THE SECOND COMING OF DR. AMOS M.D.SIRLEAF (PH.D.

) BLACOLOGIST
TO LIBERIA: THE MISUNDERSTOOD LIBERIAN CULTURAL SCIENTIST
AND INTELLECTUAL, WHOM OTHER SCHOLARS DO NOT WANT YOU TO
KNOW.

Introduction
It is paradoxical, yet true to say that the more
we know the more ignorant we become. In
absolute sense, for it is only through
enlightenment that we become conscious of our
limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying
results of intellectual evolution is the continuous
opening up of new knowledge.
Why am I misunderstood by my people at home
especially within few so-called skeptical and
sometimes repentant intellectuals in Liberia
since my matriculation from the USA from 2011
to 2015 specifically at Cuttington University
where I served as professor?.It must be
mentioned that at Cuttington University, my
most intellectual and scholastic admirers has
been the student population and few level
minded local Liberian professors.
Why our people must reduce themselves to this? Is it
because of competitive western education from the
western deceptive perspective? What is Education?
Education, fundamentally, is the vital channel through
which culture is transmitted from generation to
generation. As a Blacologist, a Black African Cultural
Scientist, in essence, it is this process of my intellectual
values meaning are made out of my life's experiences,
both local and global, that constitute the fabric of the
life of my people. It must be mentioned that in most
societies, education became an instrument of control
in the hands of the powerful few; a means by which
inequality is at best maintained, at worst exacerbated
Africans or Third World Nations keep knowledge in the
hands of the few and reduces the many to apathy or
despair through the twin strategies of (a) information-
overload (b) and ignorance. Liberia, my land of nativity
is an embodiment of the above socio-political cultural
construction of reality.
Why is it that I am culturally, Blacologically,
Religiously, Ideologically, Scholastically, and
Intellectually misunderstood, mostly by my own
people since my return to Liberia from 2011 to 2015?
In an attempt to constructively engage this unique
subject, I would like to share to my readers the
difference between the making of Intellectual and
an Intelligence person, and Nature's gift of
knowledge and intelligence as an intellectual and
scholar. (a) The intelligent person, in many
instances, is someone, who has the capacity to
respond to mental challenges, deducing logic,
inferring hints and understanding complex subject
matter upon explanation. (Education through
Training)
(b) This individual may have varying degrees of
curiosity and interest, and it would depend on the
subject that he/she has become familiar with.
(Education through Training). Even unknown
subjects, when explained coherently, they would be
well adapted to pick up the logic of it, and conduct
intelligent conversations around them.(Education
through Training).

Under street slang, there is the generally known

difference between book-smart and street-smart,
and both categories would fit well with the
description of an intelligent person. The book-smart,
reading books most of his time, can relate what
he/she has read through his reasoning ability, and
that builds a formidable trove of knowledge and
reasoning power. That, so popular culture
recognizes, is the mark of intelligence. Especially, it
is pointed out, the street-smart should also be
considered as intelligent, because intelligent merely
means to understand facts and their relationships
when presented with them. A book-smart person
relishes on abstract-theoretical applications, a
street-smart person enjoys social challenges and
practical problems. I am caught up between these
two schools of thought, which, in many instances,
might had precipitated my misunderstood situation
by my people, mainly in Liberia, especially when it
comes to Blacology. Based on my life learned lesson
and the applications of both Intelligent and
Intellectual along with my Black African tradition
and philosophical Cultural Scientific knowledge, I
have come to be misunderstood. It is significance to
elucidate that the youth and few culturally conscious
indigenous elders men and women in Liberia
embraced me in Bong County where I served as a
professor at Cuttington University from 2011 to 2015
through Blacology. A Scientific Study of the
evolution of Black African People and their Culture. I
am optimistic that Blacology can be receptive to the
Liberian people nation wide. This , of course, will
come to fruition during my "Second Coming". Of
course the return of the Black Messiah...Black
Jesus(Blacologist) . The Black African Liberian
Cultural Scientsis.
(c) The intelligent person is, therefore, the umbrella
term, and the intellectual belongs to the category of
the intelligent person. What distinguishes the
intellectual from the intelligent person is his or her
curiosity and interest that goes significantly beyond
the person, who can merely respond to mental
challenges when posed to him/her. For instance,
(street-smart). In fact, the intellectual is actively
looking for mental challenges, i.e. to ask questions
that yield to some answers, but open up more
questions that need to be answered. (Can the African
People or the Liberian tell me why Jesus is white,
Mary is white, Joseph is white, the Angles are white
and the Devil is Black )? (Will they accept from me
that Jesus was a Black Man and God is a Black
Person)? (Will they be able to tell me that Black
African People are the first species created by the
divined Creator)? (Will the Liberian People'
Christians and Muslims not asked me from their
Churches and Mosques when I tell them that
Jesus/Mohammed were Black Men)? Reading
books, discussing heavy topics with friends and
family, writing and publishing articles and essays
etc, an intelligent person goes through life,
sometimes curious, but most of the time content
when more tranquil times prevail, and not ask for
much more. University degree? Perhaps, but more as
a means to an end (job, income), rather than an end
in itself. I returned to Liberia on September 11, 2011
to 2015 to help the post conflict Liberian peace
building process. I was called by Cuttington
University as a Professor.
On the other hand, the intellectual is not content
with mentally tranquil times, but once when having
found out the pleasure of inquiry can not stop
inquiring, and setting his life around the solution of
problems. Blacologically finding a solution to Black
African problems, by no means, means that an
ultimate answer can be found, and the thirst has
been quenched. The method counts, not the tool. For
the intelligent person, mental challenges, again, are
a means to an end, and when once discovering a
satisfactory answer or solution, holds on to this
precious knowledge, and does not bother about
questioning its foundations. This is not the case of
Blacology. The search for knowledge continues
through life. It is essential for me to insert below
some of my Blacological activities in Liberia for the
purpose of public awareness as to whether there is a
justification for me to be misunderstood by my own
people:

We kindly ask that you:

Follow all directions from the ushers/marshals.
Refrain from going/walking in and out of the arena
after the program begins.
Silence all mobile phones.

Welcome to the First Commencement Convocation of

the Blacology, Liberia Mission. We highly appreciate

your cooperation in helping to sustain the dignity and

solemnity of the occasion. We however, respectfully

request that you refrain from engaging in loud

conversation, as well as moving about while the

commencement exercises are in progress. Once the

exercises have begun, only members of the authorized

accredited press and photographers are permitted to

move about. Opportunities for taking photos will be

provided at the end of the program.

 PRESIDENT, BLACOLOGY UNIVERSITY, USA

Dr., Prof. Blacologist, Xrozz, BSc, MSc, PhD, UBZD*

Vice President, Blacology, Washington D.C./President,
Blacology Liberia Mission
Dr., Prof. Amos M. D. Sirleaf, Blacologist, BSc, MSc, PhD,
UBZD*
National Program Director of Blacology, Liberia Mission

Prof., Dr. Mogana S. Flomo, Sr., Blacologist, BSc, MBA,

PHF, BZD*
Commencement Speaker and Honoree
Rev., Dr. Daniel (Dan) Edward Boeger, BZD*, Deacon, St.
Timothys Episcopal Church, Gridley, California, USA
 Honorary Degree Citation

HONORABLE DANIEL (DAN) EDWARD BOEGER

FIRST COMMENCEMENT CONVOCATION SPEAKER
Rev. Dr. Dan Boeger, your family immigrated to the
United States from Germany just before the First World
War and built successful farms of orchards, rice, and
other crops in California. Your father graduated from
Stanford just before the great depression of the 1930s.
His father also became a farmer and invented many
modern farming tools.
You graduated from Oregon State University in
Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics where you
were president of Farm Economics Club and selected to
Ag Honorary Society, and aw you were awarded the Dad
Potter Award for outstanding student.
After graduation, you started AgData, a company
that writes, provides, and services computer software for
agriculture. AgDatas farm management software has
been used throughout the United States and in some
foreign countries, including Morocco and China and even
in Liberia. You were elected as a charter board member
of American Agricultural Computing Companies the
only board member elected west of the State of Iowa.
You have served 12 years as mayor and city
councilman of Gridley, California, you have also served as
a member of Butte County Water Commission, and you
also served as member and chairman of Butte County
Economic Development Committee. You have further
used your macro and micro economic skills to serve
Liberian Childrens Schooling Project (LCSP) working in
co-ed schooling in Liberia and more recently in
promoting modern irrigated agriculture, clean water &
sanitation, and recently in the fight against Ebola in
Liberia. You led a team of five medical and construction
volunteers to Liberia in a Rotary Global Grant, Liberian
Villages Clean Water and Sanitation. This grant is using
modern, portable, equipment to drill safe and sanitary
water wells in Liberia.
Because of your public service in your home
community and abroad, and because of yor Christian
leadership and service, in 2014 you were ordained a
permanent Deacon of the Episcopal Church of the United
States. As such, you represented your diocese of
Northern California in Global Episcopal Ministries
Network (GEMN) national conferences to promote global
ministries as well as Christian Peace and Reconciliation
missions.
Rev., Dr. Dan E. Boeger, you are married to Mary
Boeger (also an ordained deacon of the Episcopal
Church) and both of you have two sons who are farmers
and outside businessmen, and you have three
grandchildren.

Therefore, with the several humanitarian positions

you have occupied, serving mankind in general, and
Africans in particular, the College of Blacology, Research,
and Development, Liberia Mission, is pleased to present
you to the President to receive an Honorary Doctorate
Degree in Blacology. Congratulations!
 Candidates for Degrees (Blacology)

Honorary Degree for Supporting Blacology

Honorary Masters (MNZ) in Blacology

Officials of Student Government

Secretary to the Liberia Mission

Faculty and Staff

National Program Director

Commencement Speaker

Government Officials
 Other Invited Guests

Vice President of the University of Blacology, USA &

President, Liberia Mission

Order of the Exercise

Dr. Amos M. D. Sirleaf

President of Blacology, Liberia Mission
Presiding
Processional

The Invocation The Rev. Jacob Q. Sameway

President, Bong Christian
Association (BOCA)
Welcome & Special Honor Mr. James S. K. Miller
and Others
Blacology Students Association

Recognition of Guests Blacologist, V. Alexander

Johnson

THE PRESIDENT CONVENES THE FIRST

COMMENCEMENT CONVOCATION

Presidents Charge to the Amos M. D. Sirleaf, PhD,

UBZD*
Graduates and Honorees President, Blacology,
Liberia Mission

The Conferring of the First Amos M. D. Sirleaf, PhD,

UBZD*
Honorary Degree on the National President, Blacology,
Liberia Mission
Program Director of Blacology

Presentation of Candidates for Prof., Dr. Mogana S.

Flomo, Sr., BSc, MBA, PHF, BZD*
Honorary Degrees National Program
Director, Blacology, Liberia Mission
Conferring of Honorary Amos M. D. Sirleaf, PhD,
UBZD*
Doctorates President, Blacology, Liberia
Mission

Presentation of Candidates for Prof., Dr. Mogana S.

