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

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The History of Ideas, Intellectual History, and the History of PhilosophyAuthor(s): Maurice MandelbaumReviewed work(s):Source: History and Theory, Vol. 5, Beiheft 5: The Historiography of the History ofPhilosophy (1965), pp. 33-66Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2504118 .

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THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, INTELLECTUAL HISTORY,

AND THE

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

MAURICE MANDELBAUM

I

Those

who are at

present

interested in the

methodological

problems of the

historian

of

philosophy cannot

fail to take

note of

the

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 gener-

ally.1 However,

it is

not

in

that wider sense that I wish to

consider it.

Instead,

I shall in the

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 the study

of the history of ideas

in a narrower and

more

technical

sense: the

movement in the United States of

which A.

0.

Lovejoy was the originator

and the dominant spokesman, and the 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 the Archiv, and also because

these presuppositions seem to raise a greater variety of issues in a somewhat

more

acute form, it is with the former group, rather than

the latter, that

I

shall here be concerned.2

I

For example, in an article entitled Historiography

of Philosophy , Sterling P.

Lamprecht says: The history of philosophy is the history

of the philosopher

thinking;

the history of ideas is the history of man thinking ,

Journal

of

Philosophy,

XXXVI

(1939), 457. A similarly extended use of the term history

of ideas , making it synony-

mous with intellectual historiography , may seem to be sanctioned

by the usage

of

A. 0. Lovejoy in the prefatory article to Volume I

of The Journal of the History

of

Ideas (1940), 3-23. However, that article must be read

in the light of Lovejoy's other,

earlier, methodological statements, and it must also be

rememberedthat the

Joulrnal was

not founded merely to promote the history of ideas

in its narrowest sense; from the

first it took as its province a wide variety of interdisciplinarystudies in the general area

of

intellectual history. Cf. P.

P.

Wiener in Studies in

Intellectual

History,

see

below,

note 2, item 11, 169f.

2

For Rothacker's statement of his intention, cf.

Das

'Begriffsgeschichtliche

Wbrter-

buch der

Philosophie' in Zeitschrift

ffir

Philosophische

Forschung,

VI

(1951),

133-136,

as well as

in

Archiv

ffir Begriffsgeschichte,

I

(1955),

5-9. The chief methodological dis-

cussions of

the

Lovejoy group may be listed as follows:



34

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

It is probably fair

to say that there were two dominant and

quite

distinct

m7notifsn A. 0. Lovejoy's conception of the history of ideas, and that both

received emphasis in almost all of his methodological writings. One of

these

motifs concerned the need for inter-disciplinary studies. Connected with it

was the conviction that intellectual history should be free to cross national

and linguistic boundaries in spite of the conventional departmentalizations of

academic learning; also connected with it was a recognition of the need for

cooperative inquiries in the development of the history of ideas.3 These

aspects of Lovejoy's program have had an undoubted influence, but they raise

(1) A.

0. Lovejoy and G. Boas,

A

Documnentary

History of Primitivismand

Related

Ideas

(Baltimore, 1935), ix-xiii and 1-22.

(2) A. 0. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936). 3-23.

(3) A.

0. Lovejoy, The

Historiographyof

Ideas ,

Proceedings of the

American Philo-

sophical Society, LXXVIII

(1938),

529-543.

Reprinted in A.

0.

Lovejoy,

Essays

in

the History of Ideas

(Baltimore,

1948),

1-13.

(4) Marjorie H.

Nicholson,

The History of Literature

and the

History

of

Thought ,

English Institute Annual,

1939 (New

York, 1940).

(5) A.

0. Lovejoy, Reflections

on the

History of Ideas , Journal of

the History

of

Ideas,

I

(1940),

3-23.

Reprinted in P. P. Wiener

and A. Noland eds., Ideas in

Cultural Perspective (New

York, 1962),

3-23.

(6) A. 0.

Lovejoy,

The

Meaning of Romanticism for the

Historian of

Ideas , Journal

of the History of Ideas, 11 (1941), 237-278.

(7) A.

0.

Lovejoy, Reply to

Professor

Spitzer ,Journal of the

History of Ideas,

V

(1944), 204-219.

(8) A. 0. Lovejoy,

Essays int the

History of Ideas (1948),

xiii-xvii.

(9)

George Boas, A.

0.

Lovejoy as Historian

of Philosophy ,

Journal

of

the

History

of

Ideas, IX (1948)

404-411,

(10) Marjorie H.

Nicholson, A. 0.

Lovejoy as

Teacher ,

Journal of

the History of

Ideas, IX (1948), 428-438.

(11) G. Boas, H.

Cherniss, et

al., Studies in Intellectual

History

(Baltimore, 1953). In

particular, the

essays

of

Boas, Stimson,

and

Wiener relate to

the methodological

questions under

present consideration.

(12) P. P. Wiener, Some Problems and Methods in the History of Ideas , Journal of

the History

of

Ideas,

XXII

(1961), 531-548.

Reprinted

in

Wiener

and

Noland,

24-41.

[In

what follows

I

shall

use

the above

italicized numbers in

designating

the

book

or

article

to

which reference

is

being

made.]

The

European

and American

movements which

have, by and large, been

distinct

may

perhaps

now

be

drawing together.

The

publisher's

announcementsof

the

newly

founded

Archives

internationalesd'histoire des idees

contains a definition of

what

is

meant

by

the

history

of

ideas which

closely

resembles

Lovejoy's

definition of

that

term.

At

the

same

time

it

defines its

province

as

the

intellectual conditions of

intellectual

life

(as

distinct

from the

material conditions) and

it

says

of these conditions that

they

give to

each

period

its own character and in a

large

measure mould

even

the

most

independent

geniuses.

The latter mode

of

speaking

would

surely

be

more

reminiscent of the

thought

of

Dilthey

than

of

that

of

Lovejoy.

To

be

sure, Ludwig

Edelstein and

Roy

H.

Pearce

have both

mentioned

to the

present writer that

relatively late

in his

life

A. 0.

Lovejoy

expressed

the view that

his

method

and that of

Dilthey

were not far

apart,

but

such

a

rapprochement

does not

seem

to be

concretely

evidenced in

any

of

Lovejoy's published

writings.

:

A similar

plea

for

cooperative

inquiries

is

to be

found

in

Lovejoy's

presidential

address

to the

American

Philosophical

Association,

On

Some Conditions of

Progress

in

Philosophical

Inquiry ,

Philosophical Reviewi,

XXVI

(1917),

123-163.





36

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

many a system is due solely

to the novelty of the application or

arrangement

of the old elements

which enter into it.

8

One might well subscribe to these statements without

drawing from

them

the conclusion that in intellectual history generally, or in the history of

philosophy specifically, the

proper way

to

grasp

the nature

of any -ism , or

any

individual

system

of

thought,

is

-

in

Lovejoy's phrase

-

to break it

up

into elemental components,

that is,

into

those unit-ideas which are discrimi-

nable within

it.

However,

if

one

examines

much

of

Lovejoy's

own

historio-

graphical practice, as well as some of

his most explicit methodological

state-

ments,

it seems that it was in

these elemental

components

that

he found the

real units, the effective

working ideas in major creeds and

movements, that

he took these unit-ideas to be the dynamic units of the history of thought .10

As a contrast to Lovejoy's

position in this matter

we

might cite Ernst

Cassirer's statement

concerning his own methodological convictions.

Speaking

of his

studies of the

Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Cassirer said that

the

aim of his approach was to elucidate the inner formative forces

in the

historical epochs with which

he was dealing, and he then proceeded

to say:

Such

a presentationof

philosophicaldoctrinesand systems endeavorsas it

were to

give a phenomenologyyof the

philosophic spirit ; t is an attempt to

show how

8

2,4.

In fact, those who recall that Lovejoy

was one of the

staunchest defenders of

the

doctrine of emergence

in his generation

may well be surprised that he regarded the

complex whole which is a philosophic

system as analyzable

into certain

elemental

component ideas. They

may in particular be

surprised that he would in this connection

use

the analogy

between the history of ideas and analytic

chemistry, since chemical

combinations had been used as a

paradigmatic case

in

defense

of

the doctrine

of

emergence from the

time of Mill to the

discussions of Lovejoy and Broad. For Love-

joy's

treatments

of the

problem of

emergence, cf.

The

Discontinuities

of

Evolution ,

University of California

Publications in Philosophy, V (1924), 173-220, and The Mean-

ings of 'Emergence' and its Modes ,

Journal of Philosophical Studies,

II (1927),

167-181. Substantially

the same article

appeared under the same title in the

Proceedings

of

the Sixth International Congress of

Philosophy (New

York,

1927),

20-33.

10

2, 6 and 7. Also, cf.

8, 253.

-

It was in this connection that

Lovejoy's colleague,

Leo

Spitzer, launched an

attack on Lovejoy's

method, and forced him to consider

the

relevance of the

doctrine of emergence. Cf. Spitzer:

Geistesgeschichte vs. History

of

Ideas as

Applied to Hitlerism ,

Journal of the History of Ideas,

V

(1944), 191-203, and

Lovejoy's Reply to

Professor Spitzer , bid., especially 204-211.

However, in his

reply,

Lovejoy was content to criticize a variety

of points in Spitzer's

argument, and he did

not

give a clear answer

with respect to that issue. He insisted,

rightly enough:

The

thought

of an individual

writer or of a

school, or

the

dominant

fashion of thought of a

period, may,

and

usually

does, contain a

number

of

...

distinct

conceptual

and

affective

components.

To understand such a

complex

as a

whole,

it is

necessary

to discriminate

these

components and

observe their relations and interplay

(ibid., 204).

Such

a state-

ment

is, of course,

compatible

with

holding that there

mey also be emergent properties

which result

from such combinations of

components. Lovejoy

explicitly recognized this

possibility,

and

also

recognized that it might have a

bearing upon

the

history of thought

(209). However, he did

not discuss that more general

methodological question, but

shifted

his attention to one of the other

aspects of Spitzer's

attack. Thus, in the end,

the general question of

whether unit-ideas

are indeed the dynamic units

of

the

history

of

thought was not

really discussed by Lovejoy in this unhappy

interchange.



HISTORY OF IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY, HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY 37

this

spirit,

struggling

with

purely objectiveproblems,

achieves

clarity

and

depth

in

its

understanding

of its own nature

and

destiny,

and of its

own

fundamental

character

and mission.

One need not, of course, accept Cassirer's conception of inner, formative

forces

as constituting

the

only

alternative to

Lovejoy's methodological

beliefs.

I have

cited it

only

because it illustrates how

another

eminent

intellectual

historian

has stressed a

point

which

Lovejoy's

program

of

inquiry into

specific

unit-ideas

left

out of account:

the

role which

is

often

played in the

thought

of a person

or

of a

period by

a

dominant

philosophic

issue which

serves to

incite

and

in

large

measure to control

that

thought.

The

possible

determi-

native influence

of problems and issues which are larger than single

unit-

ideas was not denied by Lovejoy. However, a consideration of them was not

included

in

his

program:

it

was

with

the

continuities of

the

elements, and not

with

the formative influences that helped

determine the patterns into which

these

elements

fitted, that he was primarily concerned.'2 Now, Lovejoy's own

work has

clearly shown that studies of these elements very frequently illumi-

nate important

segments of a philosopher's thought, and that an under-

standing

of

precisely

these

segments

of

his

thought may

on

occasion

be crucial

for an

understanding of that thought as a whole.

Nevertheless,

a

stress on

the continuity of the unit-ideas which enter into a particular philosophic

system usually

fails

to yield an interpretation of the basic aim and

motivating

power of

that

system. That this should be so may be said to follow

analytically

from Lovejoy's assumption that originality is

more often found in the

pattern

of

a

thinker's

thought than in the specific unit-ideas which are

discriminable

within it:

the

more original and creative a thinker may be, the more one who

follows

Lovejoy's program will be forced

to neglect the original aspects

of

his work

through concentrating on the

history of the unit-ideas which

he

tended to share with others.'3 From this it further follows that the method of

tracing

unit-ideas stands in danger of underestimating or of

misconstruing

the

influence of

a philosopher on subsequent thought, for that influence

may

11

The Philosophy of the

Enlightlenment

(Princeton, 1951), vi.

12

Cf.

2,

4.

