Word.ws English Dictionary

Skinner's maxim

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.

Proper noun

Skinner's maxim

  1. 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.
    • 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...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...
    • 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 of Skinner's maxim

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

Questions about Skinner's maxim

What does Skinner's maxim mean?
Skinner's maxim means 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.
What part of speech is Skinner's maxim?
Skinner's maxim is a proper noun.

Words near Skinner's maxim in the dictionary

  1. skinner
  2. Skinner box
  3. Skinner boxes
  4. Skinner's ground mantis
  5. Skinner's ground mantises
  6. Skinner's maxim
  7. Skinnerian
  8. Skinnerians
  9. Skinnerism
  10. skinnerite
  11. skinners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Skinner's maxim (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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