Flomo, Sr., BSc, MBA, PHF, BZD*
Honorary Masters Degrees National Program
Director, Blacology, Liberia Mission

Conferring of Honorary Amos M. D. Sirleaf, PhD,

UBZD*
Certificates President, Blacology, Liberia
Mission

Remarks: a) The Honorees

b) Emmanuel N. B. Flomo, Africa
Award Recipient
c) NGos
d) Other Dignitaries
e) Government Officials
Selection --------------------

The Commencement Address: Rev., Dr. Daniel (Dan)

Edward Boeger, PHF, BZD*
 Deacon, St. Timothys Episcopal
Church in Gridley City,
California, USA, Chairman,
Vocational Training Team, USA

The Conferral of Degrees in Course Amos M. D. Sirleaf,

PhD, UBZD*
President, Blacology, Liberia
Mission

The Petition & Presentation Mogana S. Flomo,

Sr., MBA, PHF, BZD*
of Graduates National Program
Director, Blacology, Lib. Mission

Conferring of Degrees and Amos M. D. Sirleaf, PhD,

UBZD*
Certificates in Blacology President, Blacology,
Liberia Mission

VOTE OF THANKS AND ANNOUNCEMENT- Albert Cole ----

Student Association

The President Closes the First Commencement

Convocation
The National Anthem Audience
(Words by: Daniel B. Warner &
Music by Ms. Olmstead Lucas)

The Blessing Rev. Jacob Q. Sameway

HONORARY DOCTORATE, HUMANE LETTERS (BZD)*

NO. NAME COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

1. Prof., Dr. Mogana S. Flomo, Sr. Liberia
 2. Rev., Dr. Dan E. Boeger USA
3. Dr. Joseph Saye Guannu (PhD) Liberia
4. Clr. Dr. J. Boima Kontoe Liberia
5. Prof., Dr. John Y. Gormuyor Liberia
6. Prof., Dr. Bengaly M. Kamara Liberia
7. Dr. Mogana S. Flomo, Jr. (PhD) Liberia
8. Dr. Andrew S. Allakamenin (PhD) Liberia
9. Dr. Charles K. Mulbah (PhD) Liberia
10. Dr. Edward L. Wonkeryor (PhD) Liberia
11. Dr. Joshua D. B. Giddings (PhD) Liberia
12. Dr. Augustus J. Flomo Liberia
13. Dr. Theodore V. K. Brown, Sr. Liberia
14. Dr. Andrew Jlay Liberia
15. Dr. Sunday-gar E. Duwah Liberia
16. Dr. George Gbakolay Liberia
17. Rev. Dr. James M. Tambah Liberia
18. Dr. H. Boimah Fahnbulleh (PhD) Liberia
19. Dr. K. G. S. Kapu, Sr. Liberia
20. Prof., Dr. John S. Flomo, Jr. (PhD) Liberia
21. Dr. Richard K. Sondah Liberia

HONORARY MASTER DEGREE IN BLACOLOGY (MNZ)

NO. NAME COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

1. Christopher D. Sankolo Liberia
2. Jackson Dumoe Liberia
 3. Julie S. Duwah Liberia
4. Rev. Jacob Q. Sameway Liberia
5. William K. Howard Liberia
6. James Dorbor Sao Liberia

HONORARY BACHOLOR DEGREE IN BLACOLOGY (BNZ)

NO. NAME COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

1. Chief Moses Joko Kuyon Liberia

HONORARY CERTIFICATE IN BLACOLOGY

NO. NAME COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
1. Viola Nyamah Cooper Liberia

Candidates for the Master (MNZ) Degree in Blacology

NAME PREVIOUS DEGREE

COUNTY/COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
Samuel Sahr Siafa BSc. Econ Lofa

Leonid W. Dunn BA Bong

James S. K. Miller BSc. Rural Dev. Bong

Laye M. Kamara BA Bong

Edwin G. Kwakpae BA & MA Bong

Edwood C. Dunn BSc. /Law Bong

Jennifer K. Ansumana BSc. Nursing Lofa

Bertina S. Gomeh BSc. Nimba

Roland S. Yowah BA Bong

Ernestine N. Clark BSc. Bong

 Candidates for the Bachelor of ZcyNzz in Blacology
NAME COUNTY/COUNTRY OF
ORIGIN
Albert B. Cole Bong
David S. K. Dangale Bong
David Suahkollie Bong
Emmanuel B. Sulonteh (Deceased) Bong
Emmanuel K. Lavela Lofa
Isaac G. Paye Bong
John Smith Lofa
Joanna B. Gbawoquiya Bong
Jimmy M. Dolo Bong
Louis K. Porte, III Bong
Lawrence N. T. Senkeh Nimba
Oscar Dolo Bong
Paul H. P. Boko Bong
Edwin K. Sackor Bong
C. Winston Kerkula (Deceased) Bong
Terence A. Stewart Bong
Paul S. Kamara Bong
Philip T. Singbah Bong
Phillip W. Barning, II Bong
Shebel P. Dorley Bong
Stephen F. Paye Bong
Togbah G. Matthew Bong
Adela K. Kpatiquelleh Bong
V. Alexander Johnson Bong
Nathaniel Peanick Bong
Shirley Norris Bong
Reubean B. Goah Nimba
Aaron Massalay Cape Mount
Mulbah Howard Lofa
Emmanuel J. Belleh Lofa
Amos G. Sumo Bong
J. Lahand Stewart Bong
Paul Tilifakpeh Bong
 Candidates for Certificate in Blacology
NAME COUNTY/COUNTRY OF
ORIGIN
Beatrice K. Mulbah Bong

Abraham D. K. Varney Cape Mount

Alfred B. Saryonkpain Bong

Levi N. White Grand Gedeh

John T. Suah Bong

Moses Flomo Bong

Enoch G. Paymah Montserrado

Joshua Lablah Bong

Maxine Kongh Nimba

Luke T. Yartoe Montserrado

Bossay B. T. Korlah Bong

Tanneh N. Flomo Bong

Leelie Gibson Bong

INVITATION & DISTRIBUTION

Mr. Albert B. Cole, Blacologist
LOGISTICS & ACCOMMODATION
Mr. David S. K. Dangale, Blacologist

RECEPTION & FOOD

Mr. V. Alexander Johnson, Blacologist

DECORATION & BEAUTIFICATION

Mr. B. Togbah G. Matthew, Blacologist

PROTOCOL
Mr. James S. K. Miller, Blacologist

ACADEMICALS
Dr. Mogana S. Flomo, Sr., Blacologist

SEATING AND USHER

Ms Shirley Norris, Blacologist

SECURITY
Police, Bong County
 NATIONAL ANTHEM

All hail Liberia, hail

All hail Liberia, hail
This glorious land of liberty
Shall long be ours
Thonew her name
Green be her fame
And mighty be her powers
In joy and gladness
With our hearts united
Well shout the freedom
Of our race benighted
Long live Liberia, happy land,
A home of glorious liberty
By Gods command.
 All hail Liberia, hail
All hail Liberia, hail
In union strong success is sure
We cannot fail
With God above our rights to prove
We will oer all prevail
With heart and hand
Our countrys cause defending
With valor unpretending
Long live Liberia, happy land,
A home of glorious liberty
By Gods command.

..Blacology is an interdisciplinary cultural science. This

science entails a cultural scientific study for black people,
specifically, the "Dark Skinned Black/African people. The "K" is
eliminated to deduce more scientific implications and universal
relevance, i.e., "science". The "K", of course, implies the
strength, wisdom, and the unique "Dark" pigmentation of the
original inhabitants of the continent of Africa. Many
researchers, readers, and observers of this paper would like to
know the actual role and significance of Blacology, or "Black
Cultural Science" as it relates to "Dark Skinned People of Africa"
in the midst of a multi-racially diverse black cultures in
contemporary society. As a young African boy growing up from
a traditional Mandingo Muslim Kpelle/Vai background in
Liberia West Africa during the early 1960s and 1970s, the
consciousness of race relations with specific emphasis on the
white racism other than the black race has never been a
profound significant with the exception of the "Light-Skinned-
Dark-Skinned-Mulatto phenomena among the Americo-
Liberians in Liberia. Black/African is all I am, is all I will be, and
that all I have ever been before getting in contact with
Europeans from Germany, United States, Russia, London,
Swaziland, and many European nations.

I believe this statement could be true for many Africans,

most especially, those of my age and experience at the time. As
ones' eyes becomes open, one can only say that "our eyes have
open and the time of the people has come, the struggle
continues". The question of Blacology in the context of an
interdisciplinary cultural science for black people, most
particularly the "Dark skinned/black People", is not an easy
question. As a matter of historic and political fact, many African
Nationalists, Black Nationalists, and Pan-Africanists alike, have
taken to the African people, in the streets of Africa and the
Diaspora, the questions, who are Africans. Among those
nationalists were the late Dr. Kwame N'Krumah, Julius Nyerere,
Ahmah Saku Toure, Ali A. Mazrui and many others. Before
approaching the debate of these African scholars, I would
access the views of Victor C. Frekiss, an American writer, who
states: that "the unity of African was target by the common
experience of European domination and the common venture
of overthrowing that domination".
Africa, according to Frekiss," is a creation not of common
race or geography or culture but of a common experience in
world politicsIt was not economic or political domination that
was the essence of colonial rule, but racial subordination. It is
this which has determined the essence of African self-identity -
not a common genetic heritage but a common reaction a racial
attitudes on the part of colonial rulers". In reaffirming Frekiss'
views,
 Dr. Nyang also points out that, this interpretation of
African experience has not become the dominant
understanding of what Africa nationalism or Pan-Africanism
means. In other worlds, according to Dr. Nyang," that African
identity is generally defined negatively, and this is largely due
to the fact that it is assumed to be the psychological and
pyschohistorical adhesive which unites the variegated members
of the colonially created community of African suffering".

Viewing from the above prospective of the dynamics

inherent in the processes of fragmentation of concepts, ideas,
phenomenon; experience, reactions, and preventive collective
actions to save the African traditional culture and its black
people, the question of who is African, in my belief, has never
been answered. Many African nationalists, as stated in previous
paragraph, have tried to give some political, philosophical, and
liberated responses to who is an African. Ever since the early
days of independence.
African scholars and politicians have been deeply divided on
the issues of African unity. A frist group (the Panafricanists)
favored political integration as a perquisite to economic
integration. Its members (Cheikh Anta Diop, Modibo Keita,
Kwame N'krumah, Sekou Toure). These men advocated the
immediate and total integration of the African Continent, and
the setting up of a single continental government with common
institutions. The researchers is an activist and advocate of the
above concept (Pan- Africanism). As a matter of fact, the
researcher was an admirer of the Nkrumahs' "young Pioneer"
phenomenon, in the context of the breeding young African
revolutionaries to take over the revolution and carry it forward.
For the youths, according to Dr. Nkrumah," have a hiding
leadership and grow through a revolutionary struggle and
emulation".

Another group, (Gradualists or Functionalist), anxious to

preserve the African states recently acquired sovereignty,
favored a more gradual approach to African intergration. This
group (felix Houphouet-Boigny, Jomo Kenyatta, Leopold
Senghor). These men held that "economic integration should
precede political integration". Its members favored a loose.
(Ann Seidman and Frederick Anang 21st Century Africa, Atlanta,
GA 1992, p. 73.) Its members favored a loose cooperation in
non-controversial (technical and economic) areas and reviewed
regional institutions as a stepping-stone for the progressive
political and economic unification of the continent. This debate,
of course, has created more damages for many progressive
young African scholars, whom I believe that if our so-called
founding fathers could not conform to the total unification of
African, as we see in Europe and other countries, that the
consciousness of black and who are considered African must be
approached from different prospective that will give credits and
compensations to the bonafide original occupants of the
continent. This, I believe will justify the development of
"Blacology" (Black Cultural Science). In addition to this, one
needs to follow up with the definitions of who is an African
from the continental Pan-Africanists prospective. There
scholars who believe in the unity and sanity of the geographical
entity called Africa. These advocates, as Dr. Nyang points out in
his writing, stated "that the term African can be legitimately
applied to anyone who makes African his or her home, takes
part in African history, proudly labors for her political and
economic development, and modestly and devotedly follow the
principles of majority rule in the governmental process of
Africa's societies".

