Intellectual history as a direction in the methodology of historical research

Abstract

This article addresses the increased interest in intellectual history as a line of research. Additionally, focus is placed on the subject of intellectual history research, which covers many types of human creative activity. The authors of the article see it, rather, not as a subdiscipline of history, but as an interdisciplinary field focused on clarifying problems and drawing attention to boundaries, and believes that it should not follow one “correct” approach. The authors contend that the issues of religion and identity, problems of collective motivation, and our relationship with the natural world are important topics in intellectual history today. Intellectual history offers what other areas of history could not. Historians’ claims are more restrained than those of philosophers and social scientists. In modern intellectual history, the desire to unite the efforts of all specialists whose professional interests are associated with the study of various types of human creative activity, including its conditions, forms and results, prevails. This, however, does not deny the existence of more moderate versions of “intellectual history”, limited to the study of exclusively the intellectual sphere of consciousness, in particular the outstanding personalities of the past. Thus, in their scientific quest, intellectual historians can turn to disciplines such as economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, philosophy, literature and its criticism, but at the same time they should not neglect their own task and the restrictions imposed by their cultural horizons and disciplinary rules. When building a cultural context, intellectual history becomes an internal part of cultural history, and cultural history serves as the external side of intellectual history; therefore, historians should pay attention to both the internal and external. Key words: intellectual history, methodology, history of ideas, sociohistoricism, culture, mindset, history of mentalities, creativity, explanation