Dear history-ideas member,
Overnight it occured to me it would be much easier to post the information
about the book into a message, and it seems to have worked!
CH
The Descent of Ideas: The history of intellectual history
Donald R. Kelley, Rutgers University, USA
The 'history of ideas', better known these days as intellectual history, is
a flourishing field of study which has been the object of much controversy
but hardly any historical exploration. This major new work from Donald R.
Kelley is the first comprehensive history of intellectual history, tracing
the study of the history of thought from ancient, medieval and early modern
times, its emergence as the 'history of ideas' in the 18th century, and its
subsequent expansion.
The point of departure for this study is the perspective opened up by Victor
Cousin in the early 19th-century on 'Eclecticism' and its association with
the history of philosophy established by Renaissance scholars. Kelley
considers a broad range of topics, including the rivalry between 'ideas' and
language, the rise of cultural history, the contributions of certain 19th-
and 20th-century practitioners of the history of ideas in interdisciplinary
areas of philosophy, literature and the sciences, and finally the current
state of intellectual history. The central theme of the book is the
interplay between the canon of philosophical thought and the tradition of
language and textual study, the divergence of the latter marking the
'descent of ideas' into the realm of cultural history.
Contents: Introduction: What was the history of ideas?; Prelude: The new
philosophy of Victor Cousin; Eclecticism in retrospect; The 'light of
philosophy' reborn; The way of ideas and the ways of words; The new
eclecticism; The history of literature; The history of science; Human
sciences; The history of philosophy; After the new histories; Index.
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