Many scholars including the researcher have problem with

the above definition. However, the first position of this
definition was embraced by Dr. Kwame N'krumah who spelled
out his views on this subject early in his political career. During
a very successful visit to the Republic of Liberia, N'krumah of
Ghana addressed himself to the racial question and to the
African identity crisis in these words": I do not believe in
racialism or tribalism. The concept African for the Africans does
not mean that other races are excluded from it. No, it only
means that Africans can and must govern themselves in their
own countries without imperialist or foreign impositions, but
that peoples of other races can remain on African soil, carry on
their legitimate avocation, live on terms of peace, friendship
and equality with Africans on their own soil.". (Dr. Sulayman
S. Nyang, Islam, Christianity, and African Identity, Vermont
United States of America
1990. P 7.)
The researcher shares many concepts of African with many
progressive founding fathers and scholars, among them were
Dr. N'krumah. But N'krumahs' definitions of African I believe,
were much of a political, social, and ecumenical nature. This, of
course, was appropriate for Africa at that time. N'krumahs'
concept of racialism, I also believe that was his personal
perception, because of his matrimonial companionship with
person out of his race, (i.e., his Jewish wife). It is essential;
therefore, to also point out that Nkrumah was not only the only
founding father of African independence to have marriage out
of his race causing him to be very conservative on the facial
problem and African identity. For instance, Jomo Kenyatta was
also married to a (British white woman), W.E. Dubois did look
white and he was a strong advocate of justice for Jews. These
social integration's in many ways, affected the thinking of many
of our founding fathers for fear of personal embarrassment
with their white families. On the continent of Africa, while
some Africans where fighting for the total emancipation,
Liberation, and freedom from colonial regime, some Africans
were enthusiastic and fascinated about colonial relationship.

This, I believe created diversion from the absolute

definition to African and who are Africans. In this light
therefore, the development of "Black Cultural Science,
(Blacology), has been one of the following major reasons, (1)
that no African scholars have tried to align a "Dark Skinned
Black African people as absolute symbols of the African
continent, (2) and that the concepts of many African scholars of
"Africa for the African" is undefined, (3) and that the concept of
we are all Africans is not an acceptable fact. Therefore, the
concept of Blacology is specifically geared toward the
development of an interdisciplinary cultural science. This
science will at least help bring out the absolute biological and
genetic definitions of Africa. This definition, I believe will create
some positive self-concept for the dark Skinned Black people of
Africa who have been considered a historic shames, laughing
stocks, and mockers in the world of racism and
prejudices. These and many instances are my mission and
objectives of my knowledge sharing with my people. Change
has enemies. Change is difficult. Change is inevitable. Change
must come to Liberia intellectually, culturally, morally,
peacefully and democratically through Blacology.

THE BIOLOGICAL AND GENETIC DEFINTIONS OF BLACOLOGY

"Black," as a people, and by its biological implications, one

many mention biologically that every living creative is a mass of
chemical cells. The bone, blood, flesh are all composed of small
particles of elements which can only be seem microscopically.
These cells are composed of jelly-like substance called
protoplasm, surrounding a nucleus, a center, which contains
chromosomes. The chromosomes are like little strings. These
strings are called genes. It is the specific natural combinations
of the genes working in a unique faction, which determine the
individual's eyes color and hair color, lack of curliness of the
hair, the color of the skin. This is also responsible for the
individuals' physical, emotional, and psychological
characteristics. Every mother gives her child half of the
chromosomes (X), the father provides the other (Y). The
characteristics of any child, according to biology, are a
combination of genetic traits inherited from both parents. It is
however, significant to acknowledge that a biological
characteristic trait of one of the parents may simply dominate
the similar trait in the other parent. For instance, if both
parents have brown eyes, there is a possibility that the child
will virtually have brown eyes also. If one of the parents has
gray eyes and the other has brown eyes, the child is likely to
have either brown or gray eyes.

Sometimes a group of genes for one characteristic will

simply dominate a contrasting group of genes for the same
characteristics or trait, making the dominated genes recessive.
At other times the two competing sets of genes will produce an
obvious mixture; this often happens with skin color- although in
a large family, for instance, some children of a white mother
and black father will take the color of the mother while other
children of the same parents will take color of the father. In
each case, the genes for the color of the parents whose skin
color is not apparent in the child because of the recessive
genes. These recessive, dominate, or subordinated genes can
become dominant if mated with dominate genes for the same
color. It had been both scientifically, sociophyshological, and
biologically proven by many biologists, sciopsychologists, and
scholars in the areas of humanity; among them are Dr. Imari
Abubakari, who said that" when a group is isolated from other
groups by geography, the people, or species of that group will
grow and develop in absolute similarities, (i.e., specifies look a
like, if the isolation persists over many generations". Dr. Imari
Abubakari Obadele, A beginners' Outline of the History of
Afrikan People, Washington, DC 1982. p.4). This hypothesis can
be both inductively and deductively justified in the context of
the "Dark Skin African People" of the continent of Africa, whom
this researcher believes are the original occupants and are the
bonafide definition of Africa. This is true due to the biological,
socio-psychological, and the geographical impact of what the
researcher refers to as positive isolationism. The fact which also
indicates that the groups in a perpetual isolation will begin to
mate or mutate within it kinds and types with one another in
the same population. They will ultimately be sharing the same
genes pool creating the same genetic reproductive results. This
population will be making group of genes for certain physical
characteristics stronger and stronger, more and more
dominate, recessive, subordinate, and superior.

Nevertheless by ten thousand years ago, and probably

much earlier, the three great races, or racial stocks, which
many anthropologists identify today, had come into existence.
That is because the people of the Far East, the Asians, or Yellow
race, had pretty much lived isolated from many centuries from
the people of Africa, whom we call the Black race, and both had
pretty much lived isolated from many centuries from the
people in Africa, whom we call the Black face, and both had
pretty much lived isolated form the people of Europe and Asia
Minor (Turkey and Iran/Persia), whom we call the White race.
Based on these conceptual and biological analysis, one can infer
that the "Dark Skinned" people of Africa are the original
inhabitants of the continent of Africa; therefore, the "Dark
Skinned" (Black People) of the continent of Africa are the
symbols and definition of Africa. When one talks about
Blacology, the interdisciplinary science of black culture, it refers
to the "Dark Skinned Black" people of the continent of Africa
specifically. Even though "Blacology" (Black Cultural Science) is
an open door inter-disciplinary cultural science. This science is
geared towards the total liberation, rehabilitation, re-
education, and re-mewing the minds of all conscious black
people. It is in the main time, save to say that the subject
"Africa, the Continent, and Black People" are very difficult
subject to elucidate because of its controversial political and
sociological nature. And also its historic sources and
discoverers. If one looks at Africa's' pre and post-colonial
historic writers and specialists, many of these so-called
discoverers, specialists, and writers of Africa and its people.
have always been Europeans. These individuals who colonized
the African people, are the same Europeans who gave the
name "Africa", and in fact are the same Europeans who gave
the name "Africa", and nine fact are the same Europeans who
gave many of the colonial African States their names. Liberia
was a white man, many of Liberia's presidents were white men,
and many of these presidents were not born in Liberia nor
Africa. There are the same Europeans who are the so-called
experts of the beginning and ending of the Africa continent and
its people, at times, the destinies of the African continent and
its people.

European Powers and its forcible incorporation into a

system of exchange base on capitalist production, the
possibility of an autonomous development of intellectual
activity in Africa was cut off as surely as the guillotine serves a
head from a body." The praise-signers continued to chant, but
what they had to say ceased to have the same relevance." (Bill
Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa, Indiana University
Press Bloomington, 1980, p. 2.) The colonial masters of Africa
took a keen interest in the territories they ruled, of course.
They were as concerned as any African king had been to
appropriate knowledge about Africa, for the purpose of
effective administration and the promotion of capitalist
enterprise. Much of this knowledge was historical; quantities of
historical materials were amassed and collected in colonial
archives and libraries. However, the colonial period produced
very little in the way of overtly historical publication. The
dominate colonial science was anthropology. From the time of
Sir. Harry Johnson, writing in 1899, it was a full half-century
before a European again wrote a general history of Africa. What
most interested Europeans in Africa was themselves; a history
of trade and diplomacy, invasion, and conquest, heavily infused
with assumptions about racial superiority that buttressed
colonial domination. For the period following conquest, colonial
writing focused on the progress of administration structures,
transport networks and business enterprise in an heroic spirit.
Yet it was the colonial context that for the first time "African"
as an entity from the Cape to Cairo, from the coastal lagoons of
the West to the Horn of the East, could be conceived. While
struggling for the ultimate development of Black Cultural
Science, "Blacology" under the auspices of the absolute
definition of Africa and who are Africans, the "Dark Skinned"
black people of the continent become major variables from
which both written and unwritten history and anthropologists
have developed the believes; based on the totality of
circumstances, that the "Dark Continent of Africa" represents in
most part, the dark inhabitants of the land. Therefore, in my
practical and unwritten knowledge acquired from my parents
and other African elders as an African and a Mandingo Muslim,
I deduced the concepts of Africa as a "Dark Continent, not to
connote negativism as European perceived it.

I believe that the term "Dark Continent" implies (the

blackness of its original inhabitants), Continent:" implies (the
blackness of its original inhabitants), this, I believe that it shows
degree of positive concepts in relations with Africa personality.
Even though Africa has suffered from those who perceived to
have founded it, yet an accurate stories, "our stories" of
"Alkebu-Lan" has come as an unwritten "our stories" from our
elders, not "his stories" which are written by him or by them
(the white so-called specialist on Africa).

WHAT IS THE HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF BLACOLOGY AS IT

RELATES
TO THE 21ST CENTURY AFRICAN SYSTEM OF THOUGHT: USA
Liberian Mission

To elaborate the significance of Blacology, (i.e.,) Black

Cultural Science, one has to also elaborate on the concept of
"Black Nationalism" as it relates to the geographic locations of
all black people with black consciousness and its relevance to
the African continent. It is imperative to note that the
elaboration of Black Nationalism has always been intertwined
with the concept of "Pan-Africanism". Therefore, Black
Nationalism in my view serves as a nucleus from which Pan-
Africanism evolved. Both "Isms" are the entities which
comprises the "Black Cultural Science called Blacology". Pan-
Africanism in relation with the 21st century African System of
Though, must also be contaminant with the roles of today'
African American Community. This, of course, requires some
historic background and overview of early Pan-Africanism as it
relates to Black Nationalism from past to present. This historic
analysis of both Pan-Africanism and
Black Nationalism will help readers to clearly comprehend
some of the social and political ramifications of both concepts
and ideologies. This will also assist to solidify the reasons for
the ultimate development of "Blacology", the interdisciplinary
science of black culture, under the auspices of the 21st century
African system of thought. In an effort therefore, to
operationally conceptualize Pan-Africanism/Black Nationalism,
one needs to first and foremost be cognizant of the meanings
of both Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism. The definitions
of these great ideologies will once again justify the significance
roles of the black people (i.e.,) the "Dark Skinned" occupants as
the symbols of the African continent and the definition of
Africa.
 PAN-AFRICANISM