To a certain extent,

although less noticeably, this

stress on the

continuity

of specific characteristicsof a doctrine,

rather than on what was novel in it as a whole,

was a characteristicof Lovejoy's earlier

essays on the history of philosophy, as well as

of

his later studies in the history of

ideas. For example, cf. On Kant's Reply to Hume ,

Archiv

fuir

Geschlichte

der

Philosophie,

XIX (1906), 380-407. However, such

was

definitely

not the

case

in

his

appreciative essay William James as Philosopher ,Inter-

national Journal of Ethics, XXI (1911),

125-153, reprinted in The Thirteen

Pragmatisms

and

Other Essays (Baltimore, 1963).

13

A similar

point may be made with

respect to literary works. Lovejoy

himself

noted

(e.g., 2, 19-20)

that

the history of ideas, as he conceived it, was especially concerned

with the appearance of the unit-ideas

in large groups of persons, and not merely

in

eminent writers. Thus, by its own

intent, it leaves to one side questions of comparative

literary value, and will thereby be forced to leave to one side questions concerning the

effective influences of some works. To

this extent it is of limited value

-

though

certainly

not without value

-

for the history of literature.



38 MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

stem directly from the pattern of his thought,

no less than from the

specific

unit-ideas which were embedded within it.

There is a second problematic feature

of Lovejoy's program to which I

should now like to call attention. It consists in the fact that the unit-ideas

which are said to constitute the basic elements

in the thought of particular

writers at different times are assumed to

have continuous life-histories of

their own. As Lovejoy defines the subject-matter

of the history of ideas it is

the study of the (so far as possible) total

life-history of individual ideas, in

which the many parts that any one of them

plays upon the historic scene, the

different facets which it exhibits, its interplay, conflicts and alliances with

other ideas, and the diverse human reactions to it, are traced out with ade-

quate and critical documentation.

14

In referring to what strikes me as a

problematic feature of this program, I do

not suggest that Lovejoy believed,

or

ever wrote as if he believed, that these

unit-ideas had a life-history of

their own apart from the persons who entertained them, or apart from the

works in which they are to be found. What strikes me as problematic is,

rather,

the

assumption

that

when one analyzes

idea-complexes

into unit-

ideas, the way to understand the occurrence

of these unit-ideas

in

the thought

of

a particular person is always (or even usually)

by tracing them backwards

in time. I should not of course wish to deny that there are many cases in

which this can fruitfully be done: the concept

of the great chain of being

is a

concept

with

respect to which

it

has

been most

successfully

done.

Also,

it

may

well be

the case that

the

concept

of primitivism

stands

for

ideas

which have had a long unitary history, and that

the

occurrence

of

these

ideas

at

any particular

time

may

well have been

dependent upon

the formative

influence

of one or more of

their

prior occurrences.

Such unit-ideas

may

best

be

designated as continuing ideas .

On

the other

hand,

there

may

also be

unit-ideas which could best be designated as recurrent ideas . Such would

be

those unit-ideas

which

human beings

are apt

to entertain on

many

different

occasions, quite independently

of

whether

or

not

others

had

previously

enter-

tained

them. The

difference

between

these two types

of

ideas

would

be

analogous

to the difference between those

cases

in which an

anthropologist

accounts

for

two

similar

types

of artifact

in terms of diffusion

and those

in

which he holds that independent invention

has taken

place. Now,

in the case

of

unit-ideas,

no less than

in

the

case

of

material

artifacts,

it

is

sometimes

not readily discernible from examining isolated instances of similar ideas

whether

diffusion

or

independent

invention

is to

be

regarded

as the more

plausible hypothesis: only

a

comparative

study

of

distribution

over

time

and

space,

as well

as evidence concerning

the other elements

with which these

units

are

associated,

will

provide

the

basis

for a reasonable

hypothesis.

In

the case of

Lovejoy's

own

program,

the

possibility

that

many

unit-ideas

might be recurrent

ideas seems

to

me

to

have

been

either

overlooked

or

too

14

3,

532.



HISTORY

OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY 39

little

stressed.

For

example,

it would seem

plausible

to

hold that the

nor-

mative uses to

which the

concept

of nature has been

put

is

an

example of

a

recurrent

idea,

rather than

one which has a

single

continuous

history. That

this is plausible would seem to follow from the fact that in his investigation

of the

meaning

of the

concept

nature

in

antiquity,

Lovejoy discriminated

sixty-six

different senses

in which that

concept

was connected

with

norms.',

Given this

variety

within

a

short

span

of

time,

and

given

the

fact that these

sixty-six

meanings

were

not

all

directly

related

to one

another,

it

seems rash

to assume

that a

conception

of

this kind

should be

regarded

as having a

unitary

life-history

wherever and whenever it is

found.16

Yet,

in his

preface

to his Essays in the

History of Ideas,

when

Lovejoy wished

to illustrate the

presence and influence of the same presuppositions or other operative 'ideas'

in

very diverse

provinces of

thought and in different

periods ,

he said

the underlying dea-complex,

summed up in the word 'nature'

n

one of its senses

which is

exhibited

as shapingboth religious

heterodoxy

and

aesthetic

orthodoxy

n

the eighteenth

century, s also shown

...

as

at

work in

the mind of a third

century

Christianapologist

[Tertullian]....

The

fundamental

dentity

of

the

idea,

and

of

the logic of the

reasoningsto which it gave rise,

is not annulled

by

the

dissimi-

larities

of

the

concomitant deas

with

which it was

associated,

nor

by the differing

preoccupations

and

temperamental

biases

of

the

writers

into

whose

thinking

it

entered.... In this case we have one of the majorand persistent deas of Western

thought, which,

since

the fourth

century B.C.,

has

scarcely

ever

disappeared

altogether,though

in

some

periods

it has

been

dominant

and

in

others

highly

recessive.

7

If, in

this

passage, the

fundamental

identity

of the idea were

simply taken

to mean that one can

find

that

something

believed

by Tertullian was also

believed by

eighteenth century writers,

and if

one were

not

attempting to

trace

a

genetic connection between

these different occurrences

of

the

same

philosophic conception, then Lovejoy's statement would not be open to

challenge. However,

his

own

assumption

seems to have been

that what

the

historian of

ideas was concerned to do was to

show the

processes by which

influences pass

over from one province [of the intellectual

world] to an-

other.

18

Furthermore,

in

my opinion,

it

is

only

this

interpretation that

is

l;

Cf.

Appendix

to

l.

16

It is

startling

that Lovejoy should

not himself have been led

to

challenge

the

assump-

tion of

continuity,

since in P.-E. Dumont's

essay

on Primitivism

n

Indian

Literature ,

it

is pointed out that

in this

independentbody of

literature there is a

parallel

to

Western

primitivism (cf. 1, 446).

-

Furthermore,among the unit-ideas which Lovejoy mentions

are

dialectical

motives ,

such

as the nominalistic

motive,

which

he

describes

as

a

tendency,

almost instinctive with some

men,

to

reduce the

meaning

of all

general

notions to an

enumeration

of

the concrete and sensible

particulars

which

fall

under

those notions (2,

10).

This manner

of

phrasing

such

a dialectical motive

suggests

that

it is

what

I

have

termed

a

recurrent

idea,

rather than one which has

a

specific

life-

history.

17

7,

xiv.

18 2, 16.

Cf. the

following statement:

Ideas

are the most

migratory things in

the

world.

A

preconception,

category,

postulate,

dialectical

motive, pregnant

metaphor

or



40

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

consistent with his

general theory

of

historiography.'9

Thus,

it is an historical

connection, and not merely a logical connection, or a

similarity

in

the

use of

two concepts,

which the historian of ideas is

purportedly

interested in

dis-

covering. Yet, by what means can such a connection be established? In his

fullest explanation

of how to establish historical

connections, Lovejoy stressed

the importance

of

a preliminary logical analysis

of

unit-ideas, and a psycho-

logical analysis

of their

likely

affinities and

incompatibilities, before attempt-

ing

to trace their actual historical relations to one another.20

Such

a

prelim-

inary exploration

of

the

materials

he

compared

to the

construction of a

tentative hypothesis

in

the natural scientist's

mind:

the

historian

of

ideas

is

to carry out preliminary logical

and

psychological analyses before he goes

on to confront their results with the historical evidence to be found in the

sources .2' The formation

of

such tentative

hypotheses

as to what one

is likely

to find in

the sources is often immensely valuable, and

I

should suppose that

few intellectual historians

have been so successful as Lovejoy

in

later docu-

menting

their

hypotheses by a careful tracing of the genetic succession of

these transformations in literary and philosophical texts. However, the extent

of his

success in some cases simply points up the difficulty of the problem in

other

cases

-

and most notably in such a case as that in which he suggested

the continuity from Tertullian to the eighteenth century, or in the case in

which

he claimed that there probably was an historical influence of certain

ideas held by philosophers and literary men in the 1780's and 1790's upon the

formation of the state of mind which led to the appeal of totalitarian ideologies

in the 1920's. In neither of these cases did Lovejoy attempt to cite texts which

would have been sufficient to allow us to trace the genetic connections which

were

presupposed; and when one bears in mind the fact that at least some

unit-ideas may be recurrent, rather than continuing, a similarity between

two unit-ideas is insufficient to establish a direct historical connection be-

tween them.22

analogy,

'sacred word',

mood of thought, or

explicit

doctrine, which

makes

its

first

appearance

upon the scene in

one of the

conventionally distinguished

provinces

of

history (most

often, perhaps, in

philosophy)

may, and frequently

does, cross

over into

a

dozen

others (4, 4).

Also, cf. the

statement of purpose

of The

History

of

Ideas Club

at

The Johns Hopkins

University

(10, 178).

10

Cf. my

article Arthur

0. Lovejoy and

the Theory

of Historiography ,Joullrnial

of

the History of Ideas, IX

(1948),

412-423.

20

5, 261-270.

21

5, 264. It

was this

doctrine that Spitzer

attacked

quite unfairly

-

as the

apriori

approach

advocated by

Lovejoy (op. cit., 193

f.).

22

With respect to the

connection

between

Tertullian and

the

eighteenth

century, my

point

may best be

illustrated by

the fact that Lovejoy

himself says of the

conception

of

nature : Its

very

ambiguity was, and in

the

history of Christian

thought

was

destined to

be,

a

positive factor in

influencing the movement

of

ideas. Once

adopt

'nature' or 'the natural'

as the

norm in general, or in

certain of its

senses, and it was

easy to slip

over

unconsciously to other senses

(7, 336).

This, however, merely

suggests

that at

various times the

ambiguity in a

particular term may be

exploited in

similar



HISTORY OF IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY 41

Yet, even in those cases

in which

Lovejoy's program

of

analysis may have

failed

in

its

attempt

to

establish historical

connections,

it

may

nonetheless

be immensely

valuable

in

indicating

historical

parallels. By calling attention

to possible parallels in the use to which concepts have been put by different

thinkers, and

in

showing

the

ambiguities

and

confusions which some of these

concepts may contain, Lovejoy

has

given

the intellectual

historian a powerful

set of analytic tools,

and has

provided

an example of their use from which

anyone can profit. Nonetheless,

as I have

attempted

to

indicate,

if

we con-

sider Lovejoy's methodological

convictions as

if

they embodied a self-suffi-

cient program

for the

intellectual historian

to

follow,

such a

program would

have grave disadvantages:

it

would frequently lead us away from those

features of an author's work which were most likely to be central to his

motivation,

and which

might

also

be

most

important

for

his

historical

in-

fluence; it might also

lead us

to

minimize

the

independence

of

an author's

thought, suggesting

lines of historical

connection where

such

connections

have not been established,

and

may

not

have

existed.

If one

were to ask

why

Lovejoy

himself

may

have

failed to note these

dangers,

or

having

noted

them

failed to discuss

them,

the answer

(I surmise)

is to be found in

one

funda-

mental characteristic

of his

philosophic temper:

his

passion

for

drawing

distinctions in order to gain analytic clarity. No one can have read much of

his work, whether philosophic

or historical,

without being aware of

how

important a role the

distaste for ambiguities and

the

demand for precision

played in his thought.

The

strength of this motivation may perhaps

be

most

strikingly illustrated

by the fact that when

he

singled

out

three recurrent

phenomena to which

his various essays in the history of ideas bore

witness,

one of

the

three referred to semantic

confusions and a second referred

to

the conflicting ideas

which may

be

present

in the thought of the same

in-

dividual.23An interest in ferreting out such intellectual lapses was what - in

some measure at least

-

led Lovejoy to his program for the history

of ideas.

What

was

of

primary

concern to

him was to

bring

into

sharp

focus

the

detailed intellectual content of literary and philosophic

works,

and to examine

ways, not that a particular

meaning

assigned to that term

in

the first instance was

causally

connected to a similar use

of it in a later instance.

