All historians are interpreters of
text if they be private letters, Government records or parish birthlists or
whatever. For most kinds of historians, these are only the necessary means to
understanding something other than the texts themselves, such as a political
action or a historical trend, whereas for the intellectual historian, a full
understanding of his chosen texts is itself the aim of his enquiries.
Of course, the intellectual history is particularly prone to draw on the focus
of other disciplines that are habitually interpreting texts for purposes of
their own, probing the reasoning that ostensibly connects premises and
conclusions. Furthermore, the boundaries with adjacent subdisciplines are
shifting and indistinct: the history of art and the history of science both
claim a certain autonomy, partly just because they require specialised
technical skills, but both can also be seen as part of a wider intellectual
history, as is evident when one considers, for example, the common stock of
knowledge about cosmological beliefs or moral ideals of a period.
Like all historians, the intellectual
historian is a consumer rather than a producer of ‘methods’. His
distinctiveness lies in which aspect of the past he is trying to illuminate,
not in having exclusive possession of either a corpus of evidence or a body of
techniques. That being said, it does seem that the label ‘intellectual history’
attracts a disproportionate share of misunderstanding.
It is alleged that intellectual
history is the history of something that never really mattered. The long
dominance of the historical profession by political historians bred a kind of
philistinism, an unspoken belief that power and its exercise was ‘what
mattered’. The prejudice was reinforced by the assertion that political action
was never really the outcome of principles or ideas that were ‘more
flapdoodle’. The legacy of this precept is still discernible in the tendency to
require ideas to have ‘licensed’ the political class before they can be deemed
worthy of intellectual attention, as if there were some reasons why the history
of art or science, of philosophy or literature, were somehow of interest and
significance than the history of Parties or Parliaments. Perhaps in recent
years the mirror-image of this philistinism has been more common in the claim
that ideas of any one is of systematic expression or sophistication do not
matter, as if they were only held by a minority.
Answer the following questions:
1. An intellectual historian aims
to fully understand
(A) the chosen texts of his
own
(B) political actions
(C) historical trends
(D) his enquiries
2. Intellectual historians do not
claim exclusive possession of
(A) conclusions
(B) any corpus of evidence
(C)
distinctiveness
(D) habitual interpretation
3. The misconceptions about
intellectual history stem from
(A) a body of
techniques
(B) the common stock of knowledge
(C) the dominance of political
historians
(D) cosmological beliefs
4. What is philistinism?
(A) Reinforcement of
prejudice
(B) Fabrication of reasons
(C) The hold of land-owning
classes
(D) Belief that power and its
exercise matter
5. Knowledge of cosmological
beliefs or moral ideas of a period can be drawn as part of
(A) literary criticism
(B) history of science
(C) history of philosophy
(D) intellectual history
6. The claim that ideas of any one
is of systematic expression do not matter, as if they were held by a minority,
is
(A) to have a licensed political
class
(B) a political action
(C) a philosophy of literature
(D) the mirror-image of
philistinism
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