Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the
history of human thought and of
intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator o ...
s, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with
ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual history is that ideas do not develop in isolation from the thinkers who conceptualize and apply those ideas; thus the intellectual historian studies ideas in two contexts: (i) as abstract propositions for critical application; and (ii) in concrete terms of culture, life, and history.
As a field of intellectual enquiry, the history of ideas emerged from the European disciplines of ''
Kulturgeschichte'' (Cultural History) and ''
Geistesgeschichte
''Geistesgeschichte'' (from German ''Geist'', "spirit" or "mind" ere connoting the metaphysical realm, in contradistinction to the material">metaphysical.html" ;"title="ere connoting the metaphysical">ere connoting the metaphysical realm, in contr ...
'' (Intellectual History) from which historians might develop a global intellectual history that shows the parallels and the interrelations in the history of critical thinking in every society. Likewise, the history of
reading
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.
For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spell ...
, and the
history of the book
The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributors to the discipline include specialists from the fields of textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social hi ...
, about the material aspects of
book production (design, manufacture, distribution) developed from the history of ideas.
The concerns of intellectual history are the intelligentsia and the critical study of the ideas expressed in the texts produced by intellectuals; therein the difference between intellectual history from other forms of
cultural history
Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing t ...
that study visual and non-verbal forms of evidence. In the production of knowledge, the concept of ''the intellectual'' as a political citizen of public society dates from the 19th century, and identifies a man or a woman who is professionally engaged with
critical thinking that is applicable to improving society. Nonetheless, anyone who explored his or her thoughts on paper can be the subject of an intellectual history. For instance, ''
The Cheese and the Worms'' (1976),
Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg (; born April 15, 1939) is an Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for ''Il formaggio e i vermi'' (1976, English title: ''The Cheese and the Worms''), which examined the beliefs of an Ital ...
’s study of the 16th-century Italian miller
Menocchio (1532–1599) and his
cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
, falls within the genre of intellectual history (as well as cultural history, the
history of mentalities, and
microhistory).
History of the discipline
Intellectual history developed from the
history of philosophy and
cultural history
Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing t ...
as practiced since the times of
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his '' nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—e ...
(1694–1778) and
Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897). The scholarly efforts of the eighteenth century can be traced to ''
The Advancement of Learning
thumbnail, Title page
''The Advancement of Learning'' (full title: ''Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human'') is a 1605 book by Francis Bacon.
It inspired the taxonomic structure of the highly influential ''Encyclopé ...
'' (1605),
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
’s call for what he termed “a literary history”. In economics,
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...
(1883–1946) was both a historian of economic thought, and the subject of study by historians of economic thought, because of the significance of the
Keynesian revolution.
The contemporary understanding of intellectual history emerged in the immediate postwar period of the 1940s, in its earlier incarnation as “the history of ideas” under the leadership of
Arthur Lovejoy, the founder of the ''
Journal of the History of Ideas''. Since that time, Lovejoy’s formulation of “unit-ideas” was developed in different and divergent intellectual directions, such as contextualism, historically sensitive accounts of intellectual activity in the corresponding historical period, which investigative shift is reflected in the replacement of the term “history of ideas” with the term “intellectual history”.
Intellectual history is multidisciplinary and includes the
history of philosophy and the
history of economic thought
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
.
In continental Europe, the pertinent example of intellectual history is ''Begriffsgeschichte'' (History of Concepts, 2010), by
Reinhart Koselleck. In Britain the
history of political thought has been a particular focus since the late 1960s, and is especially associated with
historians at Cambridge, such as
John Dunn and
Quentin Skinner
Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner (born 26 November 1940) is a British intellectual historian. He is regarded as one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. He has won numerous prizes for his work, including t ...
, who studied European political thought in historical context, emphasizing the emergence and development of concepts such as
the State
A state is a centralized political organization that imposes and enforces rules over a population within a territory. There is no undisputed definition of a state. One widely used definition comes from the German sociologist Max Weber: a "sta ...
and
Freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving one ...
. Skinner is known for provocative, methodological essays that give prominence to the practice of intellectual history. In the United States, intellectual history encompass different forms of intellectual production, not just the history of political ideas, and includes fields such as the history of historical thought, associated with
Anthony Grafton (Princeton University) and
J.G.A. Pocock (Johns Hopkins University). Formally established in 2010, the doctorate in History and Culture at
Drew University
Drew University is a private university in Madison, New Jersey. Drew has been nicknamed the "University in the Forest" because of its wooded campus. As of fall 2020, more than 2,200 students were pursuing degrees at the university's three sch ...
is one of few graduate programs specializing in intellectual history, in the American and European contexts. Despite the pre-eminence of early modern intellectual historians (those studying the age from the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...
to the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
), the intellectual history of the modern period also has been very productive on both shores of the Atlantic Ocean, e.g. ''
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America'' (2001), by
Louis Menand
Louis Menand (; born January 21, 1952) is an American critic, essayist, and professor, best known for his Pulitzer-winning book '' The Metaphysical Club'' (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America.
