{"id":11376,"date":"2013-05-19T11:08:08","date_gmt":"2013-05-19T15:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=11376"},"modified":"2013-05-19T11:08:08","modified_gmt":"2013-05-19T15:08:08","slug":"terminology-the-history-of-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2013\/05\/19\/terminology-the-history-of-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Terminology: The History of Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Arthur<\/a>
Arthur Lovejoy (1873-1962), proponent of one version of the history of ideas<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the drums I like to beat is that historians’ methodological toolkit is well developed, but that we do not use this toolkit as cooperatively and as productively as we might. \u00a0Part of making good use of tools is having good terminology, which helps us to understand and talk about what tools we have and what they’re good for, and how they can be used selectively and in chorus with each other. \u00a0It also helps avoid needless disputes, where vague language leads to perceptions of wrong-headedness and naivet\u00e9. \u00a0For example, I like to talk about the need for “synthesis,” which I take to mean an interrelating of historians’ works at the level of their particulars (rather than mere thematic similarity). \u00a0For me, synthesis is a sign of a healthy historiography, but such calls could be dismissed by others as a call for “Grand Synthesis,” which all right-thinking historians have been taught to shun.<\/span><\/p>\n

For this reason, I thought it might be useful to suggest some definitions, which I personally follow. \u00a0In some cases, these are the result of extensive reflection, and, if you go into the archives of this blog, you will find I do not use the terms consistently. \u00a0And, of course, I don’t suppose my terms are the final word on the subject. \u00a0The best thing would be if they opened the door for debate and clarification. \u00a0In this post, I want to talk about:<\/span><\/p>\n

The History of Ideas<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The history of ideas is sometimes regarded as a subset of intellectual history<\/strong>, and is sometimes understood to mean the history of Big Ideas, like democracy, or, in geology, uniformitarianism. \u00a0Ideas might also mean some discrete object appearing (and, perhaps, evolving) through a body of texts. Think Arthur Lovejoy’s classic work<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the history of ideas on the “great chain of being”.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I take the landscape of ideas to be much larger, so that the history of ideas is more properly synonymous with the history of thought<\/strong>. \u00a0It may include\u00a0explicit ideas<\/strong>, but it can also focus on the\u00a0implicit ideas\u00a0<\/strong>that inform speech and action:\u00a0values, ideals and ideologies, preoccupations and obsessions, etiquette and customs, prejudices, “mentalit\u00e9s<\/em>,” “ontologies,”<\/span><\/a><\/span> etc<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Traditionally, I think there is a revisionist tendency to oppose the histories of explicit, intellectualized ideas with histories of implicit ideas. \u00a0Identifying implicit ideas underlying<\/em> explicit ideas can remove their power and their claims to historical centrality. \u00a0Here we can look to the Marxian interest in identifying the class interests underlying “ideology,” and to Freudian psychoanalysis. \u00a0This concentration on the underlying idea could be extended to ideas that appeared to permeate societies. \u00a0One might look to Nietzsche’s explorations into the history of morals, as well as to\u00a0the anthropological\/sociological imperative to ascertain the relationship between ideas and social structures. \u00a0Both projects would inform the work of Michel Foucault, who held a chair in the “history of systems of thought”<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time,\u00a0cultural<\/strong> history<\/strong> can use non-intellectualized ideas to open up a world beyond the realm of established ideas, where ideas are more important for their “meaning” and the diverse<\/em> values those meanings reveal, than for their strictly functional role. \u00a0Anthropologist Clifford Geertz is often cited on this score<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u00a0On a somewhat different point, Carlo Ginzburg’s\u00a0The Cheese and the Worms<\/em> is often cited for its depiction of its protagonist’s idiosyncratic appropriation of ideas from the canon. \u00a0His ideas\u00a0seemed to defy<\/span><\/a><\/span> the power of the Church’s overarching system of ideas, even though those ideas held sway over his life and death.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think the allure of the history of ideas is two-fold.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, ideas often seem like the most important<\/em> thing we can study, because they serve as a sort of engine (or navigation system, perhaps) for history. Whether we are dealing with a small group of intellectuals, the membership of a political party, or a culture of millions of people, by attempting to encapsulate those groups’ ideas, we suppose we can explain their behavior. \u00a0Moreover, by understanding those ideas, historians can purport to intervene by identifying those ideas’ ongoing (quite likely pathological\/ideological) role in today’s society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, ideas can seem very easy<\/em> to study. \u00a0A body of ideas does not necessarily grow in proportion to the size of the community holding them, meaning we can attempt to encapsulate an entire society just by studying the ideas pervading it. \u00a0Moreover,\u00a0one can attempt to read the history of\u00a0ideas as they are exhibited within a relatively small sample of texts. \u00a0These two strategies, of course,\u00a0court problems of interpolation and extrapolation, respectively. \u00a0But, given standard caveats about the unknowability and contingency of history, such interpolation and extrapolation may be easily justified.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be more blunt about these points, the history of ideas—particularly the history of invisible implicit ideas<\/span><\/a><\/span>—can seem like an easy path for lazy historians to exert their own importance as intellectuals.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, this is not an innate feature of the genre. \u00a0While\u00a0I would agree that historians are forced to extrapolate ideas from texts, and to interpolate them in populations, responsible historians recognize that this inevitability must be accompanied \u00a0by the proviso that we must never rest content. \u00a0If we can develop accounts with finer grains, then we should. \u00a0This, of course, necessitates mechanisms for consolidating our gains, that is, making sure we know the fineness of the grain we have already achieved.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, I woud hasten to point out, systems of ideas can be both deviously subtle and monstrously complex. \u00a0Very good histories of ideas require deft critical skills. \u00a0Maintaining a historiography of ideas in its full depth and complexity requires the maintenance of a strong critical community as well as excellent and patient pedagogy, which can accommodate the need to keep track of a wide array of ideas and the places and purposes of their expression.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most important caveat I would suggest with respect to the history of ideas is that we need to be more conscious of its dominance in our methodology. \u00a0In the mid-20th century the history of ideas was extremely popular among high-ranking intellectuals. \u00a0Today it remains popular among historians of all levels, except that most historians who practice the history of ideas do not describe what they do as such. \u00a0This, perhaps, makes us too negligent of “non-idea” objects in history. \u00a0The history of ideas is not, I think, well-integrated with histories of economies, institutions, demographics, geography, and even—God forbid—chronology. \u00a0The historiography that can pull off such an integration is a very good historiography indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

Next in this series<\/strong>: Intellectual history as a sub-genre of the history of ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the drums I like to beat is that historians’ methodological toolkit is well developed, but that we do not use this toolkit as cooperatively and as productively as we might. \u00a0Part of making good use of tools is having good terminology, which helps us to understand and talk about what tools we have<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… Terminology: The History of Ideas<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[135,212,259,477,898,1087,1355],"class_list":["post-11376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terminology","tag-arthur-lovejoy","tag-carlo-ginzburg","tag-clifford-geertz","tag-friedrich-nietzsche","tag-karl-marx","tag-michel-foucault","tag-sigmund-freud"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}