The History of Ideas, Intellectual History, and the History of Philosophy

Those who are at present interested in methodological problems of historian of philosophy cannot fail to take note of existence of what has come to be called the history of ideas. The latter term has been used in a variety of senses, sometimes being equated with intellectual history generally.1 However, it is not in that wider sense that I wish to consider it. Instead, I shall in first instance confine my attention to problems which arise out of two important parallel movements, each of which may be regarded as an attempt to promote study of the history of ideas in a narrower and more technical sense: movement in United States of which A. 0. Lovejoy was originator and dominant spokesman, and movement inspired in Germany by Dilthey's work, and now represented by Erich Rothacker's Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte. Because Lovejoy and his close collaborators have written at greater length concerning their methodological presuppositions than have those connected with Archiv, and also because these presuppositions seem to raise a greater variety of issues in a somewhat more acute form, it is with former group, rather than latter, that I shall here be concerned.2