...
and ''The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–50'' (1973), by
Martin Jay.
Methodology
The Lovejoy approach
The historian
Arthur O. Lovejoy
Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (October 10, 1873 – December 30, 1962) was an American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the discipline known as the history of ideas with his book ''The Great Chain of Being'' (1936), on the topic o ...
(1873–1962) coined the phrase ''history of ideas'' and initiated its systematic study
[Arthur Lovejoy: ''The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea'' (1936), ] in the early decades of the 20th century.
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
was a "fertile cradle" to Lovejoy's history of ideas;
Ronald Paulson
Ronald Howard Paulson (born May 27, 1930 in Bottineau, North Dakota) is an American professor of English, a specialist in English 18th-century art and culture, and the world's leading expert on English artist William Hogarth.
Education
Paul ...
br>''English Literary History at the Johns Hopkins University''
in ''New Literary History'', Vol. 1, No. 3, History and Fiction (Spring, 1970), pp. 559–564 he worked there as a professor of history, from 1910 to 1939, and for decades he presided over the regular meetings of the ''History of Ideas Club''. Another outgrowth of his work is the ''
Journal of the History of Ideas''.
Aside from his students and colleagues engaged in related projects (such as
René Wellek
René Wellek (August 22, 1903 – November 10, 1995) was a Czech-American comparative literary critic. Like Erich Auerbach, Wellek was an eminent product of the Central European philological tradition and was known as a vastly erudite a ...
and
Leo Spitzer, with whom Lovejoy engaged in extended debates), scholars such as
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...
,
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...
,
Christopher Hill,
J. G. A. Pocock, and others have continued to work in a spirit close to that with which Lovejoy pursued the history of ideas. The first chapter of Lovejoy's book ''The Great Chain of Being'' (1936) lays out a general overview of what he intended to be the programme and scope of the study of the history of ideas.
Unit-idea
In the History of Ideas, Lovejoy used the ''unit-idea'' (concept) as the basic unit of historical analysis. The unit-idea is the building block of the history of ideas; though relatively stable in itself, the unit-idea combines with other unit-ideas into new patterns of meaning in the context of different historical eras. Lovejoy said that the historian of ideas is tasked with identifying unit-ideas and with describing their historical emergence and development into new conceptual forms and combinations. The methodology of the unit-idea means To extract the basic idea from a work of philosophy and from a philosophical movement, the investigative principles of the methodology are: (1) assumptions, (2) dialectical motives, (3) metaphysical pathos, and (4) philosophical
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
. The principles of methodology define the overarching philosophical movement in which the historian can find the unit-idea, which then is studied throughout the history of the particular idea.
The British historian
Quentin Skinner
Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner (born 26 November 1940) is a British intellectual historian. He is regarded as one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. He has won numerous prizes for his work, including t ...
criticized Lovejoy’s unit-idea methodology as a “reification of doctrines” that has negative consequences. That the historian of ideas must be sensitive to the cultural context of the texts and ideas under analysis. Skinner’s
historical method
Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be draw ...
is based upon the theory of speech acts, proposed by
J.L. Austin. In turn, scholars criticized Skinner’s historical method because of his inclination to
reify social structures and sociological constructs in place of the historical actors of the period under study. The philosopher
Andreas Dorschel
Andreas Dorschel (born 1962) is a German philosopher. Since 2002, he has been professor of aesthetics and head of the Institute for Music Aesthetics at the University of the Arts Graz (Austria).
Background
Andreas Dorschel was born in 1962 ...
said that Skinner’s restrictive approach to ideas, through verbal language, and notes that ideas can materialize in non-linguistic media and genres, such as music and architecture. The historian
Dag Herbjørnsrud
Dag Herbjørnsrud (born 1971) is a historian of ideas, author, a former editor-in-chief, and a founder of Center for Global and Comparative History of Ideas ( Senter for global og komparativ idéhistorie, SGOKI) in Oslo. His writings have been publ ...
said that “the Skinner perspective is in danger of shutting the door to comparative philosophy, and the search for common problems and solutions across borders and time.”
The historian
Peter Gordon said that unlike Lovejoy’s practise of the History of Ideas, the praxis of Intellectual History studies and deals with ideas in broad historical contexts.
[Gordon, Peter E]
“What is intellectual history? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field”
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. That unlike historians of ideas and philosophers (
History of Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
), intellectual historians, “tend to be more relaxed about crossing the boundary between philosophical texts and non-philosophical contexts . . .
ntellectual historians regardthe distinction between ‘philosophy’ and ‘non-philosophy’ as something that is, itself, historically conditioned, rather than eternally fixed.” Therefore, intellectual history is a means for reproducing a historically valid interpretation of a philosophical argument, by implementation of a context in which to study ideas and philosophical movements.
Foucault's approach
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...
rejected
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional ( memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional ( fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc ...
, the historian’s traditional mode of communication, because of what he believed to be the shallow treatment of facts, figures, and people in a long period, rather than deep research that shows the interconnections among the facts, figures, and people of a specific period of history. Foucault said that historians should reveal historical descriptions through the use of different perspectives of the "archaeology of knowledge", whose historical method for writing history is in four ideas.
