The Logic of the History of Ideas

Patterns of family life, debates in politics, religious observances, technological inventions, scientiŽc beliefs, literature, and the arts – all of these things are aspects of human culture. Typically we deŽne a broad concept of human culture in contrast to physical and biological processes. One key feature differentiates the cultural even if the precise boundaries between it, the physical, and the biological sometimes remain blurred: cultural phenomena convey meanings, and they do so because cultures are composed at least in part of beliefs. Students of culture concentrate on the meanings conveyed by patterns of behaviour, forms of social organization, economic systems, and technical inventions. To study the history of ideas is to study such meanings, and so culture, from an avowedly historical perspective. But surely the study of culture is always parasitic on history? Although scholars can evaluate cultural phenomena morally, epistemically, and aesthetically, they cannot evaluate what they do not know, and the only way they can acquire knowledge of cultural phenomena is through historical studies. Hence, any theory of culture relies at least implicitly on an analysis of the nature of the history of ideas. The meanings or beliefs that constitute cultural phenomena enter into almost every area of historical scholarship. When people act, they do so in accord with their conscious, preconscious, or unconscious beliefs, so the historical study of actions, and also practices and institutions, always involves the history of ideas, albeit alongside historical explorations of desires, physical movements, and natural phenomena. Even when historians concern themselves with the consequences of actions, as is common in economic history, they cannot explain these consequences apart from by reference to the meanings that informed both the actions and the ways in which other people understood these actions. Hence, almost all historical studies rely at least implicitly on an analysis of the nature of the history of ideas. Historical and cultural studies alike must embody a series of philosophical views about the history of ideas. The Logic of the History of Ideas attempts to bring the relevant philosophical issues to the fore so as to reect upon them (Bevir 1999). It answers questions such as: what is a meaning?