Pan-Africanism as perceived by the researcher and many

scholars, is a political, social, and economic ideology, and
concept which implies the total unification of the African
continent under a unified political structure and leadership. The
definition of Pan-Africanism was developed from scholastic
observers, from their historic perspectives of studying other
Colonial political and continental unification, under one
modern political hegemony. BLACK NATIONALISM is a cultural,
social, political, and biological concept of consciousness of the
unique black race. The definition of Black Nationalism infers
that black people should repudiate the white man and his
culture; the emotional acceptance and propagation of black
culture or race pride. Black Nationalists must reconstruct
history to demonstrate that black people, especially African-
Americans are descended from noble and glorious ancestors,
from wise and powerful rulers and conquerors. Black
Nationalism also exhorts many black people in the United
States and those of the Diaspora to stand up in defense of their
human personality. This implies that black people must
manifest exceptional strength on behalf of both black men and
women. Just as a coin has two sides, so has today's theme of
black consciousness. From my vantage point, side one is this:
For Blacks in the United States the reality is that race, as it has
been biologically and socially defined, has been a major
determining factor in institutional arrangements, particularly
with respect to the dominate power structure's formulation of
what it considered to be appropriate educational policies,,
program, and practices. Throughout U.S. history the dominate
economic, political, and social ideologies regarding African-
American reason for being in the U.S. and their appropriate
place in its structures have interacted to shaped their
educational arrangements, education being a subordinate
social institution. As it has been known in the world, the
economic and political needs of the larger society dictated an
educational policy of ignorance for blacks in the South from
slavery to emancipation. (Faustine C. Jones-Wilson, Race,
Reality, and America Education: Two Sides of the Coin, Journal
of Negro Education, Vol. 59, No. 2 (1990) Howard University p.
119.) In light of the above scenario, and prior to that period,
many African-Americans who were discontent with the
American political system, decided to organize the back to
African Movement, Pan-Africanism, and Black Nationalism. The
significant relations between African and Africa-American in the
context of Pan-Africanism-Black Nationalism from the end of
the 19th century up to the 1950s is fascinating, albeit not well
know by many people.
 Like Edward Wilmot Blyden, Marcus Garvey, George
Pardmore, Frank Fanon, Cesaure, Kwame Knrumah, Jomo
Kenyatta, Sekou Toure, and Seda Senghor, W.E.B. Du-Bois, one
of the founding fathers of modern Black Nationalism and Pan-
Africanism (which until the 1950s, was essentially Pan-
Negroism). Du-Bois, a co-founder of the the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.)
and of the
Pan-African Movement, inspired both African-American fighting
for civil rights and African Nationalists struggling for an "African
for the African". W.E.B. Du-Bois was born in Massachusetts in
1868. His parents came from Haiti and his ancestors included
Black slaves brought as chattel labor to the West Indies. Du-
Bois grew up in a liberal and tolerant white neighborhood and
did not encounter in many ways the ugly face of white racism
for three major reasons: (1) Du-Bois was near-white (Negro) (2)
he went to imperial white schools, (3) he was not considered a
disadvantaged Negro. Until he went to Fisk College in Nashville,
Tennessee. In Harvard, Du-Bois encountered a different kind of
racism. At Massachusetts in my opinion, Du-Bois did not
encounter the bitterness of racism because he was light
skinned or (near white). In Harvard, racism was less brutal for
Du-Bois due to his near white complexion and being a near
white black and at Harvard. Du-Bois's first major book, The
Suppression of the African Salve Trade in the United States
1638-1870, was published in 1896 and dealt with the struggle
for abolition in the United States. Du-Bois was co-founder of
Pan-African Congress which convened in London in 1900.
There, he coined the famous, almost prophetic, since "the
problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line". It
is essential to acknowledge that DuBois' prophetic vision and
articulation of the color problem in the 20th century, has been
transformed and modified by a prophetic vision and
articulation of a young African scholar from Liberia, West
Africa, who claims that: The Black Race, the African Continent,
and the Ultimate Necessity for the Development of Black
Cultural Science, (Blacology); the 21st Century African System
of Thought. Du-Bois, who believed in democratic socialism was
a bitter enemy of his fellow Black Nationalism Marcus Garvey,
who advocated racial purity, Black supremacy, and capitalism. It
is reasonable to mention that Marcus Garvey was not admired
by many of his peers of his time because of his dark skinned
complexion. Du-Bois evolved from the Negro-Mulatto near
white persuasion, and Garvey whose organic African dark
skinned out look, and his traditional African communalism,
which I believe was threatened to white, the near white Negro-
Mulatto persuasive black people. Therefore, one can deduce by
inferring that, for many reasons, Du-Bois and his near white
black comrades had problems with Marcus Garvey and his dark
skinned comrades because of their dark skinned complexion,
which of course, led to many of the radical positions that
Garvey took during his stay in the United States. It is also true
that many writers of that period did not actually address the
bone of discontent, dissolution, and the frustration that
permeated between Du-Bois and Garvey in the context of the
color problem. However, in an effort to minimize, contain, and
resolve the near white and the dark skinned problems which
permeates in the fabrics of the World community in
contemporary society, especially the United States and South
Africa; the development of Black Cultural Science (Blacology),
which primary objective is to define the organic meaning of
African, from the stand point of the continent and its dark
skinned occupants prior to the whites and the evolution of the
mixed races. This, I believe will motivate both white and near
white black people (light skinned) to respect dark skinned
people by virtue of their unique historic contribution to the
world population with beautiful race.

Despite the conflicts that erupted among all of our

founding fathers, in Africa and America, in the context of the
odds against Marcus Garvey because of his dark skinned Black
Nationalist, vs. W.E. Du-Bois, light skinned (Jewish activist), and
the division among the Pan-Africanists, Cheikh Anta Diop,
Modibo Keita, Kwame Nkrumah, Sakou Toure, and the
gradualists-functionalist and integrationalists, Felix
Houphouset-Bioigny, Jomo Kenyantta who also had a white
wife, and Leopold Senghor; the conflicts that existed between
comrae Malcom X, Elijah Mohammed, Louis Farrakahn, of the
families of the National of Islam, also the conflicts between the
indigenous Liberians and the Americo-Liberians have created
gabs or lines of demarcations. These gabs or liens of
demarcations can and must be bridged under the auspices of
the common black race, the African Continent, and the
Ultimate Necessity for the Development of Black Cultural
Science, (Blacology), which the researchers believe must be the
21st. Century African System of Thought. Every self-conscious
national and its people on the looks back upon its past to revive
former glories, to discover its origins, to relate its history to that
of other parts of the world and to arrive at a knowledge of the
development of its political, social, economic and other
systems. Attached to this concept, one can therefore deduce
that, there can no experts on African except those Africans who
are conscious of themselves. And who believe that because of
their might black race (dark skinned), for which they have been
ridiculed, abused, segregated, subjugated, alienated, and killed
in the process by the universal enemies (i.e.,) white colonialists,
these black are the experts of their stories but not his stories,
the colonial stories.

In light of the above analogy, it becomes a important that I

echo from these great social theorists, August Comte and
Durkheim, who declared that social phenomena should be
treated as things and consequently could be indirectly observed
by the constraints they place on people. They stated further
that the main task for the social scientist, therefore, was to
discover natural laws which govern these constraining
phenomena. Durkheim's belief in the "realness" of objective
social phenomena and the rigorous procedures which are
necessary to infer these social constraints is exemplified in his
brilliant and carefully controlled study of Suicide. While Weber,
who also emphasized the unique nature of social phenomena;
he declared that the only way to arrive at real, meaningful
conclusions relative to human behavior is to understand it. This,
of course, does not mean that a researcher's values must
become involved in his selection of a problem for inquiry;
rather it means that one must be aware of and utilize his
position in
the universe as a thinking, reasoning human being in order to
(in a modified sense) take the role of others in interpreting his
actions. Actions can only be understood from the standpoint of
meaning to the actor. I believe that the only way to arrive at
solutions to any difficult problem is to know the problem and
its existence. Therefore, the problem of the 21st century is the
problem of:

THE RELEVANCE OF BLACOLOGY/BLACK CULTURAL SCIENCE IN

THE MIDST OF MULTI-RACIAL DIVERSITIES IN CONTEMPORARY
SOCIETY:

The statistical inventory of cultural diversities and changes are

eminently
distinguishable and identifiable in individual African and African
countries and those of the Third World. Ina n effort to
absolutely comprehend the term culture, it must be defined in
accordance with the concept of black cultural science,
(Blacology). What do we mean by culture and its relevance to
the study of Blacology? According to this study, the term
culture is defined as a transit and inherent experience and
value of black people with common interest, common
characteristics, working together, for the general welfare
of black people. This definition has four variables which are
traditionally imbedded in the African system vis-a-vis black
system of though," manly", common interest, common
characteristics, communalism, and the extended African family
phenomenon. The common interest phenomenon is based on
the totality of excruciating circumstances and experiences of
the African people and their stories in dealing with the
African/black people past and present, leading them to
determine what is common to them as they grow through their
struggles. The common characteristics aspect of
Black/American culture involves the common Black/dark
skinned race with all its redicues and shames that make the
black/African people and what they are in the context of their
common mighty race. The Communalism perspective includes
the idea of wholesome functioning society and collective
whole. The idea of helps one helps all, scratch my back and I
scratch your back, which implies a transitive property of
equality. As it illustrates that: if A=B, and B=C, therefore, A=C).
To further this definition with an illustration on the African
harvest or farming labors distributions; if one African family
went to my farm to assist during harvest, my entire families will
have to reciprocate the same, this is called communalism in
many aspects. The extended African family phenomenon which
includes mother, father, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
nephews, nieces, husband, wife/wives, grandfather;
grandmother, etc., all are considered one household.
 Working with the above definitions, I feel compare to
embrace and add to this paper as a significant ingredient to our
total understanding of culture as it relates to contemporary
society. This addendum has been brilliantly outlined by an
Africanist and African scholar, Dr. Sulaymay S. Nyang who
declares;" that culture is a human enterprise which has three
components. He maned them as (a) the material base, (b) the
value base, and (c) the instructional base. The material base of
a culture, according to Dr. Nyang embraces all materials
embodiments of the spirits and ideas of a particular society.
The value base, on the other hand, refers to the total body of
values which determines the relative significance of all things
and all deeds within a given social universe. The institutional
base refers to the given social universe. The institutional base
refers to the processes and conditions which are instrumental
in the self-definition and self advancement of a given society".
(Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang, The Cultural Consequences of
Development in Africa, International Conference on Culture and
Development in Africa, The World Bank Washington, DC.) The
relevance of Blacology/black cultural science in the midst of the
multi-racial diversities in my views, is therefore, a positive self-
concept. As black\dark skinned original occupants (numbbins of
the ALkebu lan), of the continent of Africa, it is evidence from
the uniqueness of the black/dark skinned superior race that
where so ever finds a fellow black/dark skinned nubbin in the
midst of other races, a natural magnetism usually attracts that
will bring you both together, no matter where you sit in an
audience, where you live, and where you work. It is just a
matter of natural propensity base on the knowledge of
ourselves. This, of course, is not prevalent among near
white/light skinned people or white people. For instance, if a
near white/light skinned black with European mentality, that
individual will not be enthusiastic if he or she meets a fellow
near white/light skinned black person. This also applies to white
people in general who are not socially conscious of one
another.

As Dr. Na'iam Akbar scholarly mentioned in one of his

presentations; "Tribal Knowledge," when he declared that once
we know ourselves as individuals, then we have to know
ourselves as a tribune. He further asked for the definition of a
tribe when he defined it as "a community." Tribune has a more
basic meaning which identifies the relationship that exits
among people who have a shared social environment, a shared
history. The tribe is that kind of spiritual/mental relationship
that ties people together based on their shared experiences
and environment;" (Dr. Na'im Akabar, From Mis-education to
Education, New Mind Productions Jersey City, N.J. 1994, p. 15.)
Dr. Na'iam Akbar declares. The disparity between realism of a
black/dark skinned African as the original inhabitants of the
land and those light skinned or near white on the North and
Northern African, and the white in Southern and South Africa
can produce a unique dichotomy in the development of black
cultural science. This study has developed both major and
manor hypothesis.