-

With respect to the

con-

tinuity of the ideas of

the 1780's in

nineteenth and twentieth-century

German

philosophy,

and their efficacy as a

preparation

or the ideology of Nazism,

Lovejoy's

reply to

Spitzer

admittedlyfailed to bring forward the necessary textual evidence (6, 217-219); and the

original

article had itself assuredly

failed to supply

such

evidence (cf. 5,

272-278).

23 Cf.

7,

xiv-xvi. The three phenomena which

he singles out

for the

reader's attention

are: First, The presence

and influence

of the same presuppositions

or other

operative

'ideas'

in very diverse provinces of

thought and

in different epochs ;

Second,

The role

of semantic confusions,

of shifts and

ambiguities in the meanings

of terms,

in the

history

of

thought

and of taste ; Third,

The internal

tensions or waverings

in

the

mind of

almost

every individual

writer

-

sometimes discernible

even

in a single writing or on

a

single page

-

arising

from conflicting

ideas or incongruous

propensities

of feeling or

taste, to

which, so to

say.

he is susceptible.



42

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

their meanings and implications in a spirit of critical detachment, rather

than attempt to measure the scope

of these works, to assess their value, or

to trace the full range of their individual

influences.

if

If the foregoing sketch of Lovejoy's program for the history of ideas was an

accurate

one,

there is much that would seem to

belong to intellectual

and

cultural history

that

it

is

bound

to

leave out

of account. And if we are to

discuss

the tasks of historians

of

philosophy,

assessing

their

relations to his-

torians

of

ideas,

it

may

be

well to

raise these more general problems

of

intellectual

and cultural

history.

In this connection we must

first

note a rather strange fact: those who have

concerned themselves with the

general

problems of historiographical method

have rarely discussed the question of

how the methods of special histories ,

such as

histories

of philosophy,

or of

art,

or

of

technology,

or

of

law,

are

related to what

they regard

as

paradigmatic

cases of

historiographical prac-

tice.

For example,

in handbooks

such

as those of

Bernheim,

or

of

Langlois

and Seignobos, or of Bauer, the models for what are taken to be standard

practices

with

respect

to

internal

and external

criticism,

and

with

respect

to

historiographical synthesis,

are not drawn from

the

fields of what

I

shall

call

special histories .24To be sure, some

treatises on historiography pay

a

good

deal

of attention

to

what

the

general

historian

may

learn

by

means of

special

historical accounts;

25

furthermore,

neither methodologists

nor

present-day

historians minimize the importance

of investigations in intellectual, cultural,

and

social

history as

aids to

understanding

what

has

occurred

in

the

past.

What one misses, however, is any substantial body of writing which concerns

itself directly

with the

problem

of whether

particular

forms of

specialized

history

differ in

aim

and in

practice

among themselves,

or

which

attempts

to

24

In

fact,

among these three only Bernheim's

work takes

cognizance of special histories;

see Lehrbuchder historischen

Methode, 6th

ed. (Leipzig, 1908), 54-55

and 69-70.

While

he does recognize

a difference

between the concerns of

a general historian

and those

which are characteristic

of persons writing

special histories (cf. note

26, below),

Bern-

heim does

not seem to recognize

that a new sort of methodological

problem

may accom-

pany the attemptto write the

latter.

-

The

general neglect of problems concerning

special

histories

is

all the more

striking since one of the most characteristic

aspects

of nineteenth-

century

historiography

was

the

proliferation

of

separate

historical treatments of

the

various facets

of culture,

in other words the proliferation

of special

histories. As

Huizinga remarked:

Klio hatte eine

ganze

Schar

von Enkeln in ihrem

Haus aufwachsen

sehen. Ich

meine hier die speziellen

Studienfiicher,

deren Wesen historisch ist, ohne mit

Geschichte

als

solcher

zusammenzufallen ,

and

in this

connection

he

lists

the

history

of

art and of literature,etc.;

see

J.

Huizinga,

Iin

Bann

der Geschichte

(Zurich

and Bruxelles,

1942),

16.

2'I

This is especially

characteristic

of

Gustav Wolf,

EinfUhrung

in das Studiunm dee

neuteren

Geschichte

(Berlin, 1910).



HISTORY OF IDEAS, INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 43

examine how these various special histories relate to what (for our present

purposes)

we

may designate as general history.2

One may of course

find

more of less explicit methodological statements

in

almost every specialized history, and among the more theoretically-minded

of the special historians one frequently finds illuminating discussions of what

is entailed by their own practice, and by the practice of those with whom

they disagree. In addition, in recent years there has been a growing body

of

literature concerned with the nature and aims of intellectual history ,27and

of

social history, as well as of the relations between them; there has also

been at least one lengthy essay of a systematic sort which has sought

to

distinguish and define the various

coordinates

by means of which we

can

operate in an historical analysis of ideas.28However, each of these discussions

has tended to involve the advocacy of a particular position, rather than

attempting to analyze the various alternative types of position

which

special

historians have taken, or might be expected to take. Until such an analysis

is

made it is likely that we shall be handicapped

in

seeking

to

discuss the

methodological problems

which can be raised

concerning

the

history

of

philosophy, or concerning other special histories. It

is for this reason that

I

shall now attempt to classify various types of approachwhich may be adopted,

and which have indeed been adopted, with respect to special histories, even

though I recognize that within the scope of the present paper

I

can

only

make

the most tentative of conjectures

in this difficult

and

neglected

area of

historiographical methodology.

2k The sole instance

of anythinglike such a discussion

which I have

found in the usual

treatises on historiographicalmethod

is a very brief

passage in Louis Gottschalk, Under-

standing History

(New York, 1958), 34-36. It amplifies

what is only

implicit in a remark

of Bernheim'swhich I shall cite

below, note 32.

- Among philosophers, the problem of

special histories has been somewhat more frequently mentioned, but has not been satis-

factorily discussed. Mention of

it may be found in

the introduction to Hegel's Lectures

on

the Philosophy

of

History,

transl.

J. Sibree (New

York, 1899),

7-8, where he classes

such special histories as the history

of art as the

fourth sub-class of reflective histories,

standing at the threshold of philosophical

history.

Heinrich Rickert also noted that

there might be

special problems with reference to

the writing of

specialized histories;

cf.

Die

Grenzen

der Naturivissenschaftlichen

Begriffsbildung(5th

ed.), 556-557, but

he

did not undertaketo discuss these

problems.

R.

G.

Collingwood also referred to various

specialized histories,

and

discussed

them at considerable length, Thle

Idea

of

History

(Oxford,

1946), 309-315,

but he did so

only

in

so far as

it

was

necessary to justify his

own characterization

of the

task

of the historian as a

re-enactment of

past thought.

27

An article by

John C. Greene entitled

Objectives

and Methods in Intellectual

History ,

Mississippi Valley

Historical

Review,

XLIV (1957-58),

58-74, is particularly

helpful for the bibliographical

references

to be extracted from it;

it

is also

one

of

the

most

careful

and thoughtfulessays

in

the

field.

8

Abraham Edel, Context

and

Content

in the

Theory

of Ideas

in

Philosophy

for

the Future, ed. R. W. Sellars,

V. J. McGill,

and Marvin Farber (New York, 1949),

419-

452. At

a

later

point I shall also mention a methodological

essay

which takes its point

of

departure

from

Lovejoy's program

for

the

history

of

ideas, viz.,

Roy Harvey Pearce.

A Note

on Method in the

History

of

Ideas ,

Journal

of

the

History

of Ideas, IX (1948).

372-379.



44

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

A first

problem immediately suggests

itself

because of the

way in which I

have stated

my

concern.

I

have

obviously

taken it for

granted that there is a

difference between what I have termed

general history (or, more briefly,

history ) and what 1 have termed special histories. Therefore, it will be

necessary

to characterize

the

subject-matter

of

general

history . As is well

known,

definitions

of

the

historian's

subject-matter have varied

widely, as

historiographical practice

has

changed.

At

present (and it is here that we

may

well

begin),

it is not unusual to find the

subject-matter

of the

discipline

of history

defined in such a

way

as to include all that has

been said

and

done

in

the human

past.

Were such

a

characterization

to be

adopted, it

would

seem

that

historians would have as the materials

for their

accounts

whatever

particularpast thoughts and actions they could manage to discover, or which-

ever of these

they

then selected

for

consideration. However, such a view

(taken

in the naked form

in

which it has been

expressed

by

James

Harvey

Robinson,

Carl

Becker,

and

Charles

A. Beard

29)

is

surely

not

tenable

if

we

wish

to

understand

the

procedure

which

historians

actually

employ.

In the

first

place,

historians focus attention on what

might be

regarded as con-

tinuous

strands

which

they

claim

to discover

in

the historical process: that

is, they regard themselves as

having

a

particular subject-matter which

has

some measure of both unity and continuity over time. This unity and con-

tinuity is

not,

I

submit, regarded

by

historians as

being

itself

a product of

their

inquiries:

they

select

subjects

which

they

take

to have

a

distinctive,

enduring

character,

and

their

inquiries

are

dedicated to

making explicit,

and

at the

same

time

accounting for,

the

unity,

the

continuity

and the

changes

within this

particular

strand of

the

human

past.

As I

have elsewhere tried

to

suggest, what makes a

particular person

or

particular

event a

matter

which

is

of concern to

the

general

historian

is

that

it is viewed

by

him

in

relation

to the nature of a specific society, or to changes which have taken place, or

are

taking place

within that

society; put

in

other

words,

the

historian

is

concerned with

human thoughts and actions

in their

societal context

and

with their

societal

implications.30

I

shall not here

attempt

to offer

a further

elucidation

or defense of this

characterization of the subject-matter

of

the

traditional

discipline of history, but I might point out

that it

is not

particu-

29

Robinson's essay, The New History (which served as the title essay

of his well-

known volume of 1912) seems to have suggested many of the themes most closely iden-

tified with the thought of Becker and of Beard. The title essay of Becker's Everyman

his

own Historian represents an influential statement of the view that the historian

is

con-

cerned with all that has been said and done by men in the past. A similar view

is

present

in Beard's address Written History as an Act of Faith ,

Amnerican

Historical

Review,

XXXIX (1933-34), 219-229, and becomes explicit

in his formal definition of his

use of

the term history-as-actuality in

Theory

and Practice in Historical Study: A Report

of

the

Coimnittee oil

Historiography,

Bulletin 54, Social Science

Research Council

(New

York, 1946), 5, n.

1.

30

Cf.

The

Problemn2 f Historical

Knowledge

(New York, 1938),

5-14

and

Concerning

Recent

Trends in the Theory of Historiography ,Journal of

the

History of

Ideas, XVI

(1955), 512-517.



HISTORY

OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY

45

larly

idiosyncratic,

being

similar

(in

part)

to the

characterization given by

Bauer:

Geschichte ist die Wissenschaft,

die die

Erscheinungen

des

Lebens

zu beschreiben

und nachfiihlendzu erkliren sucht,soweit es sich urnVerinderungenhandelt, die

das

Verhifitnis

des Menschen

zu

den verschiedenen

gesellschaftlichen

Gesamt-

heiten mit

sich

bringt,

indem

sie

diese

vom

Standpunkt

hrer

Wirkiung

auf die

Folgezeit,

oder mit

RUcksicht

auf

ihre

typischen Eigenschaften

auswihlt

und ihr

Hauptaugenmerk

uf solche Verinderungenrichtet,

die in der Zeit und

im Raum

unwiederholbar ind.31

Taking

such a

characterization

of the

historian's task as a basis

for discus-

sion,

it

goes

without

saying

that the materials with which the

various special

histories deal

-

for example,

the

history

of

art,

or of science

and technology,

or of law

-

do belong (in part

or in

whole)

to the

province

to which the

general historian

devotes

his

attention. One could

not,

for

example, under-

stand the societal life of

men at

different times and

places

without taking

into account

their

science

and

technology,

their

law,

their

religion,

their

philosophy, and

their

art. However, this

is

merely

to

say

that the particular

selection of materials

with which the

special

historian deals

is

also of

interest

to

the

general historian;

the

ways

in which these

materials are used

in

special

histories and in general histories may nonetheless be extremely different. If

our characterization

of

general

history

is

sound,

we

shall

expect

to find that

materials which enter into

special

histories

are used

by

the

general

historian

to

document, establish,

understand, or explain

the

social context which

governed the life of men

at a

particular time

and

place.

On the other hand,

special histories will

seek

to establish

how a

particular

form of human

activity,

such

as

art,

or

religion, or science,

has

developed

over

time,

rather than

attempting

to trace how it

has contributed

to this or to

that

particular

society.32 In this, there is a difference between special histories and general

31

W. Bauer,EinfUhrung n

das Studium der Geschichte, 2nd ed.

