Intellectual History in a Global Age

• Published in: Journal of the history of ideas Vol. 66; no. 2; pp. 155 - 167
• Main Author: Kelley, Donald R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Johns Hopkins University Press 01-04-2005; University of Pennsylvania Press
• Subjects: Academic discipline; Ancient philosophy; Constructivism; Cultural history; History; History of ideas; History of philosophy; Intellectual history; Intellectual History in a Global Age; Intellectual work; Internalism; Literary criticism; Literary history; Literature; Lovejoy, Arthur Onken (1873-1962); Marx, Karl (1818-1883); Philosophy; Reductionism; Space; Spitzer, Leo; Time
• ISSN: 0022-5037; 1086-3222; 1086-3222
• DOI: 10.1353/jhi.2005.0034

The history of ideas is an interdisciplinary field that began as an offshoot of the history of philosophy and was transformed by notions of perspective and cultural context drawn from the tradition of historical studies. The result is the practice of intellectual history, which has been carried out between the poles of inquiry commonly known as internalist and externalist, corresponding to mental phenomena and collective behavior in cultural surroundings. These are not opposed but rather complementary methods, and intellectual history may be seen as the inside of cultural history and cultural history as the outside of intellectual history, the intellectual historian's task being to bring the two into alliance.