摘要：

I now wish to turn to the suggestions for studying the history of political thought offered by W. H. Greenleaf, but subscribed to in varying degrees of explicitness by a number of other historians and philosophers. W. H. Greenleaf has been widely acknowledged as a significant contributor to the gradual development of a more historically sensitive attitude to the study of political thought. Pocock and Skinner, for example, while disagreeing with some of Greenleaf's ideas, pay tribute to his efforts to change the character of the discipline.1 J. G. Gunnell has asserted that much of what Skinner has to say about history echoes what Greenleaf had said as early as 1964.2 However, when Greenleaf is mentioned in methodological discussions he is given very little consideration. I know of only one article that devotes more than a few sentences to his prescriptions for the study of the history of political thought, and even that article draws only upon Greenlea's Order, Empiricism and Politics and neglects his subsequent theoretical development.3 One reason why Greenleaf's methodological theories have never attracted the attention they deserve is because their author tends to present them in connexion with other intellectual pursuits. Therefore, the theory comes in fragments and nowhere appears in a comprehensive form. Thus, one of the aims of this chapter will be to construct a detailed account of the theory from Greenleaf's scattered statements, and to relate it to the sources of its inspiration. Greenleaf, in this study, represents the first stage in the move away from traditional assumptions about, and ways of studying the history of political thought. However, he also represents a step back in time. Through British idealism he looks to Hegel for guidance in organizing the subject matter into a coherent whole. Hegel presents past philosophy as a system in development, and Greenleaf selectively appropriates some of Hegel's ideas and develops Oakeshott's brief remarks on the composition and organization of past philosophy.

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