MAJOR HYPOTHESIS AND JUSTIFICATION

The major hypothesis in this study is contemplated on the (See
Amos M. D.
Sirleaf, Realism of Secondary High School Training and
Vocational Marketable of Liberian Students: a partial fulfillment
for the Masters Degree in Sociology/Social Work, Prairie View
A&M/the Texas A&M University System, 1989, p. 5.) positive
relationship between the dark skinned/black African as the
original occupants of the land, which is considered higher grade
of aspiration and expectation. And the definition of who is
African, remains politically, economically, socially and
genetically debatable questions for scholars of research.
Supporting this hypothesis from both inductive and deductive
reasoning, it is observed that most of the developmental
theories of realism of black cultural science (Blacology), among
black in general, can be illustrated by the below listed variables:
I. The Black Races: (a) black people (b) black skinned people (c)
near white/light skinned black people.

September 23, 2008

Dear Dr. Sawyer:
I am writing to recommend Dr. Amos Sirleaf for the
position of President of your national university. To
the best of my knowledge, Dr. Sirleaf is qualified to
occupy this post for three important reasons. I will
develop each of these arguments in support of his
application and to ask you to give serious
consideration to my recommendation.
The first reason why I believe it would be in the
interest of Liberia to recruit a man of Dr. Sirleafs
caliber, honor and integrity, it is because of whom he
is and what he can for that country. He is a native-
born citizen of Liberia who took courses with me and
throughout this period he reveals strength of
character and commitment to Liberian development
and political stability. It was with this attitude in mind
that I come to the conclusion that his doctoral thesis
and the enormous work that went to its creation
prepared him to serve both town and gown. As an
educated Liberian with many years of residence in
the West, particularly in the United States of
America, Dr. Sirleaf comes to the job well prepared.
Not only do you see the pen and the tongue in
collaboration, but the heart and the spirit are united
in the betterment of Liberia. Both the students on
campus and the villagers on the scattered places of
Liberia would find succor and hope in his statements
and performance.
The second reason why I support his application
rests entirely on his capacity to navigate on the
intricate and challenging mental highways of
Liberian society. Like many African countries, Liberia
has many groups jockeying and competing for
power, prestige and resources. Although many
entertain these attitudes, a very few have the
capacity and the capability to deliver the much
needed goods from their fellow countryman. Not
only is Dr. Sirleaf exposed to the vicissitudes of life
in the U.S. but he has learned from these
experiences and would now like to replicate socially
what he has learned to articulate among Liberians
and fellow Africans. This moment in his life and in
the history of his country is critical. Your decision
could make a big difference. His command of
several of your national languages would make him
a valuable point of contact and communication
between the leaders and the led.
The third reason why I ask you to give serious
consideration to his application is to pay close
attention to the activism of Dr. Sirleaf. Those
Liberians, Africans and others who know him can
testify to his long-term advocacy for Liberia. Not only
are his efforts over the years known to many of us,
but his classroom performance and his
determination to be a living voice of Liberia when
young Africans lamented for the plight of their
nations and cried with pain in their affirmation of
hopes and dreams about better days for Africa and
her fifty-plus daughters. Liberia, in the eyes of Dr.
Sirleaf, is a nation with historical roots and definite
historical consequences for Liberians and blacks
around the world. Together with Ethiopia and Haiti,
Dr. Sirleaf would affirm, God in his wisdom chose
these countries to be the havens of hope and
dreams for people suffering from Rudyard Kipling
would call The White Mans Burden. Bent of
making a difference, Dr. Sirleaf could well be
considered a faithful protg of Blydon, the
celebrated Liberia from the New World after the end
of slavery to join the ranks of the founders and their
successors in making Liberia. There is much history
to be made, and he too can join you in your difficult
and challenging task of learning and governance.
I hope you will find this letter of recommendation
useful. Please feel free to contact me if you need
additional information. In the meantime, I wish you
well and look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Sulayman S. Nyang, Ph.D.
Cell: 240-498-8623
Office: 202-238-2311

