"The investigative premise of intellectual history is that ideas do not develop in isolation from the thinkers who conceptualize and apply those ideas."
This subfield studies the ideas and philosophical movements of the modern period, including existentialism, Marxism, and feminism.
Enlightenment: A cultural, philosophical, and intellectual movement that emerged in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, advocating reason, individualism, and science over traditional authority and religion.
Rationalism: A philosophical doctrine that stresses the importance of rationality, logic, and reason in human understanding and knowledge.
Empiricism: The philosophical position that knowledge comes primarily from sensory experience and observation of the external world.
Scientific Revolution: A series of intellectual and cultural changes in Europe in the 16th through the 18th centuries, characterized by the development of modern science based on empirical observation and experiment.
Enlightenment philosophers: A group of influential thinkers, writers, and intellectuals who advanced enlightenment ideas, including John Locke, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith.
Romanticism: An artistic and literary movement that emerged in Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, emphasizing emotion, imagination, and individualism over reason and rational thought.
Marxism: A social, political, and economic theory that emphasizes social justice, equality, and the eventual abolition of capitalism through collective ownership of the means of production.
Liberalism: A political philosophy emphasizing individual rights, democracy, and free markets.
Nationalism: A political ideology that emphasizes the importance of the nation-state, often incorporating cultural, linguistic, and historical factors.
Positivism: A philosophical movement that emphasizes scientific observation and empirical evidence as the primary sources of knowledge.
Existentialism: A philosophical movement that emphasizes individual freedom and choice, questioning the meaning and purpose of human existence.
Feminism: A social, political, and intellectual movement that advocates for gender equality and the rights of women.
Postmodernism: A movement in literature, art, and philosophy that challenges the notion of objective truth, advocating instead for relativism and subjective experience.
Psychoanalysis: A psychological theory and therapy that emphasizes the role of unconscious motivations and conflicts in human behavior.
Postcolonialism: An interdisciplinary field of study that examines the cultural, social, and political legacy of colonialism, often incorporating themes of identity, power, and resistance.
Social History: Tracing societal changes through time and how they influence intellectual developments. It includes topics like changing gender roles, social movements, and class structures etc.
Cultural History: Focusing on the cultural practices and beliefs of a certain era, tracing shifts over time and the impact on art, literature, music, and philosophy.
Political History: Examining how different political theories and events shaped intellectual debates and discussions. It includes topics like democracy, authoritarianism, nationalism etc.
Economic History: Exploring how economic theories and practices came to shape intellectual thought, and vice versa. Topics include capitalism, industrialization, and labor activism etc.
Religious History: Tracing the evolution of religious thought and the impact it has on intellectual history. It includes topics like the Reformation, Catholicism, and Islamism etc.
Intellectual Biography: Focusing on the individual lives of notable scholars and thinkers, and the evolution of their thoughts over time.
Science, Technology and Medicine: Examining the impact of scientific discoveries and advances on intellectual thought, and vice versa. Topics include genetics, artificial intelligence, and medical ethics etc.
Environmental History: Focusing on the relationship between humans and their natural surroundings, and how it has influenced intellectual developments over time.
Legal History: Examining how legal systems and theories have shaped intellectual thought, and vice versa. Topics include human rights, constitutionalism, and jurisprudence etc.
Linguistic History: Exploring how language and linguistic theories shape intellectual thought, and how intellectual thought influences language itself. Topics include language acquisition, translation, and semantics etc.
"(i) as abstract propositions for critical application; and (ii) in concrete terms of culture, life, and history."
"The history of ideas emerged from the European disciplines of Kulturgeschichte (Cultural History) and Geistesgeschichte (Intellectual History)."
"To develop a global intellectual history that shows the parallels and the interrelations in the history of critical thinking in every society."
"The history of reading, and the history of the book, 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 that study visual and non-verbal forms of evidence."
"The concept of the intellectual as a political citizen of public society dates from the 19th century."
"Anyone who explored his or her thoughts on paper can be the subject of an intellectual history."
"The Cheese and the Worms (1976), Carlo Ginzburg's study of the 16th-century Italian miller Menocchio (1532–1599) and his cosmology, falls within the genre of intellectual history..."
"The Journal of the History of Ideas is one of the flagship journals in intellectual history."