(Tfibingen,

1928),

17.

-

For other

characterizations

which also place emphasis on

the societal

context of

the

materials with which historians are

concerned, cf. Bernheim, op. cit., 9; G. J.

Garraghan,

A Guide to Historical Method

(New York,

1946),

8-10;

J. Huizinga, A

Definition

of

the Concept

of History , in R. Klibansky

and Paton, Philosophy

and History (Oxford,

1946); G. J. Renier, History,

Its

Purpose

and Method (Boston, 1950),

chs. 1 and

2;

J.

M. Vincent, Aids to Historical

Research

(New York, 1934), 10-11.

-In

Renier's

dis-

cussion there

is a strong statementto the same

effect, quoted

from unpublished lectures

by Henri Pirenne,

and Marc Bloch quotes

(apparently

with.

approval, but perhaps not

consistentlywith his own position)

from Lucien

Febvre's discussionof the subject-matter

of

history:

Not man, again,

never man. Human societies,

organized groups ;

see

Bloch,

The Historian's

Craft (New York, 1953),

26, n.

32

Bernheim comments on the difference

in approach between

the general historian and

the special

historian as

follows: Zudem ist ... der

Ausgangspunkt ein

anderer,

wenn ein

Historiker oder wenn

ein

Fachmann

die Geschichte

eines Spezialgebietes

behandelt; letzterer hat gewdhnlich

nur

die Ausbildung der betreffenden

Disziplin

mit ihrer Methoden und

Resultaten an sich

im Auge und betrachtet die

ganze

Ent-

wicklung derselben

mehr

retrospektiv vom

gegenwdrtigen

Standpunkt

der Disziplin

aus;

der

Historiker

betrachtet dieselbe mehr

als einen Zweig

sozialer Leistungen..



46

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

history

in

what

might

be called

the

direction

of

understanding (or of ex-

planation).33Such a difference may be of

significance even if some of

the

same

materials

are to be found in the different

accounts.

The difference between the two modes of considering historical materials,

which I have

called a difference

in

direction ,

is

obviously not a difference

in how detailed or how specialized

the raw

materials which enter into the

two types of

account

may

be: one can

write a

highly detailed, technical,

monographic study

on

a

topic

relevant

to

general history

no less than

on a

topic relevant to some special

history. Conversely, special histories may cover

at least

as extensive

a

span

of

time as do works

of

general history, as

can

be

seen from

the fact

that

one

can

write a

history

of

Western

science, or

of

Church doctrine. Yet, even though there is no necessary difference in tem-

poral scope,

nor

any necessary

difference in scale

4

between

special

his-

tories and general history, one may say that the focus of interest of special

histories is narrower. For example,

even though

a

history of art, or of

science,

or

of Church doctrine, may include

a wealth of sociological and political

material,

that

material is only introduced

in

order to

help

one understand

or

explain

what

has occurred within the

history

of

art,

of

science,

or of

doctrine.

On the other hand, when aspects of these special histories are in-

troduced into general histories, it is for the sake of understanding or explain-

ing the nature and changes in societal

life at that time

and

place. It is in this

sense that one might say that general

histories have a wider focus of interest

than do special histories.

In order

to obviate the possibility of

misunderstandings

in this

connection,

let

me repeat that the above

differentiation between special

histories and

general history

does not entail

that, say,

art and

religion

and

science

have

no

part to play in the social structure which exists at a given time

and

place;

nor does it entail that these activities fail to influence one another. All that I

wish

to insist

on is that each special

history

has

its own focus of

interest,

no

matter

how much

it may draw upon

knowledge

concerning

other strands of

history, and no matter how closely interwoven this strand may be with all

(op. cit., 69).

-This

characterizationparallels what I here wish to uphold,

although it

appears to me misleading in that it equates the historian with what I have

termed the

general historian and thus assumes that all who write special histories are not historians

proper, but must be practitioners of the special disciplines whose histories they

trace.

Nor would I subscribe to what appears to be Bernheim'sview that there is in all special

histories a tendency to view the past strand with which they deal in terms of the

present

state of their discipline: in this respect there seems to me to be no difference

between

special histories and general history, for whatever argumentscan be applied with

respect

to one can also be applied to the other.

3 I shall use both the term understand and the term explain , since I do not

here

wish

to discuss the problem of what constitutes historical understanding or

historical

explanation.

34

On

the

concept of scale, which I borrowed from

K.

Milanov, cf. my

Problem

of

Historical Knowledge, 256.



HISTORY OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY

47

else that was occurring

at that time and

place.

In

short,

a

special historian is

not dealing

with materials which have no connections with

other aspects of

societal life. Consequently,

he will

often have to draw upon a wide variety

of facts in order to account for the changes which occurred in that strand of

human activity

whose course

he seeks

to follow.

Nonetheless, his interest

remains

fixed on that

particular

strand,

not on

the

shifting patterns into

which, at any

one

time,

it

may enter.

Putting

the matter in this

way,

it should

become

immediately evident that

the legitimacy of any and every atttempt to write a special history would be

challenged by

those who subscribe to what

may

best be

designated as socio-

logical monism . This

doctrine

(which

is

also

sometimes

referred

to as

holism

35)

can assume a variety of forms, as will be clear to those who are

familiar

with the views

of

Comte, Hegel, Marx,

and

Spengler, or who are

acquainted

with

some of

the

forms

which the

doctrine of

Functionalism

has

taken in anthropological theory.36What is common to these variant forms of

monism is the contention that

any

element

in

a

society

is

related

to the other

elements

within that

society

in

such

a

way

that

it

can

only

be understood

through also understanding them,

and

through understanding

the

society

as

a

whole.

As

a consequence

of

such a view, the attempt to separate out some

strand of human activity, such as art or religion, or the political or juridical

system,

and

trace its history would

be

to sacrifice

a

genuine understanding

of

it.37

Put in terms of the problem of the diffusion of culture, sociological

What

is

here referred to as sociological

monism represents only one

aspect of what

has come to be

called holism by Karl Popper and

J. W. N. Watkins.

For example,

cf. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of

Historicism (Boston,

1957), 17-19 and 76-83; and

J.

W. N. Watkins,

Historical Explanation

in the Social Sciences , British

Journal for

the Philosophy

of

Science,

VIII (1957), 104-117. Unfortunately,

in their

use of the

term holism as well as in some

of the discussions of

F. A. Hayek and Isaiah Berlin

-

three different theses have come to be too closely identified with one another. These

three theses were

in fact all present in many theories

held at the end of

the eighteenth

century and during the nineteenth,

but they are logically distinct, and should (in

my

opinion) be treated as distinct. One

of them is the doctrine

of sociological monism.

A

second is the view

that institutions,

or other collective entities , are

not reducible to

the purposes

or behavior of individual

persons. The third is the view that

there are laws

of historical development. That there

is

no necessary

connection between

these three

doctrines can

readily be seen by noting the differences

among the contradictories

of

each. Those who deny sociological

monism would adopt

a theory of

social structure

which involves some degree of pluralism (i.e., of external

relatedness) among

the

various

facets of a society. Those who

reject the second thesis adopt the point

of view of

methodological individualism .Those who reject historical determinism may adopt a

variety of differing

beliefs regarding

either chance or freedom in

historical change.

Each of these

views may be held independently of the

others. Cf. my

articles entitled

Societal Facts ,

British Journal of

Sociology, VI

(1955),

305-317, and

Societal Laws ,

British Journal

for the Philosophy

of Science, VIII (1957), 211-224.

3

Of the

various

meanings of Functionalism , here

have in mind the general

position

of

Radcliffe-Brown,

and even more obviously the extreme

position adopted

by Ruth

Benedict in Patterns

of Culture.

37 Americo Castro,

in his Structure

of Spanish History, holds such a view.

In the follow-

ing passage he

also holds the view (which I should regard

as a form of

historicism ,as



48

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

inonism

would

hold

that

a characteristic

lement of a

culture

could not

travel from one society

to another without

undergoing a more or less radical

change. Put in terms of the problem of social inheritance, it would hold

that

heritages from the past (even within a continuing society) would necessarily

change

in

their

nature and modes of

functioning

as the

other elements within

a

society undergo change.

Sociologicalmonism,

as thus

characterized, aises a host of problems

both substantive

and

methodological.

t is not

my

intention to

deal

with

them here. I have chosen to

discuss this

extreme

and

undoubtedly amiliar

position not because

it is

often adoptedby those who today deal with prob-

lems of intellectual

and cultural

history,

but

because one can more readily

define and discussvarious alternativepositions by using it as a base from

which

comparisons

an be

made,

and

by noting

how

various

more frequently

held positions deviate

from it.

Among such deviations here are two which I should be inclined to term

partial

monisms .One

such

partial

monism would be

representedby many

who speak in terms of a Denkstil, or of a Zeitgeist,which pervades he art,

thought, aste, and modes of feeling at a particular ime and place. According

to some who hold a view of

this

sort, there is a unity in all of what might

be

called the expressive forms of man's spirit, and no one of these forms can

be adequately understood apart from the unity

which

pervades them

all.

Thus,

the

view is monistic. On the other

hand,

such a monism may

be

partial

only (in

contrast

o sociologicalmonism),

since the

unity attributed o

these

aspects of social life may not embraceother compresentaspects,such as

the

economic organization, r the juridical ystem,

or the

technologyof

the

age.

For this reason, a partialmonismof this particular ype might be designated

as

cultural

monism, taking

the

term culture

n that narrower

(non-

anthropological)ense in which its primary ield of reference s the aesthetic,

intellectual, eligious,and moral aspectsof the life of the times.Assuming

a

partial monism of this sort (with which Leo Spitzer'splea for Geistesge-

schichte may be tentatively dentified

8),

what would follow with respect

to

the problemsof writingspecializedhistory?To this the answerwould depend

upon which strandsof historywere taken to be bound together nto a unity,

would Popper) that one cannot understanda single period

of a society's history taken

by

itself. Even though Castro accepts both of these theses, and

links them in one passage,

their

distinctness rom each other should be clear: Before we can consider any single historical

feature

of a people, we must have a view of that people as a whole and of that

people's

values.... For many long years I have written now and again about specific aspects of

linguistic, literary, religious, and even pedagogical history

inside the Hispanic world.

Yet,

when some time ago I was asked to express in an essay my ideas concerning the Renais-

sance in Spain, I saw clearly, as never before, that such a

task was impossible if

it

was

not articulated, lluminated, in a general view of Hispanic

history. Otherwise one

would

fall

into anecdote and arbitrariness, nto denigration or

over-estimation op. cit., transl.

E. L.

King [Princeton, 1954], 11; cf. also 31-35).

l'

Cf. note 10, above.



HISTORY

OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

49

and which

were held to lie outside

this sheath. An historianwould be

ac-

knowledged

o be able to write a

satisfactoryhistory

of

those

strands

of

activity which- while influenced

by

other factors

could

be understood

as

havinga continuousexistenceof theirown. On the otherhand,he could not

write a

satisfactoryhistory

if he

attempted

o

separate

a

single

strand

of

culture

from

what is

regarded

as

constituting

a

unitaryorganic

whole: such

wholes,

taken as wholes,

are

regardedby

the culturalmonist

as

constituting

the

proper object

for

study.

Since

partial

monisms

of

the sort which

I

have

been

using as

illustrative

materialsare less

widely accepted

than

once

they

were,39

t

may perhaps

be

useful

to

alludeto a second

species

of the same

genus,

which

may

be

termed

institutionalmonism , n contrastto culturalmonism . Once again I am

using

these

terms n a narrower

ense than

that in which

they

are

legitimately

used

by anthropologists.)By

institutional

monism I

would

wish to

refer

to

that

form

of partialmonismwhich

mightregard

he economic

organization,

the

family and kinship

systems,

the

educational

system,

the

political

and

juridical

controls,

and the

like,

as

forming

an inter-connective

pattern

of

differingactivities,

no

one

of

these activitiesbeing

intelligiblewithout refer-

ence to

the

others; yet, at the

same time, allowing

that, say, the

art

or

the

philosophyor the literatureof a people could undergohistoricalchanges

which were

in part independentof the institutional

patternwhich

supported

them.

Such a view mightwell

be held by those who accept a modified

version

of

the

Marxian doctrine of the

superstructure, r

who

accept

a

moderate

form of

Functionalism n

anthropologicalheory.40These illustrations

may

help to

clarify the types of

theoryto which referencewas made by using the

term

partialmonism .

