Intellectual History

The intellectual history is one of the branches of the historical research. Of recent appearance, agitated by many controversies and oppositionselle, this field of study is placed in the continuity of the Histoire of the ideas.

Stakes

In the years 1960 and 1970 in France, the history of the long life and the quantitative history, in the tradition of the school of Annals, dominated the historical production. That left only little place to the intellectual history, considered as too near to biographical and the policy and thus devalued with the eyes of the majority of the Historiens. It is thus necessary to wait the years 1980 to see emerging a specific field of study on the history of the Intellectuels which, since, meets a certain success near the historians and of the general public.

If the history of the intellectuals is interested initially in the protagonists, the intellectual history has as an ambition to replace the traditional history of the ideas, which was satisfied chronologically to present the plays of influence of one author to the other: “The intellectual history intends to return account of works, course, routes, beyond the disciplinary borders”, explains François Dosse. One of the principal debates in intellectual history related to “the reciprocal merits of the internal analysis of works and the external study of the context, of the systematic comprehension of the thoughts and the location of the social rootings of their production or circulation. ”

Regarding these debates as “without exit”, Roger Chartier took as a starting point the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to define the intellectual history. It would have thus as a function “to include/understand how each field of the intellectual production translates according to its own structures and its references the external determinations which weigh on him. It is thus only one analysis of the particular field considered, its constitution like field and its history, its divisions and oppositions, its operating rules, which can make it possible to assign socially, without mechanism nor reductionnism, the thoughts and the ideas”.

Concerning the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, which do not achieve the unanimity among the historians, François Dosse invites “to leave a static design of a context which too often functions as a rigid framework and a source of mechanical explanations”. Being subject to the influence of the “linguistic Turning”, of many researchers who came from the social Histoire are interested in years 1980 and 1990 in the concepts of culture and representation, because the social one seemed to limit to him only the capacity of explanation. Like François Dosse writes it: “One passed from a history of mentalities triumphing in the years 1970 to a intellectual or cultural history on the basis over an increasingly radical criticism over the mode over reductionnism implied by a sociological determinism”.

François Dosse presents Louis Bodin like very remote historian a “of the model bourdieusien”. However, in a precursory work published in 1964, this last considered it regrettable that the world of the intellectuals is not approached “like a sociological reality” and that “historical background, the social situation, cultural dimension” are neglected. According to Louis Bodin and Jean Touchard, the history of the intellectuals passes by a precise study of the evolution and place of the structures Universitaires.

Methods

On the other hand, those which are located in the continuity of the research engaged by Jean-François Sirinelli privilege three research tools (places, mediums and networks), which make it possible to choose an approach at the same time Géographique, Sociologique and Idéologique. The reflection is centered on the structuring of the intellectual medium, its operating process, his report/ratio with the policy. The intellectual networks are forged around strong personalities, but their constitution is complex because it concerns a whole series of elements, at the same time institutional, scientific, political, friendly… For the academics, the bonds between individuals are generally woven during the formation or of the militant activities. The dynamics of these networks rests on the ideological convictions of the protagonists.

From the point of view of a political History of the intellectuals, Jean-François Sirinelli and Jean-Pierre Rioux also opened the way being studied of the structures of sociability, whose objective is to undertake a study “of the relations between the policy and the cultural one, that it acts of ideals, actors or political cultures” But this step was criticized: “The problem is not to reduce the history of the intellectuals to the component " intellectuels" of a vaster political history. ”.

A whole series of methodological tools available to write the history of a selected sample of intellectuals. The study of the individual courses is essential to include/understand the intellectual behaviors. The analysis by generations is often determining to explain the intellectual attitudes, even if it is not systematically applicable.

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