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Methods in Intellectual History
Methods in Intellectual History
Methods in Intellectual History
History 2300
METHODS IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
Monday 2-4 pm
Lower Library, Robinson Hall
All historians work with documents, attempt to recover meaning, and must
reconstruct contexts: in this sense, we are all necessarily intellectual historians.
However, in the more precise sense that some historians are specifically
interested in the history of thought and ideas, only they are conventionally
defined as intellectual historians. In the last thirty years, the discipline of
intellectual history has been at the center of historical debates over meaning,
context, hermeneutics, the relation of thought and action, and the explanation of
historical change. It has also had close relations with the study of philosophy,
literature, and political theory, among other fields. This course will introduce
students to some of the major methodological debates within intellectual history,
and between intellectual history and these other disciplines. We will also
examine examples of practice and discuss primary texts in light of our broader
discussions. The examples and the texts will be drawn from both Asian and
Euro-American traditions of thought.
REQUIREMENTS
II. The written requirement for the course can be fulfilled in one of two ways:
SET BOOKS
These books have not been ordered at the Coop. All are in print and can be
bought on-line via amazon.com, abebooks.com, half.com, and similar sites.
†Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald
G. Marshall, 2nd edn., rev. (New York, 1993), pp. 383-491.
†√Martin Jay, “Should Intellectual History Take a Linguistic Turn? Reflections on
the Habermas-Gadamer Debate,” in Dominick LaCapra and Steven L.
Kaplan, eds., Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New
Perspectives (Ithaca, 1982), pp. 86-110. [Available as e-book via HOLLIS]
*John E. Toews, “Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of
Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience,” American Historical Review,
92 (1987), 879-907.
-4-
†√J. G. A. Pocock, “The Concept of a Language and the Métier d’historien: Some
Considerations on Practice,” in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of
Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 19-38.
†J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and
History (New York, 1971; rpt. Chicago, 1989), pp. ix-148, 233-91.
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