Interpreting a text

1.5.7 Cambridge New ‘History’ 
The Cambridge ‘new historians’ see textual interpretation as revealing the 
historically variable problems to which particular philosophers proposed 
particular answers and deny that there are eternal problems. Understanding 
meaning needs that we understand the problem being addressed. Peter Laslett, in 
his introduction to Locke’s 
Two Treatises
(1960), reinstates the book to its 
political and historical context. It also shows that the volume had been written 
nearly a decade earlier than what was known paving the way for succeeding 
reinterpretations of Locke. This method of historical investigation has been 
vehemently promoted. Textbook approaches have been rejected as insufficiently 

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21 
Text and Context: 
Reading and 
Interpreting A Text 
historical. For this approach, political theory is a form of political action. It is 
intended to warn, persuade, criticize and frighten. Political theorists have always 
involved in propaganda and persuasion. Textual interpretation is a task of 
restoring texts to the historical contexts and understanding the question(s) to 
which the texts were offered as answers.
Therefore, we could see that any single method won’t suffice to get the answers 
we seek. A plurality of approaches which will not burden us in the range of 
questions we can ask is preferable. In adopting this pluralistic approach, 
intellectual, political and linguistic contexts have to be considered. Also we have 
to remember the fact that texts take a life of their own once they are published. 
To concentrate solely on what the author intended in a particular text is to the 
neglect of what other thinkers and readers had to say about the said text. 
Interpretative enquiries are problem-driven and dynamic. We turn to texts to 
clear doubts. These doubts may arise from anywhere but their interpretative 
solutions must be justified by rigourous scholarly criteria. The classic works may 
be kept alive through reinterpretations and reappraisals.