CEVAP:

Two major criticisms were directed to the contextual approach in the narrow sense: One line of critique stemmed from the earlier historical materialist tradition which shared the view on the importance of the social history of ideas. Rather than accepting ideas as constitutive in the historicist sense of the Cambridge School, renewed attempts to enrich historical materialism started with acknowledging that those questions confronting political thinkers acquired specific historical forms. Therefore, a better understanding of political theory should dwell on the social background of ideas and the human interactions on the societal level to explore the historical forms assumed by the apparently long-lasting political questions such as justice, social order, human development and the best form of government to provide these elements. Such a way of historicising political ideas benefited from the materialist perspectives regarding the study of history. These perspectives presented material and social circumstances as the ground on which particular political ideas flourished. In such close historical scrutiny, people’s access to the material conditions of life sets the background of political debate. Expressing this through a famous statement, a well-known historical materialist, namely Karl Marx, claimed that “mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve; since looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation”. From a general perspective, followers of historical materialist tradition perceived the social circumstances as putting their stamp on the way people formulate their problems regarding social justice, equality, social order and good government. Not the ideas that derive out from historical conditions and intellectual context, but the material conditions and the inherent contradictions within material circumstances were constitutive with regards to the history of mankind and history of political ideas. The contextual approach to the history of political thought, in a broader sense, shares the contextual emphasis of the historical materialism. However, it also attributes ideas a more notable role in the historical development. 

The other criticism was related to the Straussian approach. According to many social scientists and political thinkers, contextualizing great classics and canonical texts of philosophy has led to ignoring the significance of these works and their timetranscending nature. In other words, as it denies significance beyond the time in which these texts had been written, the contextual approach is criticised with closing eyes of the reader to the nature of human beings and perennial questions such as order and justice that are supposed to be independent of time and social circumstances.