However, since my

primarypurpose is to discuss

problems

of the history of

ideas, intellectual history, and the history of

philosophy,and not social institutions, shouldlike to redirectattention o

that

form of partialmonismwhich I have termed

culturalmonism .

One could hold

to

a

partialculturalmonismwithout

nvoking

he

concept

of

a Denkstilor of a Zeitgeist,

and to some degree

this has been characteristic

of

many who have undertaken o create a discipline

of

intellectual

history.

Ernst

Cassirer's heory and practice might be

cited as evidence

for this

31

The

decline in partial monisms

among cultural historians in the United States

is,

I believe,

in no small measure due

to the influence of Lovejoy, and particularly to his

analyses of the concept of Romanticism . Cf. especially his essay entitled On the

Discrimination of Romanticisms ,

reprinted in 8, 228-253.

40

The

early form of Malinowski's

functionalism (as distinct from the psychological

approachwhich he later came to

define as functionalism )

might

-

with suitable modi-

fications

-

serve as an example of

this type of position. To be

sure, opinion on which

institutionsin

a society form a

connected pattern, and which may be regarded as having

an

independent history, will, at

present, vary from

anthropologist to anthropologist.

Furthermore, one might hold a variant of the position,

according to which different

groups of institutions would

fonn

parts of the interconnected

whole in different so-

cieties.



50

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

tendency,

and so too

might any

view of intellectual

history

which holds

that

an understanding

of the

various

intellectual

enterprises of an age depends

upon uncovering

a fundamental set of

presuppositions which

underlay those

enterprises and determined the basic patterns which they could assume.4'

Without

knowing

to what extent

one

should

characterize

the view of John C.

Greene as belonging

to

this type, we may note that at

least one of

his

characterizations of the function of

the


is consonant

with it.

In an article which

I

have already cited,

he

said:

The primary unction of the intellectualhistorian s to delineate he

presuppositions

of

thought

in

given historicalepochs and to explain

the

changes

which those pre-

suppositionsundergo from epoch to epoch ... it is the peculiar

province of the

intellectual historian to search for and describe those most

general ideas, or

patterns

of

ideas,

which

inform

the

thought

of an

age,

define its intellectual

prob-

lems,

and indicate the direction in which solutions are to be

sought.42

With respect to this statement we may note that it does not necessarily go as

far

in

the

direction

of monism as those who support Geistesgeschichte

usually

go. For example, the intellectual historian

need not

assume

that all aspects

of culture will reflect the

intellectual presuppositions of the age. Just

as a

representative of Geistesgeschichte might exclude from the unity of the times

many of the institutional factors which exist at that time, so the intellectual

historian might exclude (although he need not do so) some

cultural phe-

nomena, such as the decorative

arts,

or music, or manners,

from the scope

of his

history. The grounds on which he might

do

so

would be his

opinion

that these cultural factors were either unaffected by, or were not directly

affected

by,

the

general

ideas

which

underlay

the

thought

of

the

age.

None-

theless, a position such as that stated by Greene would presumably

fall

within

the range of partial monisms, since

it

looks upon

a variety

of

human

activities as having been informed by a common set of general ideas, or a

pattern of thought, which must be understood if we are

to understand or

explain

the

forms which these activities assumed

at that time and

place

in

human history.

In

opposition to even this partial monism would

be a position

which

I

should be

inclined

to

term

cultural

pluralism . Applied

to the

realm of

intellectual

history, it would seek to understand the various

intellectual

activities

of

men

in terms of the traditions and unsolved

problems

of the

particular disciplines, and through tracing those specific influences which

might have affected different disciplines differently. Such

unity

as is then

found

in the various intellectual activities of the age

would be

explained by

means

of

specific influences passing from one discipline

to

another.

Thus,

4t

To some extent at least, Whitehead's Science and the Modern

World and

Burtt's

Metaphysical

Foundations of Modern Physical Science approach

this

position.

42

Objectives and Methods

in

Intellectual History , Mississippi Valley Historical

Review, XLIV

(1957-58),

59.



HISTORY OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY 51

in

the

field of intellectual

history,

a cultural

pluralism

would differ

from a

partial

monism

by

its unwillingness to assume that there

is one

particular

pattern

of

ideas,

or set

of presuppositions, which can serve as the basis for

explaining the specific strands of intellectual history; instead, it would seek

to explain widespread presuppositions as being the results

of,

not the

causes

of, the particular

cultural activities and

products

which make

up the intel-

lectual life of the times.

For fear that it may be thought that there is but little difference

between

these two positions, let us now generalize the pluralistic approach, and see

how it may be applied not only to intellectual

history ,

taken as a

special

form of

historiographical inquiry,

but to other and

more limited

special

histories, such as the history of art, or of science, or of literary criticism.

In these special inquiries, if the pluralistic approach were espoused, we

should not have to write the history of the discipline with which

we were

dealing in terms of the history of some larger social or cultural unit of

which

it

was a facet or part. On the contrary, our

task

would be that of tracing

influences between specific events, regardless of the field of

their

provenance.

To be sure, we would assume some degree of unity and continuity in the

strand of events which we were tracing, that is, we would assume that the

history of art or of science, or of literary criticism, actually had what Rene

Wellek has

termed an internal history .43However, the fact

that

the practice

of, say, one critic or group of critics influences that of succeeding

groups

(by way of emulation, or development, or reaction) does not entail

that the

works of the latter will not also be influenced by a variety of

political, or

metaphysical, or scientific influences, to mention but three.44Thus,

pluralism

does not deny cross-influences: it regards the fabric of historical

occurrences

as

containing many strands, each of which may from time to time

cross any

other, being affected by it, and affecting it as well. On the pluralist's view,

the task of the historian is to trace these relationships among the

various

events which have occurred; what pluralism rejects is the methodological

position which holds that at least a partial monism must be true. In other

words, pluralism denies the assumption that there always are internal

con-

nections between the various strands of intellectual and cultural

history,

such

that even in those cases in which no direct influence can be

established,

the

changes

in

one of these strands cannot be understood

independently

of

changes which also occurred within the other. To illustrate the pluralist point

of

view,

a passage from The Seventeenth Century by G. N. Clark

may

be

cited:

'3 Cf.. A

History of

Modern

Criticism:

1750-1950 (New Haven,

1955),

I. 7.

is Wellek

specifically recognizes such

influences and would share my

view that

their

existence is in no way incompatible

with viewing literary

history

as

having an internal

history

(op.

cit.,

8-11). In the same passage he suggests in what

ways he departs

from

tihe

program of Lovejoy.



52

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

Economic history, military history,

the

history

of

science, each of these branches

is often rendered almost unintelligibleby

specialistswho ignore their interaction.

On the other hand

there

is

an

equally

serious

danger

in

making too much of the

connection between

them.

If

they

are all

represented

as

mere phases of one com-

mon spiritof the age, their real distinctness s sacrificed to an empty and formal

unity.

To

say

that

the mercantile

system,

the rise

of

standing armies, and the

discovery

of

the differential

calculus were all connected is

true, but

it

tells

us

very

little....

The business

of

the

historian is

not

merely

to show

that

they were con-

nected

but

how,

and how

far.45

What

pluralism rejects is, then,

not the

existence

of

cross-influences: it

rejects

the

assumption

that one cannot write an

adequate special history except by

viewing

that strand of the

past

as a facet or a

part

of some

more inclusive

unit which had a history of its own. Although the position of those who deny

pluralism

has a

certain

plausibility,

I

should be

prepared

to

argue

against

them, were that my present task.46 But

as

I have

indicated, it seems more

important

to anatomize some alternative

positions

-

no matter how

crudely

this

must be done

-

rather

than

to

argue

for

one

of these

positions against

its multiform alternatives.

Turning, then,

from

a consideration of those methodological

positions

which range from sociological monism

to pluralism, let

us

more briefly

examine another type of problem which arises with respect to special his-

tories. Whereas the issue of monism

or pluralism focusses attention upon

relations which

may

be

assumed to obtain between one strand

of

history

and

other

contemporaneous historical

events,

the

type

of

problem

toward which I

should now

like to

direct

attention concerns

the

continuity

within

what we

take to be the

subject-matter of special histories.

In other

words,

the

problem

of

monism or pluralism might be

designated

as

horizontal

in

character,

relating

as

it

does

to

questions

of

the functional

unity

within a

society

during

a particular span of time: our present problems might then be designated

45

Cited in C. H. Williams, The Modern Historian (London, 1938), 129 f.; cf. G.

N.

Clark, The Seventeenth Century, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1947), ix-x.

I6

One of the basic difficulties in attempts to establish even

a

partial monism

seems

to me to arise when we recognize that within

any

society with which the special historian

is concerned, cultural life may not be homogeneous. For example, if one is writing

a

history of music, or if one is writing intellectual history, with what group of persons

should one deal? As Roy H. Pearce pointed out in the article already cited, historians

of

ideas presuppose

a

relatively homogeneous group

of

those

who wrote for one

another;

op. cit. (note 28, above), 373-374. Yet such a group is assuredly not representative of

the total life of the times. Nor need what may be called the intelligentsia in all cases

be the most

important group

with

which

the


should be

concerned:

for example, in so far as specific political or economic forces have an impact

on

the

intellectual life of the times, this impact may reach the intelligentsia only through the

effects which it has

first

had on the feeling of other groups. Similarly, though

we

usually find that cultural influences run in the opposite direction, there are cases in

which

the

popular

arts

and popular taste are accountable for changes in fashion among

the intelligentsia.

-

Given these facts (among others), I am personally inclined to assume

that pluralism provides a methodological hypothesis more in keeping with the facts

with which special historians must deal than does any form of the monistic doctrine.



HISTORY OF IDEAS, INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

53

as

longitudinal ,

elating

to

questions concerning

continuitiesand discon-

tinuities over time.

Every

historicalaccount

which deals with

a

series of

changes

n

time

does,

of course, have a particular ubject-matterwith which it deals, and in that

sense

it

may

be

regarded

as

possessing continuity .Nonetheless,

n the

field

of

special

histories

there would seem

to be a differencebetween those

cases

in

which the historian's ubject-matterwas

in

continuousexistence through-

out

the

span

of

time

with which

his

accountdeals,

and those

in

which it

was

not. For example, a historyof the Roman armyfrom Augustus o the death

of

Nero

would

treat of an institutionwhich existed continuously

hroughout

the period

in

question.On the other

hand,

in a historyof the ways in which

the ideal of Roman glory subsequentlyaffected the political aspirationsof

Italian life, there is no continuingentity with which

the

historian s dealing:

the

events

in

question are discontinuous nd may be sporadic.Nonetheless,

if

such appeals to past glories have a common source or if they influenced

one

another,

and

if

in

that way a traditionarose, the growthof this tradition

and

its effects on Italianhistorywould assuredly onstitutea propersubject-

matterfor historical nquiry.The existence of such time-bridgingnfluences

prevents

one

from regardinga history of these discontinuous vents as an

artifactof the historian'sprocedure.On the other hand, it is also impor-

tant to notice that what the historian s tracing does not constitute a con-

tinuously existing entity. Were we to fail to recognize the latter fact, we

should

have

to

follow those who postulate the equivalentof a subconscious

soul of

a people in order to locate where the traditionenduredwhen it was

not

overtlymanifested n speech or deed.

The fact

that special histories are often written concerningdiscontinuous

series

of

events may also be made clear with respect to literary or artistic

forms.One can, for example,write a history of the epistolarynovel without

assuming that at every time-intervalwithin that history, epistolary novels

were

either

being writtenor being widely read. Thus, the epistolarynovel as

a

literary orm

is

not to be regardedas having a continuous xistence.

None-

theless, in writingsuch a history the literaryhistorian s not simply stringing

together

a set

of facts whose relations o one anotherdependupon

his

having

taken

note

of qualitativeresemblancesbetween them. In so far

as

these

novels

did

in

fact influenceone another,and in so far as there therebygrew

up a traditionwhichindividualwriters ollowed or modified,the

genre

itself

may

be said

to

have had a

history,

and the

special

historian

of that

genre

will

attempt o account or the changeswhich he finds that it has undergone.