What is Intellectual History? A Frankly Partisan

Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field
Peter E. Gordon Amabel B. James Professor of
History & Harvard College Professor Harvard
University Revised Summer, 2013 Please do not cite
or circulate without authors permission
Introduction Harvard University now boasts of a
great number of accomplished historians whose
interests and methods align them primarily
though not necessarily exclusivelywith intellectual
history. These include (in alphabetical order): David
Armitage, Ann Blair, Peter Bol, Joyce Chaplin, Peter
Gordon, James Hankins, Andrew Jewett, James
Kloppenberg, Samuel Moyn, and Emma Rothschild.
But just what is intellectual history? Intellectual
history is an unusual discipline, eclectic in both
method and subject matter and therefore resistant
to any single, globalized definition. Practitioners of
intellectual history tend to be acutely aware of their
own methodological commitments; indeed, a
concern with historical method is characteristic of
the discipline. Because intellectual historians are
likely to disagree about the most fundamental
premises of what they do, any one definition of
intellectual history is bound to provoke controversy.
In this essay, I will offer a few introductory remarks
about intellectual history, its origins and current
directions. I have tried to be fair in describing the
diversity of the field, but where judgment has
seemed appropriate I have not held back from
offering my own opinions. The essay is frankly
partisan, in that it reflects my own preferences and
my own conception of where intellectual history
stands in relation to other methodologies. I hope,
however, that it can serve as an introductory
summary and guide, one will be of some use for
students at both the undergraduate and graduate
level who are considering work in intellectual
history. Intellectual History and the History of Ideas
What is intellectual history? Broadly speaking,
intellectual history is the study of intellectuals,
ideas, and intellectual patterns over time. Of
course, that is a terrifically large definition and it
admits of a bewildering variety of approaches. One
thing to note right off is the distinction between
intellectual history and the history of ideas. This
can be somewhat confusing, since the two terms
are sometimes used interchangeably: history of
ideas is a rather old-fashioned phrase, and not
currently in vogue (though there is an excellent
journal for intellectual historians published under
the title, The Journal of the History of Ideas.) But if
we are worried about precise definitions rather
than popular usage, there is arguably a difference:
The history of ideas is a discipline which looks at
large-scale concepts as they appear and transform
over the course of history. An historian of ideas will
tend to organize the historical narrative around one
major idea and will then follow the development or
metamorphosis of that idea as it manifests itself in
different contexts and times, rather as a
musicologist might trace a theme and all of its
variations throughout the length of a symphony.
Perhaps the most classic example is the book by
Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (originally
given as the William James Lectures at Harvard
University in the mid 1930s). This kind of exercise
has many meritsfor example, it permits us to
recognize commonalities in thought despite vast
dissimilarities in context, thereby calling attention
to the way that humanity seems always
preoccupied with certain seemingly eternal
thoughts. But this advantage can also be a
disadvantage. By insisting that the idea is
recognizably the same thing despite all of its
contextual variations, the history of ideas approach
tends to encourage a kind of Platonist attitude
about thoughts, as if they somehow preexisted
their contexts and merely manifested themselves in
various landscapes. Lovejoy was in fact rather more
nuanced than this suggests, however: his study of
the great chain of being (as one example of what
he called unit ideas) demonstrated that there was
an internal contradiction in this concept, a tension
which eventually transformed the original idea and
led ultimately to its self-destruction. As Lovejoy
practiced it, the history of ideas was much like a
history of large-scale concepts, in which the
historical narrative showed how intrinsic tendencies
in those concepts worked themselves out as if of
their own internal logic. Intellectual history is often
considered to be different from the history of ideas.
Intellectual history resists the Platonist expectation
that an idea can be defined in the absence of the
world, and it tends instead to regard ideas as
historically conditioned features of the world which
are best understood within some larger context,
whether it be the context of social struggle and
institutional change, intellectual biography
(individual or collective), or some larger context of
cultural or linguistic dispositions (now often called
discourses). To be sure, sometimes the requisite
context is simply the context of other, historically
conditioned ideasintellectual history does not
necessarily require that concepts be studied within
a larger, non-conceptual frame. Admittedly, this last
point can be controversial: some intellectual
historians do adopt a purely internalist approach,
i.e., they set thoughts in relation to other thoughts,
without reference to some setting outside them.
This method is usually most revealing when the
relations between ideas helps us to see a previously
unacknowledged connection between different
realms of intellectual inquiry, e.g., the relation
between theological and scientific modes of
explanation, or between metaphysical and political
concepts of causality. But this method tends to
reproduce the Platonism which beset the older-
style history of ideas approach. Even today, many
intellectual historians remainstubbornly or
covertly internalist in their method. They may pay
lip-service to contextualism, but they are chiefly
interested in conceptual contexts only. But because
internalist styles of argumentation have in recent
decades fallen out of favor amongst historians and
humanists more generally, those who write
intellectual history in the internalist manner often
look rather tweedy and traditionalist to their more
worldly colleagues both within and beyond of the
historical discipline. Indeed, intellectual historians
who practice this sort of concept-contextualism will
not infrequently meet with accusations of quietism,
elitism, or political naivet. Internalism is
nonetheless defensible on methodological grounds,
though it is important to acknowledge its risks and
its limitations. As this discussion makes plain, there
are many types of intellectual history, and each of
them has its own methodological peculiarities.
Perhaps the most helpful way to think about the
various tendencies in intellectual history today is to
compare them with those disciplineswithin and
beyond the discipline of history itselfwhich they
most closely resemble. These are: philosophy,
political theory, cultural history, and sociology.
Intellectual History and Philosophy Intellectual
history can frequently involve a close reconstruction
of philosophical arguments as they have been
recorded in formal philosophical texts. In this
respect intellectual history may bear a noteworthy
resemblance to philosophy, and most especially,
the history of philosophy. But intellectual history
remains importantly distinct from philosophy for a
number of reasons. Most importantly, philosophy
tends to disregard differences of history or cultural
context so as to concentrate almost exclusively
upon the internal coherence of philosophical
arguments in themselves. One often says that the
task for intellectual historians is that of
understanding rather than philosophical
evaluation. That is, intellectual historians want
chiefly to understandrather than, say, to
defend or refutea given intellectual problem
or perspective, and they therefore tend to be
skeptics about the philosophers belief in
decontextualized evaluation. Philosophers, too, of
course, will frequently appeal to historical-
contextual matters when they are trying to figure
out just why someone thought as they did. So the
difference between philosophy and intellectual
history is merely one of degree rather than kind. Yet
intellectual historians tend to be more relaxed
about crossing the boundary between philosophical
texts and non-philosophical contexts. Indeed,
intellectual historians will tend to regard the
distinction between philosophy and non-
philosophy as something that is itself historically
conditioned rather than eternally fixed. They will
therefore be wary of assuming one can ever
concentrate ones attention upon a purely
philosophical meaning uncontaminated by its
surroundings. Because they are historians,
intellectual historians believe it is important to
understand why people thought differently about
things we may not agree with today. This
pronounced awareness regarding historical
difference makes historians generally reluctant to
draw strongly evaluative claims about past ideas. Of
course, historians cannot bracket out their own
moral or intellectual commitments entirely and it
would be foolish to believe they could do so. But
history nourishes a certain skepticism about the
permanence of any philosophical or moral
commitment, and it therefore promotes a certain
readiness to entertain differences in philosophical
perspective whereas philosophers would likely think
that the differences are either superficial or
evidence of philosophical error. This interest in
reconstructive understanding as against strict
evaluation has at least two notable consequences
for the practice of intellectual history. First, it
enables intellectual historians to draw sometimes
surprising and creative connections between
different sorts of texts. Second, it allows them to
think about intellectual meaning in a rather
capacious or open-ended fashion, such that the
canon of what counts as the proper topic for
intellectual history remains remarkably loose.
Intellectual historians are interested in ideas of all
sorts, not only ideas as they are defined within the
current guidelines of academic philosophy. These
two features of intellectual-historical practice may
invite charges of eclecticism or lack of philosophical
rigor. Such criticism is not without merit. Some
intellectual historians seem so concerned with
contextualizing philosophical ideas they miss
important details in the ideas themselves.
Philosophers are right to complain that
philosophical comprehension should not be
sacrificed for the sake of broad-mindedness. But
every opportunity for creativity is accompanied by
risks. Intellectual historians are likely to defend
their efforts by noting that philosophy carries a
correlative risk that, by fixing itself so narrowly
upon the details of philosophical argument,
philosophy can miss the reason why such an
argument was ever considered significant. Still, it is
important to see that the boundary-line between
philosophy and intellectual history remains highly
flexible. There are of course differences of
methodological emphasis, some of which are
outlined above. (For another perspective, insisting
on a strong divide between intellectual history and
philosophy, one should consult the introductory
pages of Bernard Williams book, Descartes, The
Project of Pure Inquiry. Penguin: Harmondsworth,
1978.) It is critical to recognize that the boundary
between intellectual history and philosophy has
been drawn differently at different times and
places. Philosophy in Europe tends to be far more
historical than in the United States; much of what
passes for intellectual history in the United States
would therefore be practiced in Europe within the
confines of a department of philosophy. On the
other hand, many scholars in the United States who
teach in philosophy departments and do work
categorized as history of philosophy quite
frequently adopt the contextualist methods of their
intellectual-historian peers. This prompts the
question as to why the historians of philosophy are
in philosophy departments at all, especially when
some of their peers dismiss their work as merely
historical. It often seems the distinction can seem to
have very little to do with actual disagreement over
method, and far more to do with contingent factors
such as competition over funding and the
institutional reproduction of group-identities (e.g., a
person with a degree in one discipline is usually
considered unqualified for another discipline)
Despite all the talk about professional training in
the methods appropriate to a specific discipline,
there is really almost as much heterogeneity within
any given discipline as between one discipline and
another. Disciplines can be and have been carved
up in all sorts of ways, and one would be justified in
thinking there is no deep logic in current
distinctions between them. In recent years, much of
the truly groundbreaking scholarship by
philosophers and historians appears to span the
divide between their two disciplines. To classify
such work exclusively as philosophy or history
would be challenging indeed; some noteworthy
examples would include: Charles Taylor, Sources of
the Self (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard, 1989); John
Toews, Hegelianism (New York: Cambridge UP,
1980); Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality (Berkeley:
University of California, 1984); and J.G.A Pocock,
The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1975). In such cases, the distinction between
philosophy and history seems so slight as to be
almost negligible, more a matter of institutional
affiliation and nomenclature than substantive
disagreement over canons or method. Still, the
rough distinctions between intellectual history and
philosophy outlined above hold generally true for
most if not all scholarship. Intellectual historians
often write about philosophical topics, but as
compared to their peers in philosophy, intellectual
historians are: a) more interested in understanding
than strong judgment, b) more willing to cross the
institutional boundary-line separating the
philosophical canon from the larger world of ideas,
and c) more ecumenical about what sorts of ideas
deserve our intellectual attention. Intellectual
History and Political Thought As it has been
customarily practiced, intellectual history has more
often than not devoted itself to understanding the
history of political thought. Why this should be so is
an interesting question and merits some comment.
The traditional emphasis on politics surely has
something to do the origins of modern historical
scholarship in nineteenthcentury Germany. The
earliest practitioners of historical Wissenschaft
(science, or knowledge) were heirs to the Greek
ideal of political-historical narration, an ideal
traceable to Thucydides. Modeling themselves
consciously after the Greeks, German nationalist
historians of the nineteenth century tended to
believe that history is first and foremost a study of
political narrative. This idea gained reinforcement
from philosophers such as G.W.F. Hegel, who saw
world history as the unfolding idea of freedom. And,
for historians such as Leopold von Ranke, history
and political history were taken to be nearly
synonymous. The German conception of history as a
political narrative proved especially attractive in the
nineteenth century, when, following Napoleons
defeat, a great number of German intellectuals
(many of them liberal if not quite democratic in
their political commitments) were preoccupied by
the question of what distinguished the German
states from the rest of continental Europe. Yet the
idea had earlier precedents. A similar tendency can
be detected in the work of the 18th-century
philosopher of history, J.G. Herder, who believed
that history is the expression of national
differences. All of these tendencies conspired to
reinforce the view that history should be chiefly
about political change, and this is the view that still
implicitly governs the practice of history throughout
most of Europe and North America. Intellectual
history, too, continues to reflect the broader
historical emphasis on politics. Even today, most
intellectual historians continue to believe that their
primary task is to understand not just ideas in
general, but rather political ideas in particular. If
one looks at the publications and syllabi of
intellectual historians, this assumption is
immediately evident. This political emphasis has
many roots. It is a noticeable feature in the works of
Friedrich Meinecke, one of the earliest and most
significant practitioners of what the Germans called
Geistesgeschichte (the history of ideas). Meinecke
wrote mostly about political thought; he was
especially concerned with the question of what
distinguished the history of German political
thought from the cosmopolitan philosophies
fashionable elsewhere in Europe. The nationalist
tenor that pervades his earlier works now seems
somewhat dated. It is interesting to note that in his
very last book, The German Catastrophe, Meinecke
abandoned his overtly political nationalism but still
managed to preserve a certain cultural nationalism,
as is evident, e.g., in his suggestion that small
cultural societies should be organized throughout
post-WWII Germany for the rebuilding of national
consciousness upon the sturdy foundations of
Goethe and Schiller. But Meinecke is merely one
example. The larger point is that most intellectual
historians were trained as historians and therefore
absorbed the normative emphasis on political
matters that continues to govern much of the
historical discipline. But intellectual historians have
modified this emphasis according to the
intellectualist focus of their own practice; they
accordingly construe intellectual history as a
discipline that is primarily concerned with political
ideas and ideologies. It is therefore sometimes
difficult to distinguish between intellectual
historians and historians of political thought. In
Great Britain, the emphasis on political thought
within intellectual history has drawn inspiration
chiefly from two accomplished practitionersIsaiah
Berlin (who taught at Oxford) and Quentin Skinner
(who teaches at Cambridge). Berlin, a Russian-born
polymath, was the author of numerous essays and
books on the European intellectual tradition. An
ardent believer in individual freedom, he devoted
much of his scholarship to exposing the danger in
the political-theoretical notion he called positive
liberty, i.e., the notion that an individuals true
freedom is only realized when it is shaped according
to the ostensibly higher needs of society or the
