What is Intellectual History?

What is History?

by Richard Whatmore

What is intellectual history? Those who practice intellectual history have described themselves as eavesdroppers upon the conversations of the past, explorers of alien ideological worlds, and translators between historic societies and our own, while their critics have often derided them as narrow-mindedly studying the ideas of dead white men. Some consider the discipline to be among the most important in the humanities and social sciences because it facilitates a better understanding of contemporary ideological programmes and facilitates their rational evaluation.

In this engaging and refreshing introduction to the field, Richard Whatmore begins by examining the historical development of intellectual history, before dissecting its various methodological debates. He presents various alternative ways in which we should think about intellectual history, as well as presenting his own very clear definition of the field. Drawing on a wide range of historical examples, Whatmore shows how ideas - philosophical, political, religious, scientific, artistic - originated in their historical context and how they were both shaped by, and helped to shape, the societies in which they originated. He ends by casting a critical eye over the current state of intellectual history, and a brief discussion of how it might develop in the future.

What is Intellectual History? will become an essential textbook for scholars and students of intellectual history, philosophy, politics, and the humanities.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction

180 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 12, 2015

About the author

Richard Whatmore is professor of modern history and codirector of the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of What Is Intellectual History?, Against War and Empire, and Republicanism and the French Revolution.

Reviews

[Sanjay Prabhakar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overly focused on the Cambridge School

[Robert Varik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for everyone and certainly not for beginners.

[hoffnarr]

Provides a helpful overview to intellectual history as it is understood by the Cambridge school.

[Ghiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief overview and explanation of intellectual history as understood and practised by the Cambridge School.

[Saija Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited to read this book. For obvious reasons, writing a short text intended to articulate an entire discipline means that the author will have to skim over a lot of important details. That being said, I felt this work was intensely inadequate in its task. This may be an unpopular opinion as the over all rating is around 4 stars. I found the book to be full of value judgements and language that encouraged one dimensional views of past approaches to intellectual history. In defining something, one must define what it is not; however, why would one ever state, in an academic text, that a historian had to ‘put an end to the awful work [he]... perceived to have been undertaken in previous decades’ (45). Like, really? Awful work? I found myself skimming through sections looking for the more objective statements hoping to learn something at all. I really can say that I’ll have to look elsewhere for my purposes. Either that, or I’ll miss the merit of intellectual history.

[Arnut Pongprueksa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is pivotal not to judge particular incidents or historic figures in the past straightforwardly. Current frameworks, which we are typically (most of the time, unconsciously) equipped with, are not always the appropriate formulas for us to utilise to dissect certain things occurring years ago. Contexts, intentions, environments, so on and so forth are those which make this world (and humans) rather complex. We can say that it is axiomatic that there is no one-size-fits-all commentary to explain a historic event. Things can be viewed from various perspectives. Past thoughts can’t be right or wrong, and we do not need to label them to be in certain baskets. Rather, it is about understanding and exploring them repeatedly and deeply time after time. These are the lessons that this book has, to an extent, enlightened me, and given me a sense of paradigm shift in viewing things

[VBV · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful book discussing how to approach and study historical ideas. The author emphasizes that a critical point is understanding the real intention of the author, along with the overall context of times and the meaning of the terms used in the past.
Typically we fall into the two types of errors: first, once we are trying to find contemporary concepts in historical texts; and second, when we are trying to attribute to the author responsibility for the further development of his ideas.
It is an extremely useful book for the era of historical revisionism. Recommended for anyone interested in studying the ideas in a non-ideoligical way.

[Eliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book in Oxford after getting excited about Intellectual History in the first place. This book was really helpful in understanding it properly, though the middle part was a bit boring and unhelpful at times because the case-studies were so in depth. Nevertheless, I feel I now understand more what intellectual history entails and what challenges it brings. Now on to study the relation with literary studies in general.

[Erin Kendrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hated this and actually DNFd it.

I feel this is already a particularly pretentious field of study, and Whatmore hasn't done much to help that case. His work is very Cambridge School centric.

Hopefully I will find something a little bit more accessible soon!

[Arran Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really useful intro to what is a very complex topic. This is a beginners guide to intellectual history which has me very much worried that I am going to need to get my dictionary out if I'm going to keep studying intellectual history because I learned about a hundred new words reading this.

[Karthick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best and most accessible introduction to a quite complicated and contested discipline.