The

precedingdistinctionmay be regardedas a distinctionbetween

two

different ypes of continuity:one would be that characterizing n enduring

entity, or continuousprocess; the other that which is given to a series of

temporallydiscontinuousevents by the causal influences which knit them

into

a

unified series. The subject-matter f special histories may belong to



54

MAURICE MANDELBAUM

either of these

types,

and I do not wish to

place any

great

stress

on the

distinction between them. Were one to say, for example, that the distinction

is not absolute, but that the differences between what I have regarded

as

different types of continuity are merely differences in degree, I should be

willing to cede the point

-

so far as our present purposes are concerned. All

that is here of importance is to have shown that a temporally discontinuous

series of

events

may legitimately

be viewed as

having

a

measure of unity

and

continuity,

such that it constitutes a proper subject-matter for historical

inquiry. This is important in the present context,

since it would be difficult

to maintain that either the historian of philosophy or

the historian of ideas

is dealing with entities which have a continuing existence.

There may presumably be various types of linkage between the elements

which make up a unified series of temporally discontinuous events; we shall

shortly have occasion to allude to some of these types, as they are to be

found in the history of philosophy.

First,

however, it is necessary to take

cognizance of one further problem concerning the longitudinal dimension

of

special histories, and that is the question of how the concept of develop-

ment is to be used in connection with them.

The

concept of development is to be differentiated from the general notion

of change, in that development always includes the implication of a direc-

tional pattern in which the change proceeds. Unlike random changes, and

unlike patterns

such

as

alternation,

the notion of development

involves

a

directional order, not merely with respect to time but also with respect

to

some quality possessed by the successive members of the series. Bearing this

in

mind,

it

should be obvious that

not

all series

of

events

are

to

be charac-

terized

as developmental: in a discontinuous series of events,

for

example,

the

events between which one can trace influences need

not

exhibit

an order-

ing of qualities which corresponds to the temporal order in which these

particular

events occurred.

To

be

sure,

one should

not

assume

that the con-

cept

of

development must be applied to any series

of events

in

what

might

be

called an all-or-none fashion. In the first place, any series

of

events may

show a developmental pattern in certain respects, while

it

displays

alternation

or

randomness in

others;

in the second

place,

even

when

there has been

no

pattern

of

development in a series of events

taken as a

whole,

there

may

be

such

a pattern within one particular segment of

that

series. (It

is also

ad-

visable to note that even if there has been a persistent pattern of develop-

ment in

a

series up to any given point, our expectation

that that

pattern

will

continue

may not turn out to have been warranted.)

Under

these circum-

stances it is of course important to specify with respect to

what

quality,

and

with

respect to what period of time, one is speaking

of

a development

when

dealing with a particular series of events.

If

the

foregoing characterization is accepted it should

be

obvious

that

among the materials with which historians deal there will

be

some

series

of



HISTORY OF IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 55

events (whether

continuous or

not)

in which one can readily find

striking

instances

of

developmental patterns,

and other instances in which

no such

patterns exist,

or in

which

(if

they

do

exist) they

concern characteristics of

negligible interest, or are of too short a duration to be regarded as significant.

The fact that

not all historical accounts are to

be

regarded

as

developmental,

is now more widely recognized

than it

was in the late eighteenth and in the

nineteenth centuries;

therefore

it

is

probably not necessary to dwell upon

this

point any

further. Instead, I shall come at long last

to a discussion of

ques-

tions which directly concern the

history of philosophy.

I am of course aware

that throughout

the preceding discussion

1

have barely scratched the surface

of some of the most important

methodological problems

which

arise

with

respect to special histories. In particular,I have not considered the differences

among the

various forms of these

histories, such as the history

of art as

compared

to the history of science47 or the history

of law as compared

with

economic history, etc. If, however,

I have suggested some

categorial

divisions

which could be

useful in discussing

these more concrete problems, my

aim

will

have been

fulfilled. By turning now to problems

relating

to

the

history

of

philosophy we can put the matter

to a preliminary

test, seeing whether

these

more general

distinctions are

of service in considering

the

problems

which arise in at least one field of special history.

m

The first

and

perhaps crucial question

which

any historian of

philosophy

must face is what

should be denominated as philosophy .

The problem

is

of

course no slight one, considering

the diversity of topics

discussed by those

commonly acknowledged

to be philosophers.

This diversity is so great

that

one

might

be

tempted

to hold that

all histories of philosophy constitute

more

or

less arbitrary

delimitations of

essentially heterogeneous subject-matter.

and

that there is no single tradition

which is the philosophic

tradition.48

4

In

Beilheft

2 (1963) of this

journal,

Joseph Agassi contributeda monograph entitled

Towards an

Historiography

of Science, which contains some materials which might

be

of use for such a study, but which has an entirely different scope and aim. - One of

the most systematic attempts to deal with some of these

problems in the field of

art

history is Arnold Hauser's book of essays,

The

Philosophy

of Art History

(New

York.

1957-58), which manages to raise many of the most significant problems, and should

be of use even to those who would most forcefully disagree with his position.

48

This view seems to be implicit in remarks made by George

Boas in his recent

review

of J.

H.

Randall, The Career of Philosophy from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment:

[I] suggest that such a subject as the history of philosophy

as a whole, or the

history

of science, or the history of art, is an impossibility. Names like philosophy ,

science ,

art , are the names given both to sheaves of problems and

to the answers which men

have offered to them. It is theoretically possible that someone would know enough to

sort out all the problems which have been called philosophical

and list all the solutions

which have been given them and then to write them up in an all-inclusive catalogue.



56

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

This, however,

appears

to me to be

too negative

a

position.

Instead,

I

suggest

that one could arriveat a

delineationof what

has

in fact

come

to

be

regarded

s the philosophic

radition

n something

ike the followingmanner.49

Let us supposethat a personshould select a very restrictedgroup of men

from

Plato to Mill (to

choose

an arbitraryerminus

n the nineteenth

entury),

and

suppose

that in the

writings

of these men there

seems to have

been

a

discussionof

some

commonproblems,

by

methodsnot wholly

dissimilar,

and

with aims

not wildly divergent.

Suppose

also

that the various

members

of

this restricted

group

of persons

however

arbitrarily

hosen are

generally

regarded

as having

been

philosophers,

and that

a majority

of the

problems

which

they

discussed

althoughperhaps

not all such

problems)

have generally

been calledphilosophicproblems.Underthese suppositionswe shouldhave

a

skeleton ist of

persons

and

problems

with

which

the

historian

of

philosophy

isito deal.

However,

t would

almost

nescapably

ome to

such

an

historian's

notice

that this particular

group of

persons

had been

influenced

by, and in

turn

also

influenced,other

persons

who discussed

he same types

of

problems,

and the conceptionof

the course

of philosophy

would thereby

become

en-

larged.

If, in addition,

other

individuals

were

found to have discussed

some

of the same problems,

n the same

general

spirit,

they too

might

be counted

as belonging o the history of philosophy,even if one discoveredno trace of

influences

eading

from the already

established

group

to

them,

or

from them

to any members

of

that group.

The boundary

ines as

to whom

one should

include

in following

such

a

procedure,

and

what problems

should

be included,

would

doubtless

remain

Mr. Randall

has too much

learning

in the field

of

intellectual history

to make

any

such attempt. .

(Journal

of the

History

of Ideas, XXIV

[1963],

287).

-

Two

points

in this passage

seem

to me especially

troublesome.

First,

Boas'

argumentseems

to

turn

upon his identifyinga history of philosophy with a gatheringtogetherof all the answers

proposed

to various

problems, in

which

the specifically historical

dimension

has been

left out

of account;second,

it seems to suggest

(in its allusion

to

Randall's learning)

that

no line of demarcation

is to be drawn

between the

history

of

philosophy

and

general

intellectual

history.

Furthermore,

Boas' own historical

studies in the

field

of philosophy

seem to

me not

to be in keeping

with the tenor

of

this passage.

-

For

a more lengthy

discussion of some

of the problems

with

which we shall

be

concerned,

the

introduction

to Brehier's

Histoire

de la philosophic

(Paris,

1948-51)

may

be

especially

highly

commended.

Particularly

suggestive

is Brehier's

analysis

of

the underlying

assumptions

of the successive

attempts

to write

histories

of philosophy,

from the

Renaissanceconcern

with

differing

sects,

to

a

concern

with systems,

and

then a primary

concern

with

the

creativity of individual thinkers. Unfortunately, with respect to our present problem

(the

definition

of what

constitutes

the philosophic

tradition), Brehier

merely emphasizes

the

diversity

of aims among

philosophers

of different

ages,

and

does not seek

to

elucidate why

each

should be called

a

philosopher.

Among recent

historians

of philo-

sophy,

only Bertrand

Russell

seems

to have

made such

an attempt;

cf. the

introductory

chapter

to

his

well-knownHistory

of Western

Philosophy.

49

The following

suggested

steps are

not,

of course, intended

to

represent

an

actual

procedure

which

has been carried

out

by any

one. Rather, they

are to

be

interpreted

as

if

they

were a schematic

diagram

of a

more complicated

process

which has taken

place

over

a

long period

of time.



HISTORY

OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

57

partially

ndeterminate nd could be

regarded

as

arbitrary

at least

along

the

fringes;but this would

be a

recognitionof the fact that the line between

the

historyof philosophy

and

what

might equally

well be

called general ntellec-

tual history also remains ndeterminate.So long as one acknowledges hat

the historyof philosophymay be deeply

influenced

by those whom historians

of

philosophymay

not

generally

abel as

philosophers,

he

questionof how

we are to classify figures such as Montaigne,or Rousseau, or Hamann, or

Kierkegaard,

would seem

to be

a

relativelyunimportantmatter. Admitting,

then, that there may

be

many

such

incidental

disagreementswhen one seeks

to define the philosophictradition, t is nonethelesspossible to expect his-

torians of philosophy o

be in

general agreementas to what constitutes he

main line of the historyof philosophy n the West; and such agreement, t

seems to me, is actually ound. The figures concerningwhom differencesof

opinionusually

ariseare

thosewho

are

regarded y

some

as

minor

philosophers,

but who are regardedby

others

as thinkerswho influencedphilosophywith-

out

being philosophers,

or who have been discussed

as figures typifying

philosophic nfluences

on the

intellectual

ife

of

the

times, or who are re-

garded

as

thinkers

representing eligious

or

other

points

of view which are

more

important

han the

philosophic

radition.

All

of

these variationsdoubt-

less occur. What seems to me

not

to occur are major variationsconcerning

the main lines of the philosophic radition

n

the West, in spite of the fact

that

different historians do assuredly assign very different weights to the

historicaland philosophic mportanceof many individualphilosopherswho

stand within that

tradition.50

The

foregoing uggestion eems

to me to

provide

a sketch

of one defensible

way of approaching characterization f

the

subject-matterwith which his-

torians

of

philosophymust deal.

Such

an approachhas,

I

believe,

the ad-

vantageof not overlooking he fact that there is a common core of subject-

matter

n

all

histories

of

philosophy,

and

yet

avoids

legislatingprecisely

what

such histories must

contain

or exclude.

It

also has

what

I take

to

be the

advantage

of

allowing

us to formulatemore

clearly

than

we

probably

other-

wise

could, wherein he factors of unity and

of

discontinuity re to

be

found

within

the historyof philosophy. t is to that problem hat we shall

now

turn.

It

will

be

recalled hat in the

preceding

ection I remarked

hat the

subject-

matter

of

the history of philosophy undoubtedlybelonged

to that

type

of

sequencein which a temporallydiscontinuous eries of events was chiefly

bound

togetherby the influencesof one upon the other. Such influencesmay

take

many forms. For example, n choosing merely a small stretchof philo-

sophic history say the sequence of Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche,

and

50

As

partial support for this general conclusion I might cite the fact

that the tradition

which

is covered in Father Copleston's history of philosophy, which is written from

an

explicitly scholastic point of view, is similar to the tradition covered by

almost

all

non-scholastic historians of philosophy.



58

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

Leibniz

-we can

trace a

great

number

of

connective

influences. One can

see such connections in the problems

posed, in the

concepts used in

posing

these

problems,

in negative reactions to

preceding

solutions, in attempts to

develop those solutions in a more consistent manner, and so on. All this is

familiar and is

ordinarily

stressed

in

histories of

philosophy which place

emphasis upon

the

unity

and

continuity

of

particular

philosophic traditions.

At the

same time, one must

also

stress the

discontinuities within such a

sequence of thinkers. The traditions drawn

upon by

each of these four great

philosophic figures were partially different traditions;

as a consequence, the

thought

of each of them

--

and indeed

certain

of the problems which were

central to

the

thought

of each - varied

greatly.

For this

reason

(and also, of

course, because of the chronology of their lives and of their works), it would

be a serious

mistake

to

regard

this

particular

stretch

of

philosophic history

as a

single

continuous

process;

certainly

it could not

be viewed in

terms of

the notion

of

a

developmental

series.