state. Against this tradition of monism (so-called
due to its metaphysical drive to subsume all
perspectives within a single, apparently rational
unity), Berlin defended a kind of pluralism,
emphasizing the primacy of personal liberty and the
irreducible diversity of individual as well as cultural
perspectives. He discovered the resources for this
pluralistic philosophy in a dissenting intellectual
tradition he called the Counter-Enlightenment,
which included such thinkers as Herder, Vico, and
Burke. In a 1953 essay on Tolstoys philosophy of
history, The Hedgehog and the Fox, Berlin offered
a famous distinction between these two intellectual
traditions in allegorical terms borrowed from the
Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many
things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
(Berlins essay was originally published under the
title, Leo Tolstoy's Historical Skepticism in Oxford
Slavonic Papers 2; 1951.) Needless to say, such
baggy categorizations are unlikely to capture the
actual details of philosophical dispute. An obvious
flaw in Berlins monism-pluralism distinction is that
thinkers such as Herder and Burke, though
ostensibly pluralists about the relation between
various cultural traditions, tended to be monists
about the integrity within a given culture. Herder
was in this respect an important precursor of
German Romanticism. And Burke went so far as to
embrace a quasi-organicist theory of political
culture, such that any sign of internal disunity or
dissent seemed to him an indication of pathology.
The irony is that Berlin himself had a penchant for
hedgehog-like generalizations, but was most
successful only when he remained a fox. He
authored an astonishing number of essays on
disparate themes and thereby introduced people to
specific topics they might otherwise have missed.
But his grander intellectual pronouncements about
the history of political thought now seem almost
dilettantish in their generality, and, the closer one
examines them, the more they seem to demand
qualification. Quentin Skinner remains today one of
the most important figures in intellectual history,
and he stands at the epicenter of what is commonly
called the Cambridge School in the history of
political thought. The author of a great variety of
essays on intellectualhistorical methodology and
early-modern (chiefly English) political theory,
Skinner is perhaps most famous for advocating a
certain contextualist approach to intellectual
history, as set forth in the path breaking essay,
Meaning and Understanding in the History of
Ideas (originally published in History and Theory,
8;1969, pp. 3-53, subsequently revised and
amended). While the fuller spectrum of its
theoretical commitments defy summary, Skinners
basic methodological posture amounts to a kind of
historicist contextualism, according to which the
meaning of an idea can only be understood when it
is placed within the larger, historical context of
linguistic utterances, written or verbal, of which it is
a demonstrable part. Skinner has put this method
to work in numerous studies on the history of
political thought, most famously, perhaps, in works
devoted to understanding the ideas of Thomas
Hobbes within the larger context of seventeenth-
century political debate. Skinner has been criticized
on a number of grounds, perhaps most vigorously
for the quasi-idealistic implication that non-
linguistic features of a given historical context (such
as class or economic arrangements more generally)
play no role in determining the meanings of a
political idea. Another, quite different line of
criticism might be that Skinners contextualism
seems to presuppose an implausibly holist view of
cultural meaning, i.e., that for every idea, there just
is one, pregiven context that must be described,
with the happy consequence that ideas seem to be
fixed entirely within self-contained but objectively
identifiable spheres of significance. This
presupposition seems to neglect the obvious
fragmentation or disunity within linguistic contexts,
and it also resorts (implicitly) to a questionable
objectivism about the identification of contexts, as
if the historians choice of linguistic context were a
matter of brute empiricism rather than
interpretation. An interesting feature shared in
common by both Berlin and Skinner is the emphasis
on political ideas, largely at the expense of other
sorts of ideas (metaphysical, scientific, aesthetic,
and so forth). One might excuse this emphasis
merely as an expression of scholarly preference, but
it has played an enormously influential role in
validating the sorts of topics that are considered
proper for intellectual historical inquiry. As noted
above, the political emphasis is grounded in
traditional assumptions as to what counts as
history. Curiously, while the larger historical
profession has slowly jettisoned this traditionalist
commitment to the primacy of politics and has
broadened its sights to address a rich variety of
non-political themes, intellectual historians have
remained largely more conventional in their
approach: they still tend to equate intellectual
history with the history of political ideas and
ideologies, or, more recently, with the history of
socially-effective discourses or representations.
Skinner exemplifies this political emphasis to an
extraordinary degree. Indeed, his methodology
itselflinguistic contextualismseems to favor the
study of political ideas over and against other sorts
of ideas. On Skinners view, the linguistic context for
an idea consists in the larger environment of
theories, documents, and utterances
categorizable as speech acts all of which bear
implicitly or explicitly on the idea in question. This
methodological requirement may be generally
applicable to a wide variety of historical topics. But
it seems somehow best suited to understanding the
world of English seventeenth-century politics, a
public sphere teeming with literate and
silvertongued gentlemen whose occasional forays
into political theory were rarely dissociable from
the more practical business of Parliamentary
debate. The pragmatic character of Anglo-Saxon
political thought lends itself quite readily to
Skinners methodological conviction that linguistic
contexts are theoretical and practical at once. That
all intellectual contexts have this practical character
seems doubtful. This caveat notwithstanding,
Skinner remains one of the most influential and
philosophically sophisticated intellectual historians
writing today. Indeed, his influence reaches well
beyond intellectual history into the discipline of
political theory, such that it is sometimes difficult to
see whether his work belongs exclusively to either
field. Because of his strong commitment to the
notion that meaning depends upon historical
context, he has been a fierce critic of presentism,
the attempt to judge past ideas wholly in
accordance with present needs while disregarding
obvious differences of history. But on this point
Skinner has not always been entirely consistent.
One senses in much of his work that he is striving
not only to understand certain ideas but also to
promote them. This is especially true for the idea of
neo-Roman liberty, which has made a frequent
appearance especially in his more recent books. But
to recognize this element of advocacy in Skinners
scholarship is hardly a strike against him. Even the
most scrupulously non-partisan historians are
motivated in some way by their own interests, both
personal and political, and Skinner is no exception.
In Anglo-American scholarship, the preference
among intellectual historians for writing primarily
on topics in political theory may be due in part to
the marginalization of these topics elsewhere in the
academy. Anglo-American philosophy departments
frequently seem to regard political philosophy as an
inferior branch of the discipline (well below, for
example, epistemology, logic, or the philosophy of
language), so those who wish to study the history of
political thought are likely to seek a warmer
reception beyond the walls of philosophy;
intellectual history has doubtless been one of the
chief beneficiaries of this disciplinary migration.
Departments of political science may present a
similar challenge to those interested in political
ideas. As the discipline has increasingly adapted
itself to the social-scientific research agenda with its
emphasis on decision theory and generalizable
models, the space for purely reflective study of
political themes and values has been much
constrained. Given the often fractious divide in
political science departments between scientists
and theorists, intellectual history has often seemed
a more hospitable disciplinary alternative. But
alongside these purely disciplinary explanations one
must take note of a crucial historical factor. Around
the mid-twentieth century, the institutions of
higher learning throughout North America
underwent a dramatic transformation under the
impact of migr scholars fleeing persecution in
Europe. These scholarsHannah Arendt, Leo
Strauss, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Cassirer, to name
just a fewsustained an intimate but conflicted
bond to the world that had expelled them. They
brought to the American scene a new sensibility
deference for the European intellectual tradition
combined with an acerbic, insiders recognition of
its potential dangers to human freedom. Political
theorists such as Arendt, Strauss, and Adorno, along
with migr historians such as George Mosse,
Georg Iggers, and Fritz Stern, were especially
consumed with the question of what elements in
the canons of European thought were most to
blame for the rise of National Socialism. They each
proposed different answersthey disagreed
bitterly, most of all with one anotherbut
collectively they helped to create an entire field of
intellectual history organized around the notion
that Nazism had a richly philosophical character
that could only be defended against if it were
exposed at its intellectual roots. This type of inquiry
tended to emphasize intellectual factors often at
the expense of social or economic ones. But
notwithstanding its many shortcomings, it has left a
considerable mark on the practice of European
intellectual history. Even today, many intellectual
historians of modern Europe still seem to work on
the assumption that it is their primary charge to
expose and combat the various legacies of fascism
wherever they appear. And they will sometimes
extend this exercise to the study of newer
intellectual traditions, such as postmodernism, in
which they discern similarly dangerous political
tendencies. While one can learn a great deal from
such scholarship, I must confess that in my view this
style of intellectual history often seems animated
more by a desire to prosecute than to understand.
But when prosecution overwhelms understanding,
intellectual history devolves into a genre of writing
that academics should in principle avoid: anti-
intellectual history. Still, it bears repeating that
responsible and temperate political criticism has an
important place in intellectual history, since it is one
of the basic principles of intellectual history as a
discipline that ideas are never entirely innocent of
their worldly entanglements. Intellectual History
and Cultural History Over the past three decades,
the historical profession has seen a dramatic shift
away from social and political history and toward
the study of a greater variety of themes and topics
in a field broadly termed cultural history. The line
between intellectual history and cultural history is
not always easily discerned. To understand the
distinction, it is worth pausing first to consider in
greater depth what cultural history means. Cultural
history is a blanket term for a wide variety of topics
and methods addressing everything that has to do
with culture, from the fine arts to popular crafts,
from religious rituals to folk magic, from the public
symbolism of commemoration and national identity
to the most intimate matters of sexuality and the
body. Cultural history arose partly thanks to the
early-twentieth century practitioners of the
Annales School in France, who investigated long-
duration patterns of European life as experienced
by the broader populace as against the
conventional historiographical concern for
statecraft and the maneuvers of political elites. But
in the 1970s and 80s, cultural history made a
second appearancein North America and also in
Europeas a reaction against the more economic
or statistical-structural methods of social history.
This new wave of cultural history was spearheaded
by scholars such as Carl Schorske, who examined
the many facets of fin-de-sicle Viennese culture,
Natalie Zemon Davis, who opened the way for a
culturally attentive study of early modern popular
life (especially in France), Lynn Hunt, who helped to
inaugurate study concerning the political culture
of the French Revolution, and Robert Darnton, who
investigated the history of the book and is
especially interested in habits of popular reading in
eighteenth century France. Cultural history today
also reflects the impact of new French theoretical
models in structuralist anthropology and literary
theory; it has especially adopted many of the
broader insights and methods developed by the
French social theorist, Michel Foucault. Cultural
historians can often write about the same topics as
intellectual historians do. The difference is chiefly
methodological: whereas an intellectual historian
may investigate a given idea for its own sake, a
cultural historian is more likely to examine the
cultural circulation of that idea, its diffusion beyond
the confines of an intellectual elite and into the
wider sphere of society. Whereas intellectual
historians frequently limit themselves to
understanding the precise conceptual systems
developed chiefly by intellectuals themselves,
cultural historians tend to be less interested in the
finer points of concepts alone and more interested
in what happens to such concepts when they are
taken up within the realm of public discourse. The
difference is sometimes dramatic, sometimes a
matter of degree. The historian Dominick La Capra
is without question one of the most influential
intellectual historians in North Americasee, for
example, his book on Jean-Paul Sartre. But he is also
a cultural historian; indeed, his work stands at the
crossroads between intellectual and cultural
history: most recently, LaCapra has contributed a
great deal to our understanding of how the
Holocaust and other experiences of historical
trauma are conceived, both by intellectuals, but
also within cultural texts such as literature and
film. Carolyn Dean would be another important
example of a scholar whose work crosses the
cultural-intellectual divideher official title at
Brown University is Professor of History and
Modern Culture and Media. Her work combines
theoretical sophistication with marked sensitivity to
the way that complex ideas (about, e.g.,
homosexuality, selfhood, pleasure, and empathy)
are integrated into broader patterns of cultural
fantasy and representation. There are many other
scholars whose works illustrate a similar ingenuity
in combining intellectual and cultural
methodologies. Overall, it is fair to say that some of
the most path breaking and creative work in recent
years lies precisely at the intersection of intellectual
and cultural history. Perhaps the most significant
representatives of the new cultural history are
those who practice the so-called new historicism
(among whom one may count Stephen Greenblatt,
Catherine Gallagher, and Thomas Laqueur). For the
new historicists, a culture has some of the same
features as a literary text: it has characteristic
themes, metaphors, or habits of perception, all of
which serve to organize cultural experience and
manage or contain cultural anxieties. The new
historicists do not limit themselves to the study of
formal or bounded texts (such as Shakespeares
plays). Instead, they delight in the disciplinary
transgression of conventional boundaries
between high and low, aesthetic and political,
sexual and religiousso as to reveal surprising
homologies across diverse precincts of culture.
Their method depends a great deal upon the
interpretive acumen of the historian, who must
read a culture with the same attention to
metaphor and detail as a literary critic might read a
poem. Greenblatt refers to his method as cultural
poetics. Some members of the historical
profession have sometimes complained that the
new historicist emphasis on topical diversity has
descended into mere eclecticism. Yet there can be
little doubt that the new historicism has resulted in
some of the most creative and stimulating
scholarship of recent memory. (A helpful summary
and critical assessment of their methods is Sarah
Maza, Stephen Greenblatt, New Historicism, And
Cultural History, Or ,What We Talk About When We
Talk About Interdisciplinarity in Modern
Intellectual History. Volume 1, Issue 2, pp 249
265.) What distinguishes intellectual history from
cultural history? Intellectual history is sometimes
faulted for its seeming indifference to the question
as to whether a given idea enjoyed any wider social
influence: Why, after all, does an abstract concept
merit ones historical attention if it had little effect
on its historical surroundings? A purely intellectual
historian is likely to protest that ideas are worth
understanding quite apart from questions of their
cultural efficacy. But a cultural historian will insist
that a concept takes on far greater significance
when we observe its cultural circulation, especially
if we can show that that concept played a truly
authoritative role, for example, in the way a culture
reinforced its own norms. For the cultural historian,
this is what makes an idea interesting: ideas are
markers of cultural belief, or symptoms of a deeply-
rooted cognitive schema. In current parlance, a
cultural historian will likely argue that ideas are
socially effective elements in what Michel Foucault
called a discourse. Ideas are accordingly both
knowledge and power: they betray the
anxieties as well as the desires that govern the
social imagination. Intellectual historians may
explain that they, too, are interested in the relation
between ideas and culture. But they may express
concern that the cultural historian is too quick to
range distinct ideas in indistinct categories: when an
idea gets taken up within the larger circuit of
culture, it rarely manages to retain its original
shape; it sheds its conceptual substance to become
instead something diffuse, atmospheric. There are
many cases of intellectuals rejecting the larger
movements they originated: Marxism grew into
the everyday texture of European life; but Karl Marx
