Introduction: ‘István Hont as political theorist’

István Hont died on 29 March 2013. He had been one of the most insightful, provocative and original thinkers in what has come to be known as the ‘Cambridge School’ in the history of political thought, and his loss has been keenly felt, both in Cambridge and beyond. By the time of his death, Hont’s reputation amongst historians of political thought was secure. He never produced a freestanding monograph: his reticence when it came to publishing and his proclivity for working simultaneously on multiple, far-reaching projects were notorious. But his 2005 collection of essays, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective, put beyond doubt his status as a world-leading historian of ideas. Awarded the J. David Greenstone Prize by the American Political Science Association, and the Joseph J. Spengler Prize by the History of Economics Society, Jealousy of Trade not only brought together Hont’s earlier work, but supplemented it with a 156-page ‘Introduction’, which has been called:

a bold, breathtakingly intelligent revision of the history of political thought between Hobbes and the French Revolution—and a demonstration of the extent to which the eighteenth- century debate over ‘jealousy of trade’ anticipated the concerns of the post-1989 global economic order. (Robertson, 2006: 941)

The result was not only one of the most compelling articulations of the history of European political thought since the Renaissance that we possess, but a boldly original intervention from a ‘Cambridge’ perspective.

That said, Hont never wore the ‘Cambridge School’ label especially comfortably. An iconoclast and sceptic to the core, he once addressed a conference at the University of Chiba in 2005, dedicated specifically to discussion of the Cambridge School, by declaring that it did not in fact exist (Bourke, 2018: 467). To outsiders this may look a bit odd, given not only Hont’s geographical location – he spent the majority of his career writing and teaching at King’s College, Cambridge – but the eminently contextual and historicist nature of his enterprise. But to those closer to the coal-face, Hont’s willingness to reject the historical and theoretical interpretations of eminent colleagues such as Quentin Skinner, John Dunn, Richard Tuck and Gareth Stedman Jones, combined with his open disdain for questions of method, makes his occasional rejection of the ‘Cambridge’ label less surprising.

Whether or not one agrees with the main arguments of Hont’s work in the history of political thought, one cannot afford to ignore them. The significance he is now accorded is indicated by the fact that since his death not one but two Festschriften have been published in his honour, devoted to the exploration and further elaboration of themes from his oeuvre (Kapossy et al., 2017, 2018). Yet Hont did not conceive of himself as purely a historian. Whilst he certainly thought that historical work was of the greatest importance, he rejected any suggestion of merely antiquarian focus. His use of history proceeded, he wrote, ‘with eyes firmly fixed on the challenges of today’ (Hont, 2005: 5) and, aligning himself with his two most cherished historical figures – David Hume and Adam Smith – he sought to use history so as to gain greater intellectual clarity regarding our own political predicaments, in the hope that such a greater understanding might improve our prospects of dealing, intellectually at least, with the challenges posed by a globalised economic order in a hostile international environment.

In light of this, it might be thought of as something of a disappointment – though not really a surprise – that political theorists have for the most part not yet taken serious note of Hont’s work. The majority of Anglophone political philosophy at the present moment conducts itself in a strikingly ahistorical mode. Even when not explicitly hostile to historical perspectives, much mainstream political theory exhibits what might be called a ‘philosophy-first’ presumption: that getting clear on conceptual matters, in the abstract, is the foundation of good theory, and that historical concerns only come in, if at all, downstream. Viewed from this perspective, Hont’s Smithean injunction that good political theory has first to start from thick historical premises, and then proceed on the basis of constant interchange between these two interrelated perspectives, is likely to look at best outmoded, at worst flatly anachronistic – and perhaps even a failure to contribute to anything that deserves the label of political theory. And, it has to be said, Hont himself made no concessions in his work to trying to win allies from this mainstream: he did what he did, and if others failed to see the power and relevance of what he was arguing, then so much the worse for them.

Nonetheless, this is an unsatisfactory situation. For Hont offers a great deal from which political theorists can learn, most especially (although by no means exclusively) if they are willing to consider the role that history might play in sharpening analytic perceptions regarding contemporary normative issues. The ambition of this special issue is thus many-sided: to introduce Hont’s work to a wider audience of political theorists than it has presently enjoyed; to convince at least some readers that Hont is worth paying attention to when it comes to normative theory; to tease out to a certain extent just what Hont’s political theoretic contributions actually were; and to pick up some of his hints and leads when exploring issues in political theory that he indicated deserve more attention, but are presently neglected.

Accordingly, the contributions in this special issue vary in their nature. Christopher Brooke begins with a plausibly Hont-ish reading of Montesquieu that draws attention to the place of a certain kind of recognition in understanding the dynamics of modern politics. Jared Holley takes seriously Hont’s suggestion that Rousseau was not simply an opponent of commercial society, and asks in turn what a ‘refined Epicureanism’ might mean for understanding liberty, whilst simultaneously highlighting the important divergences between Hont’s reading of Rousseau and recent treatments by ‘analytic’ political theorists. Sandrine Bergès considers the French Revolution and its significance for theorising commercial republics in a world of international political economy, pushing back against Hont’s scepticism about the compatibility of pre-liberal versions of republicanism and commerce. Richard Bourke takes as his starting point Hont’s insistence that history is the tool of sceptics, and from there interrogates the conceptual and historical coherence of the idea of ‘conservatism’, urging us to abandon tribal allegiances of party when writing as scholars in favour of more complex and truthful interpretations of both past and present. Paul Sagar takes up directly the question of what Hont can teach political theorists today, arguing that the recent revival of ‘realist’ theory has most to gain from an engagement with his work. Finally, in a review essay of Hont’s posthumously published Carlyle Lectures, originally delivered at Oxford in 2009, Robin Douglass interrogates both the potential and the limitations of his account of Rousseau and Smith as theorists of commercial society.

We hope that readers will learn something from this collection of articles, as well as finding something in them to enjoy – and we also hope that this special issue will be the start of a broader conversation amongst political theorists, one that relates both directly to the substance of Hont’s own political-theoretical contribution, but also to the historically-sensitive form of theorising that he advocated for so long.