The Concept of Context in Mark Bevir’s Contextualism

The article is devoted to the concept of context in historical-philosophical contextualism which is examined using the example of M. Bevir’s approach. Bevir’s criticism of the notion  of context in predecessors’ theories presupposes a semantical shift, which is the main  topic of the article. As the most important characteristic of Bevir’s approach the indeterminism of explanation in contrast to the determinism of understanding is singled out. We show that this characteristic stems from Bevir’s rejection of the interpretational semantic paradigm.  This permits him to understand context as something that does not fix understanding but rather poses a problem demanding a creative solution.

Keywords: contextualism, Bevir, history of philosophy, history of ideas, explanation, understanding, semantics.