When one

turns

from

the

stretch of

philosophic history

which

has just been

mentioned to

that

represented by

the works of

Locke and

Berkeley

and

Hume,

one

sees a similar network of relations which

contains both

continuity

and

discontinuity. However,

one

can

scarcely escape noticing

the

very

decided

influences which the previously mentioned continental philosophers had upon

them; thus,

the

total

history

of Western

philosophy

in

the

seventeenth

and

eighteenth

centuries takes on

added

elements of

unity,

but

also

a

greater

measure

of

diversity.

Furthermore,

this extension

of the historian's interest

beyond

either continental or British philosophy taken

alone, entails an ex-

tension

of

the

connections

between

these centuries

and the

past,

since the

chief influences

of

earlier

thought

upon, say, Leibniz,

were different from

the

heritage which was

drawn

upon by

Hume.

Thus,

in the

end,

the

seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries become closely linked to almost the whole of

the

Greek

tradition from Plato to the end of

antiquity.

In

addition,

when

our

view of

the

seventeenth

and

eighteenth

centuries

includes both continental

and

British

philosophy,

the

variety

of

philosophic problems

to be

considered

will

be

seen

to enlarge: almost all of

the traditions

of

moral and

political phi-

losophy from

the

ancient to the modern schools become relevant

when we

consider

not only Spinoza but

also

Locke and Hume. Even sectarian

religious

issues and

particular

scientific

questions

become

part

of

the

materials with

which the historian of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

must

deal.

Thus, to speak of the philosophic tradition does

not demand that

we

select

merely

a

narrow

range

of

particularly original

or

particularly

homogeneous figures as

constituting that tradition.

Up

to this

point we have viewed the

history

of

philosophy

as

if

it consisted

solely of

disembodied doctrines

which formed a network of relations;

how-

ever, to

view philosophic

doctrines apart from

the

specific aims of those

who

formulated

them can be

seriously misleading.

If

we are

not

to

falsify

the



HISTORY OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY

59

history of philosophy we must recognize that even when two

philosophers

do properly belong

within a

fairly

circumscribed

tradition,

and even

when

they

share

many

basic

presuppositions, their specific aims

may

differ

pro-

foundly, as is clear in the case of Berkeley and Hume. Nonetheless, a recog-

nition

of the

important

fact that the aims of

philosophers do differ should

not

lead

us to assume

that their

methods and

general

modes

of

argumentation

also differ

as well.

In so far as

they

can be

seen

as

belonging

to a

single

tradition, there

will be some common intellectual

impulses

which

they

share,

as

is evident from

the

fact that

they

would

not otherwise

have taken

it upon

themselves

to

analyze,

or to

speculate upon,

the

same sets of

problems. In

short,

while it

would be a

mistake

to

consider the

history

of

philosophy

as

if

it were a mere criss-crossing network of relations among doctrines, ancient

and

modem,

it

would also

be a

mistake

to write the

history

of

philosophy

merely in

terms

of

the

intellectual, religious, moral,

or social aims

of

in-

dividual philosophers. What

accounts

for

the existence

of that

network of

relations among philosophic

doctrines which

constitutes the

philosophic

tra-

dition

is

the

fact that

particular

men were

moved to

think

and

to write in a

way

that

they regarded

as

having a

bearing upon

what their

predecessors

wrote.

Thus, even though

there

may

be

no

one

impulse

which is

the source

of all philosophic thought, there assuredly are a limited number of ways in

which those whom

we

regard as

philosophers

have

reasoned. Were this not

the

case, we should be hard-pressed to

explain why they should have

sought

to elaborate, to reshape, or

to rebut

their

predecessors. Only thus, in

short,

would the

connective

networks of relations

among philosophic doctrines

have

been

established.51

It

is

precisely at

this

point

that

one

can see the difference between the

history of philosophy and the

history of ideas, taking the latter term

in that

special sense in which Lovejoy used it. A unit-idea, in Lovejoy's sense, can

have

a completely migratory

history: perhaps originally

coined in

a

philo-

sophic context, it may at one time

play

a part in a scientific

argument and

at

other

times provide a

pregnant metaphor in a sermon or a poem. Its history

can

sometimes be

traced, as

Lovejoy

has

shown,

as it

travels

from one context

to another, and as it

becomes transformed through adhering to other unit-

ideas, or being interpreted

now in one way and now in another. With

respect

to its migratory form of

existence, a unit-idea is similar to those

iconographical

symbols which historians of art have frequently traced with outstanding

The

point which I wish to

make seems to me to have general

applicability,

and is

not

confined to the history of

philosophy. It consists in the assumption that

any

dis-

continuous

series of

events which

builds a continuous tradition (e.g.,

in art or

in science

as

well

as

in

philosophy) depends upon the existence of two different sorts of

factors:

a set

of

psychological impulses or needs to think or act in certain ways, and conditions

which

permit influences to spread

to others from those who think or act

in these

ways.

In

short,

a

tradition could not

build up without the possibility of cross-influences,

but

it

would not

build up if the

activity itself were not an activity which it was natural for

men to

pursue

in

different times

and places.



60

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

success,

to the

great

benefit of

interpretative

riticism

However,just as an

iconographical ymbol

may reappear

n

the

most

trite and artisticallynegli-

gible

circumstances,53

so a

unit-ideawhich had

importantphilosophicorigins

may reappearn contexts n which its usersmay be wholly lacking in philo-

sophic impulse or

philosophiccomprehension.

Thus,

the

historianof philos-

ophy

need not

be

concerned o

trace the

total

history

of

specific unit-ideas,

as

Lovejoy

himself was

fully

aware.

However,since

in

any age a philosopher

(no less than

a

scientist,

or a

poet,

or an

essayist) may

be

profoundly n-

fluenced, sometimesunwittingly,by a characteristic

nit-idea, the historian

of

philosophy

will sometimes

draw

great profit

from

a

study

of

the

history

of

such ideas;

otherwisehe too may overlooktheir importance n the thought

of those philosopherswith whomhe is concerned.Furthermore,n so far as

such ideas enter

into the

thought

of

a

particularphilosopher,or group of

philosophers,

hey may

become

integral

to the

systems

of

thought of phi-

losophers in succeeding

generations,

as

Lovejoy

has shown in

The

Great

Chain

of Being.

Ai

this must

be

willingly

and

gratefullygranted.

Nonethe-

less, continuitiesof this sort are no

more

frequent,

and

may

be

considerably

less

frequent,and

they may

be

no

more

important,

han are the

explicit and

self-consciousattempts of a given philosopher o

rectify what

he

takes to

have been errorson the partof his predecessors, r to follow out the implica-

tions

of

their systems

n

new areas of

knowledge,

or

the

like.

To the extent

that influencesof

the

latter sort

determine

he

general pattern

of a

philos-

opher's hought,

and

to the extent to which unit-ideas

are to

be

regarded nly

as

single

elementswithin

such

largerpatterns,

he

contribution

f historians

of

ideas to

the

history

of

philosophy

must be

acknowledged

o

be

a limited

one.

To say

this is not to

denigrate nvestigations

n the

history

of

ideas,

for

in addition to the

undoubted(though limited) importance

of

the latter

for

the history of philosophy, the programof historiansof ideas has had im-

portant repercussions

upon

the

history

of

literature,

he

history

of

science,

and

general ntellectualhistory as

well.54

Turning

now to the relationsbetween

he

history

of

philosophy

and

general

intellectualhistory,

t

shouldbe noted that whereas

he

history

of

philosophy

involves a

discontinuous eries

of connected

events,

the

subject-matter

with

52

In referring to iconographical symbols, I have in mind those elements

which Erwin

Panofsky has referred to as the secondary or conventional subject matter of works

of

art, cf. Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York, 1955), 26-40. This material

is also

to

be found in the introductorychapter in his Studies in Iconology (1939). Panofsky's own

researches in iconographical symbols in this sense are, of course, classics.

53

Note how the symbol of Blind Cupid appears on contemporary valentines;

for the

early history of this symbol, cf. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, ch. IV.

54

Though

it

is not my task to do so, I think that one could probably

show that

the

role of the history of ideas for the historian of literature is limited in

much the same

way as I have suggested that it is limited for the historian of philosophy.

If I

am

not

mistaken, its role in the history of science may turn out to be a much more

considerable

one. For one testimony as to the importance of The Great Chain of Being for historians

of science, cf. Gillispie's remark in Forerunners of Darwin (Baltimore, 1959), 265.



HISTORY OF IDEAS, INTELLECTUALHISTORY, HISTORY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

61

which

the intellectual

historiandeals

is

continuouslypresent throughout he

time-spanwith

which

he seeks to deal. This contrast which,as I have

noted,55

is

not

one

whichmust

be taken

as

absolute)

can

be

illustrated

n

the

following

way. In any givenperiodin

the life

of a particular ociety in the West

there

may be no productive

nterest

n

philosophicproblems,

and the philosophic

traditionwould be moribund

at that time and

place

-

although

t

might

sud-

denly revive within

a generation.On the other hand,

it is hard to see what

it would mean

to say that in any

given period of a Westernsociety there

was

nothing

which represented

he intellectual ife

of the

time.

If

philosophy

were

moribund,would literatureand religion

be

so as

well?

Would there not

be

basic presuppositions

oncerning

echnologyor the political arts, or the

like,

which one might (withoutan undue stretchingof the term) regardas per-

taining to the intellectual

history

of that time and place?

And

there is anotherdifference o

be noted betweenthe

subject-matter

f

the history of philosophy

and the subject-matter

f

intellectualhistory:

at

any one time, as we have noted,

there

may

be

a multiplicity

f strata

n

the

intellectual

ife of the times. This, in fact,

would

not be

an abnormal

ituation,

for we are

frequently

orced

to describe the intellectualhistory

of the in-

telligentsia n

one

way,

and the intellectualhistory

of other

strata

of

the

same

societyin otherways. Whileit is not unknown hat there should be similar

splits

within

those

aspects

of

the

philosophic

traditionwhich are

espoused

and

cultivated

by

different

segments

of

the

same society

at the

same time,

such a situation

s

surely

ess frequent,and represents

an

anomaly.56

Neitherof these

points

of

differencebetween

the

history

of

philosophy

and

general

ntellectual

history

can,

of

course,

be

substantiated

withoutspecifying

more

precisely

what one takes

the

subject-matter

f intellectual

history

o

be.

However, regardless

of how one

defines its

subject-matter

believe

that

it

shouldbe clear that the historyof philosophycan at most be consideredas

one

particular trand

within the

intellectual

history

of

any period

of time.

It

may,

to

be

sure,

be

regarded

as

that

which

generates

other

strands;

t

may,

likewise, be regarded

as an offshoot

of other more basic factors

within

a

society. However,

n whatever

way

one is

likely

to

define intellectual

history,

or

to

relatethe

history

of

philosophy

o

it,

it would seem that

one must

grant

that

philosophy,

ike art or music

or science, to some degree possesses

its

own

internal

history which is not

to be

submerged

n

general

intellectual

history.Thereare, as we have seen, networksof connectionsamong heworks

of

philosophers,

and it is through

these

connections that

there arose

the

tradition

with

which historiansof

philosophy

are concerned.

On

the

other

hand, as we have also had occasion

to notice, this

traditionexists only

in so

-5

Cf. p. 53f. above.

56

As

a

possible recent instance of such

a split, one might

take

cognizance

of

the

differ-

ence

which obtains

at present between

Marxist modes of philosophizing

and

non-Marxist

modes, even outside

the Communist

countries.



62 MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

far as men have a desire or need

to deal with those sorts of

intellectual

problems

whichwe have

come to call

philosophical.Thus,

philosophydepends

both

upon

an

impetus

to

philosophize

and

a

tradition

of

philosophizing.Un-

der these conditionsit would be a mistake to attempt to understanda

philosopher

merely as

a reflectionof whatever

ntellectualor social factors

impingeddirectlyupon him because of the time and place at which

he lived.

It

is

only

when

we view

philosophic hought

both in

termsof

its own

tradition,

and

in terms of influences ocussed

upon

it because of

the

circumstances f

the

philosopher's

ife

and his

times,

that we

can

see

a

particular

hilosopher's

work

in

proper perspective:

as a

distinctive

philosophicachievementwhich

also

belongs

within the

general

ntellectual

history

of

the

period.

To speak of philosophyas having an internalhistorywhich is in some

measuredistinct

rom the other strandsof

contemporary

ntellectual

history,

necessarily

raises most of

those

methodological

ssues

to which

I

alluded

n

discussing

he

problem

of monism or

pluralism.

It is

to these

issues that I

shall now turn.

