Enthusiastic Reading

Rethinking Contextualization in Intellectual History

Bibliographic Data

ID12740324
AuthorsEdward Baring (Drew University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume14
Issue1
Pages257-268
Publication date2015-09-02
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Intellectual History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1479-2443 • E-ISSN: 1479-2451
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1479244315000244
OpenAlexW2594506479
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited3

In the past ten years, contextual approaches to intellectual history have been dislodged from their dominant position in the discipline. In the 2013 volume Rethinking European Intellectual History , edited by Samuel Moyn and Darrin McMahon, a number of the contributors challenged the previous generation's emphasis on context, whether social, political, or linguistic, arguing that it constrained the scope of intellectual history and unnecessarily foreclosed the possibility of critical engagement: if we could only understand ideas by embedding them in foreign contexts, how could they be meaningful today? Instead, many historians have come to embrace what had earlier been derided as a form of “idealism”: an emphasis on the autonomy of ideas and their internal structure. Paying attention to this structure has allowed historians to treat ideas less as historical artifacts and thus offer them as living resources for thinking through problems in the present

Autonomy · Context (archaeology · Contextualization · Epistemology · Idealism · Intellectual history · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Scope (computer science · Social science · Sociology · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography

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