Reaction Essay
What is Intellectual History?
Stefan Collini
Introduction and Overview
At the outset, I can say that I have a vague notion of what intellectual history is. As this area of historical study seemed arcane or highbrow. Most historians deal with political and/or economic areas of historical inquiry. This essay summarizes what the article is all about and evaluates if the article/author achieved its purpose.
The article basically provides various discussions from different authors regarding what intellectual history is. Stefan Collini points out that just like the other areas of history, intellectual history “most certainly is part of history, part of the attempt to understand past human experience.” The intellectual historian is interested in the “ideas to be seen at work” and the “understanding of those ideas, arguments, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and preoccupations that together made up the intellectual or reflective life of previous societies.” He further states that while other historians look into the documents/texts for data as a “necessary means to understanding something other than the texts themselves”, the intellectual historian is primarily concerned with “understanding of his chosen texts is itself the aim of his enquiries.”
Another historian Michael Biddiss succinctly argued that intellectual history takes account “not simply of political and social ideas but also of their interaction with developments in the natural sciences, in philosophy and religious thinking, and, not least, in literature and the arts where the overlap with ‘cultural’ history becomes clearest.” For Biddiss, intellectual history “yields no general law allowing us to make simple correlation between the intrinsic worth of ideas and their practical influence; that judgments about such worth have to be subordinated to properly historical explanations as to how, why, and in what degree these notions became current.” Moreover, he adds that intellectual history involves “complex ways through which ideas (moulding, yet also moulded by, their social setting) might interact with a particular political and economic environment.”
Key also to our understanding of what intellectual history is the definition by Quentin Skinner. He eloquently states that intellectual history is “the study of past thoughts.” Subsequently, he clarifies that intellectual history is “The study of the great religious and philosophical systems of the past; the study of ordinary people’s beliefs about heaven and earth, past and future, metaphysics and science; the examination of our ancestors’ attitudes towards youth and age, war and peace, love and hate, cabbages and kings; the uncovering of their prejudices about what one ought to eat, how one ought to dress, whom one ought to admire; the analysis of their assumptions about health and illness, good and evil, morals and politics, birth, copulation and death - all these and a vast range of kindred topics fall within the capacious orbit of intellectual history.”
What is Intellectual History?
What is intellectual history? Historian J.G.A. Pocock states that it is a “certain kind of intellectual activity, which used to be and sometimes still is called ‘the history of political thought’…”
However, Pocock has some second thoughts with the term ‘thought’. He prefers instead the word ‘discourse’ which means “‘speech’, ‘literature’ and public utterances in general, involving an element of theory and carried on in a variety of contexts with which it can be connected in a variety of ways.” For Pocock, intellectual history is a history of human actions and the circumstances generated by the performance of such actions in a variety of circumstances.
Bruce Kuklick contributes his answer to the inquiry regarding intellectual history. He states: “Intellectual history as it has come to be practiced has defined itself as an amorphous field unified only by historians’ emphasis on the importance of consciousness or ideas in understanding the past.” Kuklick emphasizes that for intellectual history to work it should not exist or be limited in the head only. It must be connected to “mundane realities” or it should be grounded on social context. Thus, intellectual history should not be just about “the study of ‘high’ ideas of past periods, the views of intellectuals who participated in the learned culture of their time…”
Overall, the article provides key points and arguments favoring or critical to the study of intellectual history. Based on the points and counterpoints laid in the article, intellectual history as an area of study/inquiry has its own pluses and minuses. On the upside, these critical observations on intellectual history boils down on approach, taste and style of the historian. On the downside, the misgivings of historians may put this area of inquiry further in the periphery as it is perceived to be elitist and detached from the realities of everyday life dramas.
The article elucidates some key drawbacks on the study of intellectual history. Stefan Collini notes that the notion of the ‘history of ideas’ may elicit assumptions that this activity is merely abstraction anchored only on the human mind but detached from concrete “aspect of human activity”. Allege misconceptions on intellectual history includes: 1) intellectual history is the history of something that never really mattered, 2) intellectual history is inherently ‘idealist’, 3) intellectual history is nothing more than the history of the various disciplines of intellectual enquiry, and 4) intellectual history must have a method or theory or set of concepts that is distinctively its own.
In the study of intellectual history Quentin Skinner notes two approach-method in its inquiry, namely: 1) unit-ideas analysis, and 2) textual analysis. However, Skinner finds these approach-method problematic. He says, “The danger with both the approaches I have singled out is obviously anachronism. Neither seems capable of recovering the precise historical identity of a given text. For neither seems sufficiently interested in the deep truth that concepts must not be viewed simply as propositions with meanings attached to them…”
Misconceptions and Problem of Method
How then to address such misconceptions and problems of method? Skinner offers a solution; he states: “The suggestion has been that we need to focus not on text or unit-ideas, but rather on the entire social and political vocabularies of given historical periods. Beginning this way, it is claimed, we may eventually be able to fit the major texts into their appropriate intellectual contexts, pointing to the fields of meaning out of which they arose, and to which they in turn contributed.” Skinner pointing to an emerging approach of intellectual history, strongly posits the approach-method of historians of political ideas such as J.G.A. Pocock - that is to “concentrate not on texts or traditions of thought, but rather on what he calls the study of political ‘languages’.”
Pocock clarifies: “Human beings inhabiting political societies find themselves first surrounded by political institutions and conventions, second performing political actions and third engaging in political practices.” He adds, “Political societies generate a constant flow of language and discourse, in which actions are both performed and discussed. Language furnishes not only the practice of politics, but also its theory. The language-using agents not only utter, but argue; they reply in speech to one another’s speech acts, challenge one another’s use of words and demand clarification of one another’s meanings.”
What then are the prospects of an intellectual historian or the historian of ideas writing on/about Mindanao? In the light of recent events, how should we approach the writing, for example, of the 2017 Marawi Incident? Should we just look into the “unit-ideas” such as ‘jihad’, ‘terrorism’, ‘kilafa’, etc. Or, should we just look into the “textual” aspect and analyze the pronouncements of the Islamic State inspired attackers? How are we going to view Islam and its ideological underpinnings in the context of the siege? Should we view its religious and ideological roots as “radicalization-of-Islam” or as “Islamization-of-radicalism”? Perhaps, beyond this dichotomy or outside of this box? As suggested by the discussants in this article, the “unit-ideas” and “text” should be linked to the dramas and realities of Mindanao; the political economic and sociocultural milieu of the Moro world and the nuances of everyday life in the Lake Lanao region.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, I find this article both comprehensive and informative. The discussants in the article were able to provide insights albeit briefly, on the dynamics of the history of ideas as intellectual history. Lastly, this reaction essay is a welcome and engaging exercise to reflect and critique on the techniques of research adding additional tools and weapons to our arsenal as future professional historians.
Reference
Stefan Collini. 1985. ‘What is Intellectual History’, History Today Volume 35.
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