First, the archaeology of knowledge defines the period of history through philosophy, by way of the discourses among
thought
In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, an ...
,
representation, and themes. Second, that the notion of discontinuity has an important role in the disciplines of history. Third, that discourse does not seek to grasp the moment in history, wherein the social and the persons under study are inverted into each other. Fourth, that Truth is not the purpose of history, but the discourse contained in history.
Long period approach
Global intellectual history
In the 21st century, the field of
global intellectual history has received increased attention. In 2013,
Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori published the anthology ''Global Intellectual History''.
In 2016, the Routledge journal ''Global Intellectual History'' (ed.
Richard Whatmore) was established.
J. G. A. Pocock and
John Dunn are among those who recently have argued for a more global approach to intellectual history in contrast to
Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism)
is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western worl ...
.
See also
*
Cambridge School (intellectual history)
*
Global intellectual history
*
Great Conversation
The Great Conversation is the ongoing process of writers and thinkers referencing, building on, and refining the work of their predecessors. This process is characterized by writers in the Western canon making comparisons and allusions to the wor ...
*
Warsaw School (history of ideas)
References
Further reading
About intellectual history
*
Surveys
*Assis, Arthur Alfaix (2021).
History of Ideas and Its Surroundings. In: ''Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method''. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
*Byrd, B. (2020). "
The Rise of African American Intellectual History." ''Modern Intellectual History.''
*
* Isaac, Joel et al, eds. ''The Worlds of American Intellectual History'' (Oxford University Press, 2017), 391 pp
* Historical Specificity of Modern Social and Political Thought, Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos para Innovar y Mejorar la Educación (PAPIME), Creación de Infografías Animadas para la Enseñanza de la Materia: Introducción al Pensamiento Social y Político Moderno (PE301017) de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
*
Samuel Moyn and
Andrew Sartori (editors), ''
Global intellectual history'' (2013)
*''Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas'' edited by Philip P. Wiener, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973–74. online
Volume 1234*
Grafton, Anthony. "The history of ideas: Precept and practice, 1950–2000 and beyond." ''
Journal of the History of Ideas'' 67#1 (2006): 1–32
online*
Higham, John. "The Rise of American Intellectual History," ''
American Historical Review
''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...
'' (1951) 56#3 pp. 453–47
in JSTOR* Rahman, M. M. ed. ''Encyclopaedia of Historiography'' (2006
Excerpt and text search* Schneider, Axel, and
Daniel Woolf
Daniel Robert Woolf (born 5 December 1958) is a British-Canadian historian and former university administrator. He served as the 20th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a position to which he was ...
, eds. ''The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 5: Historical Writing Since 1945'
excerpt* Woolf D. R. ''A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing'' (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (2 vol 1998
excerpt and text search
Monographs
*
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
et al., ''The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years'', New Press 1997
*
Jacques Le Goff
Jacques Le Goff (1 January 1924 – 1 April 2014) was a French historian and prolific author specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries.
Le Goff championed the Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term ...
, ''Intellectuals in the Middle Ages'', translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993)
*
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
. ''A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'', New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945.
*
Toews, John E. "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn. The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience", in: ''
The American Historical Review
''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...
'', 92/4 (1987), 879–907.
* Turner, Frank M. ''European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche'' (2014)
*Riccardo Bavaj, ''Intellectual History'', in: ''Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte'' (2010), URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Intellectual_History
Primary sources
*George B. de Huszar, ed. ''The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait''. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1960. anthology by many contributors.
External links
*''Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas'', edited by
Philip P. Wiener
Philip P. Wiener (July 8, 1905 – April 5, 1992) was an American philosopher who was a specialist on Pragmatism, Charles S. Pierce, Leibnitz, the history and philosophy of science, and the history of ideas. He co-founded the ''Journal of the Hi ...
, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973–74
Volume 1: Abstraction in the Formation of Concepts TO Design ArgumentVolume 2: Despotism TO LawVolume 3: Law, Concept of TO Protest MovementsVolume 4: Psychological Ideas in Antiquity TO Zeitgeist(Courtesy of the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
)
*Historical Specificity of Modern Social and Political Thought, Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos para Innovar y Mejorar la Educación (PAPIME), Creación de Infografías Animadas para la Enseñanza de la Materia: Introducción al Pensamiento Social y Político Moderno (PE301017) de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
The International Dictionary of Intellectual Historians a project launched by the ''
Journal of the History of Ideas''
A guide to applying to do graduate work in intellectual history Anthony Grafton, ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 67.1 (2006) 1–32
*"Intellectual History/History of Ideas", Seán Farrell Moran, in ''The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing'', Vol. I
*"What is Intellectual History Now?", A. Brett in: ''What is History Now?''
"What Is Intellectual History? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field"(
Peter Gordon, 2012)
{{Authority control
Cultural history
Fields of history
History of philosophy
Humanities