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From Intellectual History to the Social History of Ideas : A Genealogy, 1930-1980

The article aims to understand the origins, transformations, and characteristics of the History of Thought from historiographical perspectives by examining the case history of the discipline in the United States, the virtual birthplace of the field. Focusing on the half century between 1930 (when the History of Thought became an independent profession) and 1980 (when the discipline was on the verge of collapse), the author divides the period into three phases according to different emphases on the role of ideas vis-a-vis society and human agency : 1) the stage of primitive intellectual history (1930-1940), which was initiated by the affiliated members of the New History and challenged by Arthur O. Lovejoy s ‘History of Ideas’ 2) that of ‘Proper Intellectual History’ (1950-1960), primarily advocated and practiced by Crane Brinton, Stuart Hughes, and Frank Manuel, and 3) that of the ‘Social History of Ideas,’ invented by Peter Gay and refined by Robert Darnton. The transition from one phase to another was caused by the later phase endeavoring to rectify the defects of the previous one. For instance, Proper Intellectual History tried to go beyond the History of Ideas, which had kept track of a permanent/timeless life cycle of the ‘unit ideas’, by emphasizing the importance of social context and milieu in interpreting ideas. The practitioners of the Social History of Ideas, on the other hand, urged the followers of Proper Intellectual History to discard the usage of vague and superficial categories such as ‘climate of ideas’ and ‘frame of minds’, which hardly reflected the diversity and complexity of world-views that differed in class, gender, religion and so forth. As the methodology had changed from the Intellectual History to the Social History of Ideas, the horizon of the History of Thought expanded from the textual analysis of canons written by great thinkers to socio-cultural description of the mentalite of ordinary people. The author concludes the article by raising another question: What kind of ‘New Intellectual History’ will come to replace the Social History of Ideas? What will Intellectual History look alike after ‘the linguistic turn’? A century-long odyssey of the discipline of the History of Thought is, indeed, not over yet.