Archaeologist, coroner, detective, lawyer, translator or what? The (intellectual) historian, cultural criticism, audiences and the painterly eye

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article does three things. First, it briefly presents some relevant depictions of the (general) historian by past and present scholars, whilst also touching on the contested role of theory in historians’ practice. Second, it illustrates a few distinct images by which the practice of the intellectual historian has been characterised. It thus argues that these images, which chiefly draw on recent work by Stefan Collini (1947-), provide a specific identity of/for intellectual history as a discipline that should be engaged in attention to audience, essayistic style and cultural criticism. Third, by focusing on the characterisation of the intellectual historian as someone trained in painterly observation put forward by the historian of ideas Duncan Forbes (1922–1994), the last section of the present paper points out some important similarities between Collini and Forbes. In so doing, this contribution also says something tentative about the status of the discipline, its value as well as its future.