Waitangi de 1840 (entre la Corona Británica y los maoríes), que se considera el equivalente neozelandés de la Carta Magna, y que permite tanto a los descendientes de europeos (Pākehā) como a los descendientes de los indígenas reclamar una porción de la soberanía nacional.

Pocock concluye que el tema de la soberanía debe ser abordado a través de la experiencia compartida, un perpetuo debate que conducirá a tantos acuerdos ad hoc como sea necesario; dado que un rebrote de la violencia de las guerras de Nueva Zelanda del siglo XIX, no debe contemplarse como posible alternativa.

Monografías

The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: a study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (1957, rept. 1987)**
The Maori and New Zealand Politics (Hamilton, Blackwood & Janet Paul: 1965) editor, co-author
Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago: 1989, rept. 1972)
Obligation and Authority in Two English Revolutions: the Dr. W. E. Collins lecture delivered at the University on 17 May 1973 (Victoria University: 1973)
The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: 1975, rept. 2003)
The Political Works of James Harrington (1977)** editor
John Locke: papers read at a Clark Library Seminar, 10 December 1977 (University of California: 1980) co-author
Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton: 1980) editor, co-author
Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (1985)**
Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France (Hackett: 1987) editor
Conceptual Change and the Constitution (University Press of Kansas: 1988) coeditor, co-author
James Harrington: The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics (1992)** editor
The Varieties of British Political Thought 1500–1800 (1993)** coeditor, co-author
Edward Gibbon: Bicentenary Essays (Voltaire Foundation: 1997) coeditor
Barbarism and Religion, vol. 1: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (1999)**
Barbarism and Religion, vol. 2: Narratives of Civil Government (1999)**
Barbarism and Religion, vol. 3: The First Decline and Fall (2003)**
Barbarism and Religion, vol. 4: Barbarians, Savages and Empires (2005)**
Barbarism and Religion, vol. 5: Religion: the First Triumph (in process)**
The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (2005)**
Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (2009)** [trad. esp. Pensamiento político e historia. Ensayo sobre teoría y método. Madrid: Akal, 2011]
More than 250 published scholarly articles and reviews (as of December 2009). For a comprehensive listing, see The Work of J.G.A. Pocock.

* in the English language.
** Cambridge University Press.

Bibliografía

Mark Bevir, The Errors of Linguistic Contextualism, in History & Theory 31 (1992), 276-298.
David Boucher, Texts in Context. Revisionist Methods for Studying the History of Ideas, Dordrecht, Boston & Lancaster 1985.
Iain Hampsher-Monk, Political Languages in Time. The Work of J.G.A. Pocock, in British Journal of Political Science 14 (1984), 89-116.
Robert D. Hume, Pocock’s Contextual Historicism, in D.N. DeLuna (ed.), The Political Imagination in History. Essays Concerning J.G.A. Pocock, Baltimore 2006, 27-55.
Preston King, Historical Contextualism. The New Historicism?, in History of European Ideas 21 (1995), No. 2, 209-233.
William Walker, J.G.A. Pocock and the History of British Political Thought. Assessing the State of the Art, in Eighteenth-Century Life 33 (2009), No. 1, 83-96.

Referencias

↑ «Muere a los 99 años el historiador neozelandés John G. A. Pocock». ABC Cultura. 14 de diciembre de 2023. Consultado el 14 de diciembre de 2023.
↑ Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: an introduction to English political thought, 1603–1642. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993).
↑ Jonathan Scott, Commonwealth Principles: Republican writing of the English revolution (Cambridge: 2004); Eric M. Nelson, "James Harrington and the 'Balance of Justice', in The Greek Tradition in Republican thought (Cambridge: 2001); James Cotton, James Harrington’s Political Thought and its context (New York: Garland Publishers, 1991).
↑ Pocock, "Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian," Daedulus 105:3 (1976), 153–69.
↑ Barbarism and Religion vol. 1: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge: 1999), 123, 303–4.
↑ Pocock detalla su génesis a Peter Laslett en "Present at the Creation: With Laslett to the Lost Worlds", International Journal of Public Affairs 2 (2006), 7–17. Laslett's 1949 edition of Sir Robert Filmer's works amounts to "the true beginning of the study of political writings by assigning them to their proper contexts". Laslett implemented "temporal" contexts; Pocock highlighted "linguistic" contexts, "each existing side by side and perhaps interacting with others, while remaining distinct and having a history of its own". Eventually, and for his own purposes, Pocock preferred history of political 'discourse' to that of political 'thought', wishing to widen and refine the field into the study of "...speech, literature, and public utterance in general, involving an element of theory and carried on in a variety of contexts with which it can be connected in a variety of ways." see Pocock, "What is Intellectual History?", in What is History Today? (London: MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1988), 114.
↑ Pocock, "The Concept of a Language and the métier d'historien: some considerations on practice," in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: 1987), 21–25; and, of an earlier vintage, see also essays nos. 1, 3, 4 in Politics, Language and Time. For a wide-ranging summary of developments that have, in one scholar's view, transformed the Cambridge School into "an intergenerational enterprise", see the review article, B.W. Young, "Enlightenment Political Thought and the Cambridge School," Historical Journal 52:1 (2009), 235–51.
↑ Pocock's method originally incorporated a theory of "traditions", combined with elements of Thomas Kuhn's "paradigms" (see Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, [Chicago: 3rd ed., 1996]), but Pocock has since explained that "a political community is not simply a community of enquiry, and that therefore the status and function of [political] paradigms" differs from Kuhn's depiction of scientific investigation. see "Preface, 1989," in Politics, Language, and Time.
↑ Pocock: Contigency, identity, sovereignty in "Uniting the Kingdom?", editors Alexander Grant, Keith John Stringer, Routledge, 1995
↑ Pocock, The Discovery of Islands, 77–93.
↑ Pocock, "British History: a Plea for a New Subject," 22–43 (1975); "The Field Enlarged: an Introduction," 47–57; and "The Politics of the New British History," 289–300, in The Discovery of Islands. See also "The Limits and Divisions of British History: in Search of the Unknown Subject," American Historical Review 87:2 (Apr. 1982), 311–36; "The New British History in Atlantic Perspective: an Antipodean Commentary," American Historical Review 104:2 (Apr. 1999), 490–500.
↑ "History and Sovereignty: the Historiographical Response to Europeanization in Two British Cultures," Journal of British Studies 31 (Oct. 1992), 358–89. And more lately, in which Pocock speculates that the European Union might devolve into an "empire of the market", see "Deconstructing Europe," in Discovery of Islands, 269–88, at 281.

