The article examines Quentin Skinner's influential interpretation of Machiavelli's views on liberty, and the sharp divergence between his methodological ideas and his actual practice. The paper explores how Skinner's political ideals directed his interpretation against his own methodological precepts, to offer a basis for a ‘revival’ of republican theory. Skinner's reinterpretation of Machiavelli as a theorist of negative liberty is examined, and refuted. The article analyses Skinner's claim about liberty as the key political value for Machiavelli, and demonstrates that liberty is secondary to empire on the list of Machiavelli's priorities. Skinner's vocabulary and efforts to tone down or ignore Machiavelli's more aggressive ideas are closely examined. The analysis offered in the article, it is suggested, has wider implications, showing the difficulty of applying contextualism in practice, by the very founder of this approach in the history of ideas.

这篇文章考察了昆汀·斯金纳对马基雅维利自由观点的有影响力的解释，以及他的方法论思想和他的实际实践之间的尖锐分歧。这篇论文探讨了斯金纳的政治理想如何将他的解释与他自己的方法论规则相悖，从而为共和理论的“复兴”提供基础。斯金纳对马基雅维利作为消极自由理论家的重新解释受到了检验和驳斥。这篇文章分析了斯金纳关于自由是马基雅维利的关键政治价值的主张，并表明在马基雅维利的优先事项清单上，自由次于帝国。斯金纳的词汇和努力淡化或忽视马基雅维利更具侵略性的想法受到了仔细研究。建议在文章中提供的分析，