It

must be admitted that

if

one

were

to

accept

any

form

of

monism,

philosophywould

not

possess

what I would

regardas an internal

history of

its

own. As

we

have

seen,

monisms

may

have a

variety

of

different

orms,

from a complete sociological monism to that partial monism apparently

acceptedby some intellectualhistorians

n

which

the

thoughtof each age

is

regarded

as determined

by

a

set of

presuppositions

which

permeate

all

aspects

of

intellectual

ife. To be

sure,

no form of

monism of

any variety

would

deny that

there have

been

philosophers,

nd none would

need

to

deny

that the

history

of

philosophic

doctrines can be

traced without

tracing

the

history

of

all other characteristics f the

age.

Nonetheless,

monists would

claim that an

adequate

understanding

f

the

thought

of

any philosopher,

and

an understanding f what was significant n the relationsbetweenphiloso-

phers,

would not be

open

to those who looked

upon

philosophy

as

a

specific

form of human activitywhich had a distinctive

historyof

its

own. Instead,

t

would be

claimedthat the history

of

philosophy s to be

viewed as a part

of

some broader

history,

such as the

history

of

the developmentof the human

spirit, or the history of forms of

social organization, r the

history of those

hidden

presuppositionswhich are

determinative

of various Weltanschau-

ungen. Under

these conditions the history of

philosophy

takes

on

an un-

familiaraspect. The connectionsbetweenphilosophersare not regardedas

being

connections stablished hroughdirect nfluences, n which

philosophers

seek

to

improve,or to refute, or

to extend the work of their predecessors, r

to

deal with

problemswhich

had been overlooked.Instead of

regarding

he

relations

between philosophersas being intrinsically

philosophical, hey

are

takento be expressiveof more

generalhistorical orces;

philosophicdoctrines

are

seen

as falling nto an order

whose explanation ies

outside

of

philosophy

itself.



HISTORY OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY

63

There are many

ways

in whichvarious orms of

monismmay be

criticized,

but that

is not my present

purpose.

I

have

merely sought to illustrate

what I

had

alreadysuggested

n more

general

terms: that

acceptance

of

any of the

forms of monism would run counter to the usual proceduresof those who

write special

histories. To

point

this out with reference

to

the

history

of

philosophy

s not to refute

monism,

since it

might

be

argued hat these

usual

procedures

hould

be

abandoned,

and

conventional

histories of

philosophy

be

thoroughly

ecast.

However,

at this

point

1

should

ike to

make t

perfectly

clear

that

even

if

one

accepts

a

pluralistic

view of the

functionalrelations

among

the elements n human societies one need neither

overlook nor

mini-

mize

the

impact

which

non-philosophic

orces

may

have on the

history

of

philosophy.A recognitionof this fact may perhapsoffset some of the appeal

exerted by

various forms

of

monism,

and

a

discussion

of

it

should

help

to

throw

light on

some

of

the

more concrete

methodologicalproblems

which

any historian

of

philosophy

must face.

As a

startingpoint,

let

us

choose to considerthe

impact

of

science

upon

philosophic hought.

There

probablynever

has been a

protractedperiod of

time

during

whichwhat

we would call

science has

failed

to have

an

influence

upon what

we

would

regard

as

philosophicquestions.

There have of

course

been timeswhen sciencehas changedvery slowly, and other timesat which

its

changes

have

been

revolutionary;

when

its

changes

have

been

slow,

the

philosophic raditionhas

probably

been more

stable,

although,

even in

those

times,

philosophy has not remained dormant. On the

other hand, it is

probably

ncontestable

hat

revolutions

n

science

are

always

felt in

the

body

of

philosophy.

The close connectionsbetween science and

philosophy

have

indeed

been

recognizedby

historiansof

philosophy,

and

one

finds

that at

least

two straightforwardttempts

o

write historiesof

particularperiods of

philosophy - Mead's Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century and

Randall's

The Career

of Philosophy from

the

Middle Ages

to the

Enlighten-

ment have taken the relations between science and

philosophy as their

dominant

nterpretative

heme.

However,

neither

Mead nor

Randall

dentified

science and

philosophy:

n

fact,

it was

precisely

because

they

did not

do

so

that

each

could so

sharply

raise the

question

of how

specific

modes

of scien-

tific

thought,or specific scientific

advances,

affected

philosophy.

Were these

two

forms of human inquirythe

same,

the

problem

of

influencewould not

even arise.Thus, an insistencethat the historianof philosophyshould trace

the

continuities

and the changeswhich occur withinthe

philosophic

radition

in

no

sense precludeshim from

acknowledging

he influenceof

science

upon

philosophy.The same point

can be made in reverse. The fact that one can

follow the

history of scientific developments,and

can relate them to,

say,

technologicaland sociological

changes, by no

means entails that philosophy

plays

no

role

in

the history of the sciences. As

historians

of science have

demonstrated,philosophic

views, whether methodologicalor

metaphysical,



64

MAURICE

MANDELBAUM

have

at least sometimes nfluenced he

investigative echniques

of

scientists,

and

they

have almost

inevitably

affected scientific

theory-formation.Thus,

the pluralistic

nsistence hat

the

traditions

of scientific

nquiryand of philo-

sophic thoughtare two traditions,being neitheridentical with one another

nor

merely aspects

of some one

tradition,

does

not

preclude he historianof

eitherphilosophyor

sciencefrom

attempting

o

establisha

series of influences

between

the

two fields.

What has

been

said of

the relations

between

philosophy

and

science might

be

thought

o be

exactly paralleledby

the

relationsbetween philosophyand

religion,

f we

take

religion

o refer

to

the

broadest

questions

of

theological

belief. However,

there is

a

difficulty

n

attempting

o

draw such

a parallel.

Unlikethe case in whichone contrasts cience andphilosophy, t is difficult

to distinguish learlybetween

the

philosophic raditionand the ways in which

men seek to settle

questions

of

theological

belief. Since

the border-line

be-

tween the two

fields

is

not

sharply drawn,

it

is not easy to speak of two

traditions

which

may influence

one

another,

but

which remain

distinct;

here-

fore,

the model

which

might

be

thought

o

be

furnished

by

the relationsbe-

tween

science

and

philosophy

will

not

adequately

erve

in this

case. On the

other hand,

if

religion

s not

to

be

identifiedwith the

raisingand answering

of questions concernedwith theologicalbelief, but is identifiedwith a par-

ticular form of human activity, or a particularattitude, or a dimensionof

experience, hen

it is

by no means easy to generalizeas

to how religionaffects

philosophy,or is affected by it. It may, I think, be

safely taken for granted

that in

a

particularperiod

of

history

such

influences

would

vary from

case

to case

-

some philosophersbeing more affectedby the

religious

attitudes

of

their

times than

were

others,

and

some philosophic

doctrines

having greater

repercussions pon

these attitudes

han would

others.

These mutualrelations

mightalso vary greatly rom age to age. Therefore,when BertrandRussell,

in

the introduction to his History of WesternPhilosophy, links religion and

science as the two factors which produce the

conceptionsof life

and

the

world

which we call 'philosophical ' p. xiii), he is

linking

two

factors

whose

modes

of

exerting

an influence

upon

human

thought

would

seem to

be

quite

different.Furthermore, s those acquainted

with

this particularpassage may

recall,

Russell

couples religiousconceptions

with

ethical

conceptions

n their

formative

influence

on

philosophy,

as

if

religion

and

ethics were

either

equivalentor functioned n the same ways. Withoutattempting o show that

both forms

of such an assumptionwould be

misleading,

cite this illustration

merely to prove how readilyhistoriansof philosophy ake

it

for

granted

hat

the mode of influence exerted on philosophic thought by one factor

in

a

culture

can provide an adequate clue to the ways in which other factors

exert

their influenceson it.

As

one

final illustration f this weakness,I shall

suggesta

few

of

the

ways

in

which a particular et of political or economic conditionsmay influence



HISTORY

OF

IDEAS,

INTELLECTUAL

HISTORY,

1-HISTORY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

65

philosophy,

and shall

suggest

hat no one of these can be taken as an

adequate

indication

of the influences exerted

in

other

types

of case. Take first what

are sometimes

called

the

social

determinants f a

philosophic

doctrine,for

examplethe claim madeby C. E. Trinkaus hat the concept of the Great

Chain

of

Being

reflected he hierarchical tructure

f a class society.57 uch

determinants,f

they

could

be

established,

would

represent

direct

influences

of political or economicfactors upon

the content of

metaphysical

deas.

The

argument

s also sometimessuggested(for

example by Trinkaus

8)

that the

modifications

f these ideas

are not to be

regarded

as

being primarily

due

to

logical motives,

nor

to

the impact of

other ideas, but that they are to be

interpreted s effects

of

changes

which have occured

n

political

or economic

factors since the originalformulationof these ideas. Thus it is arguedthat

both the originsand

the changesof specific metaphysicaldeas

may be taken

as resultsof the direct action of social

conditionsupon men's thoughts.How-

ever tenuous such an hypothesismay

be when it is applied to

metaphysical

doctrines,59 ne should

be cautious

in denying the possible effects

of

such

direct influences

when dealingwith politicalphilosophies.

t

would

seem not

wholly unwarranted

o think thatthe specificcontentof a normative

political

theory might be directly nfluencedby

the political scene (although

t might

also be influencedby the traditionof that branch of philosophicthought);

and it is

almost certain that one can

in some cases trace

changes in the

content of

these theories

because

of

changes

in the political

and

economic

forces

which

were presentat the time.

Thus, we may

note that

the

influences

which are operative

n one branchof philosophy

may not be directlyoperative

in others.

Furthermore,

one should perhaps distinguish among various

forms

of

indirect nfluencewhich social conditions

may have upon philosophic

hought.

Among such indirect nfluencesmight be those in which politicalunrestor

economic

crises

have made men more

sensitive to political and economic

issues,

and have thus channelled he thoughtof philosophers

n these directions

ratherthan others. On the other hand,

there also are indirect

nfluences

of

a

quite

different sort. In all societies the political

and

economic conditions

tend

to determine he

classes of people

who have

the

time and

the

social

7

Four

Letters on Ernest Nagel's

Review

of

Lovejoy's

'The Great Chain of

Being ',

Science and

Society,

I

(1936-37), 410

ff. In addition

to the letter by Trinkaus,

there is

a reply by Nagel and comments by Lovejoy and V. J. McGill.

35

Ibid., 411.

59

The

quite different thesis that

such metaphysical

doctrines may be used to justify

political

and economic policies (either

directly,

or indirectly through their

influence

upon political

and economic theory)

is sometimes

confused with the above

hypothesis.

In

fact,

Trinkaus failed

to separate the problems

of social

determinantsfrom social

consequences,as Nagel's

rebuttal served

to point out. However,

the

consequences of a

philosophic

doctrine are surely not to

be interpreted

as part of the history of

philosophy,

unless

the Marxist wishes

to emulate the idealist

and

maintain,

as

F. H.

Bradley held,

that 'the

real Julius Caesar'

extends just as far as

his influence

extends.



66

MAURICE MANDELBAUM

positions

which

make it

possible

to

engage

in

philosophic

thought

in full

awareness

of the traditions

of that

thought.

Furthermore,

at different times

the social

structure seems to determine

what groups

of

people,

in what oc-

cupations, form the groups in which one finds concerted efforts to deal with

philosophical

problems.

For example, in some generations

in some

societies

most

philosophers

have

been

professors

of

philosophy,

whereas

in

other

generations

(for example

in

England

in the nineteenth century) they have

not.

If this

fact

had no influence

upon

the

history

of

philosophy

it

would

be

as

surpnsniig

as

if the fact that mediaeval philosophers were

churchmen had

no

impact upon

how they thought

and wrote.

Thus,

in

these

two

quite different

ways, what might be

called social determinants may have

an

indirect

in-

fluence on the course of philosophy without necessarily determining the

specific content

of philosophic

doctrines.

No facts

of

the

above

sort need be denied

by

those

who hold that there

has been

-

and that

there is

-

a

specifically

philosophic tradition which

it is

the function

of the historian of philosophy

to understand, to analyze, and

to

depict.

An

insistence

that

any

persistent

form

of human

activity,

such

as

that

represented

by philosophic

thought,

takes

place

within the

framework

of a

growing

tradition does

not

entail

that this

activity,

and

the

tradition which

it

forms, is unaffected by other forms of human activity and the products

through which

these are expressed. Through

an acceptance

of a pluralistic

view of

the relations

among

human

institutions,

both

the

continuity

of

phi-

losophy and

its changing

features

can best be understood.

The Johns Hopkins

University

Documents

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