Enlaces externos

J.G.A. Pocock at EdwardGibbonStudies.com

Datos: Q1336397

[1] «Muere a los 99 años el historiador neozelandés John G. A. Pocock». ABC Cultura. 14 de diciembre de 2023. Consultado el 14 de diciembre de 2023.

[2] Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: an introduction to English political thought, 1603–1642. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993).

[3] Jonathan Scott, Commonwealth Principles: Republican writing of the English revolution (Cambridge: 2004); Eric M. Nelson, "James Harrington and the 'Balance of Justice', in The Greek Tradition in Republican thought (Cambridge: 2001); James Cotton, James Harrington’s Political Thought and its context (New York: Garland Publishers, 1991).

[4] Pocock, "Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian," Daedulus 105:3 (1976), 153–69.

[5] Barbarism and Religion vol. 1: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge: 1999), 123, 303–4.

[6] Pocock detalla su génesis a Peter Laslett en "Present at the Creation: With Laslett to the Lost Worlds", International Journal of Public Affairs 2 (2006), 7–17. Laslett's 1949 edition of Sir Robert Filmer's works amounts to "the true beginning of the study of political writings by assigning them to their proper contexts". Laslett implemented "temporal" contexts; Pocock highlighted "linguistic" contexts, "each existing side by side and perhaps interacting with others, while remaining distinct and having a history of its own". Eventually, and for his own purposes, Pocock preferred history of political 'discourse' to that of political 'thought', wishing to widen and refine the field into the study of "...speech, literature, and public utterance in general, involving an element of theory and carried on in a variety of contexts with which it can be connected in a variety of ways." see Pocock, "What is Intellectual History?", in What is History Today? (London: MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1988), 114.

[7] Pocock, "The Concept of a Language and the métier d'historien: some considerations on practice," in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: 1987), 21–25; and, of an earlier vintage, see also essays nos. 1, 3, 4 in Politics, Language and Time. For a wide-ranging summary of developments that have, in one scholar's view, transformed the Cambridge School into "an intergenerational enterprise", see the review article, B.W. Young, "Enlightenment Political Thought and the Cambridge School," Historical Journal 52:1 (2009), 235–51.

[8] Pocock's method originally incorporated a theory of "traditions", combined with elements of Thomas Kuhn's "paradigms" (see Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, [Chicago: 3rd ed., 1996]), but Pocock has since explained that "a political community is not simply a community of enquiry, and that therefore the status and function of [political] paradigms" differs from Kuhn's depiction of scientific investigation. see "Preface, 1989," in Politics, Language, and Time.

[9] Pocock: Contigency, identity, sovereignty in "Uniting the Kingdom?", editors Alexander Grant, Keith John Stringer, Routledge, 1995

[10] Pocock, The Discovery of Islands, 77–93.

[11] Pocock, "British History: a Plea for a New Subject," 22–43 (1975); "The Field Enlarged: an Introduction," 47–57; and "The Politics of the New British History," 289–300, in The Discovery of Islands. See also "The Limits and Divisions of British History: in Search of the Unknown Subject," American Historical Review 87:2 (Apr. 1982), 311–36; "The New British History in Atlantic Perspective: an Antipodean Commentary," American Historical Review 104:2 (Apr. 1999), 490–500.

[12] "History and Sovereignty: the Historiographical Response to Europeanization in Two British Cultures," Journal of British Studies 31 (Oct. 1992), 358–89. And more lately, in which Pocock speculates that the European Union might devolve into an "empire of the market", see "Deconstructing Europe," in Discovery of Islands, 269–88, at 281.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]