famously declared he was not a Marxist.
Positivism became something far greater though
less precise than the doctrine formulated by August
Comte. Nietzscheanism became culturally
fashionable in the fin-de-sicle and, for young
soldiers in World War One, it became almost a
religion something Nietzsche himself would have
despised. Historical inquiry concerning the cultural
efficacy of a given idea may therefore stand in
direct conflict with historical research concerning
the precise contours of the idea itself. But the
difference is usually one of degree: a cultural
historian devotes greater attention to the
circulation of ideas; the intellectual historian pays
greater attention to the ideas within their
conceptual context alone. Both methods are fruitful
and neither method taken alone is likely to satisfy
the expectations of every practicing historian. The
strictly intellectual historian may seem too narrowly
interested in ideas themselves as if thought were
dissociable from the wider world. The cultural
historian may seem too easily intrigued by the sheer
variety of cultural representations as if everything
were equally deserving of scholarly attention. For
this reason the cultural historian may appear as
more of a methodological populist whereas the
intellectual historian may appear to be guarding a
rather traditionalist precept of intellectual
hierarchy, i.e., that some ideas are intrinsically of
greater importance. Some cultural historians
therefore regard intellectual historians are
methodological elitists. But intellectual historians
are likely to counter this charge with the
observation that the popularity of an idea is hardly
a good measure of its value. After all, cultural
historians must themselves resort to intellectual
theories in their study of cultural phenomena. And
this appeal to theory is revealing; it demonstrates
that notwithstanding their populism about topics of
study, cultural historians are themselves committed
to the principle that certain concepts have a value
seemingly irreducible to their cultural circulation.
For the intellectual historian, the apparent populism
of cultural history can look very much like an
instance of bad faith: a symptom that intellectuals
have themselves absorbed the anti-intellectualism
of a market-driven culture. The difference between
intellectual and cultural history may appear at times
rather slight; there is certainly room enough in the
historical discipline for diverse methodologies and
the political dimension of such disagreements
should not be exaggerated. It is worth repeating
that the chief difference has to do with the sorts of
questions that motivate historical research. Cultural
historians pay attention to ideas mainly because
they are seeking evidence for larger patterns of
culture; intellectual historians pay attention to ideas
for their cultural significance but also because they
find the ideas themselves of interest. Intellectual
History and Sociology: Persons, Institutions, Social
Structures Readers may have felt it surprising that
this essay has not yet mentioned the role of
intellectuals. I have written at length about ways to
study ideas and their contexts all without
noting the rather obvious fact that there are always
thinkers who are thinking those thoughts. But the
history of intellectuals is indeed a significant
dimension of intellectual history. One can approach
the history of intellectuals in a variety of ways,
amongst which perhaps the most prominent are:
biographical, institutional, and socialstructural. It
may seem strange to note that intellectual
biography is really a form of intellectual history.
Still, to study the biography of an intellectualher
childhood, her education, her travels, her
friendships, personal idiosyncrasies, and so forth
is one means of understanding a thinkers thought
in context, by which here one means the most
immediate context of the intellectuals own life. Of
course, not all biographies of intellectuals merit
classification as intellectual history: the biographer
has to devote some significant portion of their
study to the thinkers ideas, and must offer insights
as to how the ideas relate to life-experiences.
Malachi Hacohens book, Karl Popper: The
Formative Years, is an excellent example of a
biographical work of intellectual history: it tells us
about Poppers theories of science, but also seeks
to explain how those theories developed out of
Poppers experiences as an Austrian Jew educated
in Vienna. Other great works of intellectual
biography are: Ray Monk: Ludwig Wittgenstein, The
Duty of Genius (1991); Elizabeth Young-Bruehl,
Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (1982); Peter
Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (1998), and Ernst
Cassirer, Kants Life and Work (English translation,
1981). Most intellectuals do not live out their lives
in complete solitude; they live and think in the
midst of other intellectuals, engage in frequent and
passionate debate, and to do so they often forge
informal groups for conversation (such as the salons
of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth
century), or they help to establish institutional
settings devoted chiefly to the life of the mind. One
very important facet of intellectual history is the
history of intellectual institutions; this includes,
though is by no means limited to, the history of
universities. Many of the most accomplished
intellectual historians have found that it is helpful to
describe ideas and institutions in parallel: a classic
example is Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination:
A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute
for Social Research (1973; new edition, 1996). This
book was a landmark in scholarship on the socalled
Frankfurt School, established in the early 1920s in
Frankfurt, Germany. The book is chiefly about a
core group of social philosophersTheodor
Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Leo
Lowenthal, and Herbert Marcuseand the Marxian
variant of social criticism, or critical theory, for
which they are best known. Most of the book
provides a lucid introduction to critical theory itself.
But these intellectuals were also leading lights of a
new institution officially founded in Frankfurt under
the name, The Institute for Social Research. Jays
book therefore spends considerable time discussing
the institutional history of the school, e.g., its
funding, its membership, its relocation from
Germany to North America, and so forth. The result
is a book which combines several different
approaches at once: it is a collective biography, an
institutional history, and also an expository study of
ideas. Another example of intellectual biography in
an institutional mode is Louis Menand, The
Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
(2001). Menands book offers us what one reviewer
called a quadruple intellectual biography, in that
it focuses on the lives and thoughts of four
intellectuals associated with the rise of pragmatist
thought in the United States: Oliver Wendell
Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce and
John Dewey. But it is also a sort of institutional
history of Harvard University and also of the
metaphysical club itself (the name these
intellectuals attached to their own informal
philosophical society). Finally, Menand sets this
institutional story against the backdrop of the
history of America in the wake of the Civil War. This
manifold approach to telling the story of philosophy
in its biographical, institutional, and political context
makes Menands book one of the more popular and
engaging works of intellectual history to be
published in recent years. Historical attention to the
character of particular institutionssuch as
churches, universities, or scientific societiescan
provide crucial insight into way that ideas both
condition and are conditioned by their social
contexts. Many intellectual historians write about
intellectuals who occupy some professional
position, as theologians or academics, for example.
It is therefore natural to devote some attention to
the professional institution itself. But usually an
intellectual historian will make only passing
mention of the institutional historye.g., of a
certain seminary or universitybefore moving on
to discuss the substance of the ideas. Other
intellectual historians believe it is important to
spend a far greater share of their time studying the
institutional setting, its origins, its relationship to
the government, and so forth. Of course, it is quite
possible to write histories of intellectual institutions
that concentrate almost exclusively on their social
or economic character. But such works should
probably not be classified as intellectual history;
they are simply social-institutional histories that
happen to be about institutions where intellectuals
do their work. In addition, there is a sub-category of
intellectual history which concentrates on the
practical or infrastructural features of intellectual
life: habits of research and rhetorical skill, notions
of evidence or proof, or the history of the book
itself. Scholarship on these sorts of infrastructural
details may sound to the unacquainted like the sort
of thing that only academics would write only for
the interest of other academics; but the underlying
premise in such studies is a crucial one. After all,
intellectual practices are signals for what counts in a
given historical period as a fact, knowledge or
indeed, truth itself. There is, for example, the
enchanting and suggestive book by Anthony
Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (1999). A
footnote is far more than a line at the bottom of the
page; it is the way modern intellectuals reinforce
both their own legitimacy and the veracity of their
claims. Intellectual practices are the everyday tools
that bring ideas into alignment with cultural beliefs:
How, for example, does a controversial scientific
theory become a new consensus? Part of the
answer is trust: scientists have to develop standards
of proof and institutions for the circulation of
knowledge, all of which function only because the
participants implicitly agree upon the validity of the
standards and institutions involved. This is the
lesson, for example, in Steven Shapins book, A
Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in
Seventeenth-Century England (1995). It is
interesting to note that most of the writing on such
practices of intellectual life has been confined to
the history of science (and it has been especially
focused on the 17th and 18th centuries, the epoch
of the scientific revolution when many of our own
modern theories of knowledge and evidence were
first born). Historians of science are perhaps more
quick to recognize that intellectual life is not all
theory; it is tied to experimentation and
experience. A history of scientific theory will
therefore quite frequently involve a history of the
various instruments and experimental methods that
were current in a given historical era. Finally,
intellectual history is sometimes combined with
sociological explanation, yielding what is often
called the sociology of knowledge. The sociology
of knowledge is a discipline developed chiefly by
sociologists in the later nineteenth and early
twentieth century. One of its first major exponents
was the German sociologist Karl Mannheim, who
argued in the 1920s that the Marxist concept of
ideology should be expanded as a general method
for relating all ideas in a non-deterministic fashion
to social position. On Mannheims account, all
thought is the expression of a socially-conditioned
worldview: ones views of the world are shaped
according to social-positional factors such as class,
institutional status, political orientation and
generational membership. All reality is dependent
upon social perception; and accordingly no
intellectual conception of reality can claim to be
true in an ultimate or unconditioned sense.
Mannheim believed that political ideologies were
especially interesting as objects of inquiry for the
sociologist of knowledge: a political ideology is
chiefly an expression of social position; even the
most intellectually sophisticated statements of
political conviction cannot escape the sociologists
disenchanted eye. In more recent years, intellectual
history has frequently adapted many of the
methods first developed in the tradition of
sociology of knowledge. The French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu has helped more than perhaps any
other scholar to revive the sociology of knowledge
at an incomparable level of theoretical
sophistication. He has applied it to many topics with
great success, to explain e.g., the political habits of
French intellectuals in the 1960s (Homo
Academicus; English translation, 1988) and the
social preconditions for early-modern scholasticism
(Pascalian Meditations; English translation 2000).
Bourdieu has been especially helpful for intellectual
historians who are trying to understand the way
knowledge functions in an intellectual milieu as a
vehicle of social prestige. Building upon a Marxist
lexicon (but without the Marxists commitment to
economic reductionism) Bourdieu conceives of
education as symbolic capital: intellectual life is a
field of power, in which intellectual rivalries may be
understood as strategic moves in a symbolic system
where ones success is ultimately translated into
socio-economic domination over the entire
intellectual field. The sociological study of ideas is
distinguished by its commitment to the notion that
intellectual affairs are no different than other
aspects of human experience in their susceptibility
to social-functional generalization. This can have
numerous applications; for example, intellectual
hierarchies can be explained using sociological
concepts of class and status; the vagaries of
intellectual reputation can be explained using
statistics and by appealing to the power of
publishing houses and accessibility of information
networks; the seemingly mysterious phenomenon
of intellectual originality itself can be understood as
a function of quite prosaic matters such as
institutional authority and educational advantage.
Theoretical insights from Pierre Bourdieu and
Michel Foucault (among many others) have
contributed to the now-commonplace historical
principle that ideas are best understood as
elements in systems of discourse; indeed, authors
themselves are best conceived as discursive
effects rather than agents of unconditioned
creativity. Such claims can seem counter-intuitive
and even paradoxical (after all, isnt Foucault an
author?). But such theories usually insist upon their
own self-reflexive application: Bourdieu, for
example, believes that his own sociological practice
is itself a strategy within the field of symbolic-
intellectual power. Some critics have worried,
however, that sociological theories that regard
ideas as mere instruments fall into the trap of social
reductionism: they cannot take ideas seriously,
because they see ideas as masks for something
ostensibly more real. Bourdieu, for example,
despite his theoretical acumen, often seems far too
ready to reduce intellectual and aesthetic
judgments to class position, and it is difficult to see
what distinguishes his sociology from the cruder
sort of Marxian economism (i.e., the theory that
the economy alone is the ultimate causality behind
human experience). (For a criticism of Bourdieus
economism as an implausibly objectivistic theory of
meaning, see the essay by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul
Rabinow, Can there be a Science of Existential
Structure and Social Meaning? in Richard
Shusterman, Ed. Bourdieu: A Critical Reader.
(Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1999), pp.84-93.
Sociology, Intellectual History, and the Discursive
Turn Despite what I have noted above, sociological
or discursive approaches to intellectual history can
have a tremendous appeal. No doubt part of their
attraction is due to the fact that they nourish an
attitude of critical suspicion or generalized
skepticisman attitude that is the rightful province
of intellectuals. From the sociological or
discoursetheoretical point of view, grand categories
of human meaning such as Truth, Knowledge
and Objectivity turn out to be socially-conditioned
values: the historians task is not to judge whether
certain ideas are right or wrong, but instead to
comprehend what counts as right or wrong in a
particular historical and social setting. This
approach is inspired most especially by Michel
Foucaults earlier writingson the discourses of
sexual pathology, criminality, and madnessand it
has now spawned a growing field of intellectual-
historical inquiries on discourses of every possible
variety. Among the most influential is the book by
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978), a path breaking
study of the way that the Islamic East has been
constructed and imagined in Western scholarship
and literature. Historians of discourse often appeal
to Foucaults anti-realist principle that the things a
discourse describes can only be said to existto
count as realbecause the discourse has
produced them as objects of knowledge. For Said,
the discourse about the Orient has its own life
and its own consequences quite apart from the
world it purports to describe: To speak about the
East is to structure social space in a certain way.
Indeed, the world we live in is ultimately the world
as it is discursively structured. Some critics have
complained that such theories are too bold in their
disregard for questions of historical truth or cultural
exchange: Said, for example, occasionally lapses
into metaphysical hyperbole when he describes
Orientalist discourse as producing the East, both
its truth and its reality. Such claims are
potentially irresponsible, since they presume the
self-enclosedness of conceptual schemes, making it
difficult to imagine the possibility of dialogue
between cultures, where intellectual constructs
would remain susceptible to ongoing criticism and
discussion. Moreover, such claims appear to disable
historians who might wish to fault Orientalist
discourse for sometimes misrepresenting what the
Islamic world is actually like. Accordingly, a
noteworthy feature of much historical scholarship
on discourses is the implicit assumption
sometimes the historian is reluctant to state this
point in a direct fashionthat the discourse is false.
Theoretical sophistication may forbid the historian
from bald pronouncements as to whether a
discourse is actually correctafter all, the
premise in such scholarship is that social reality is a
function of discourse rather than its precondition.
But such historians are usually animated, however
implicitly, by a kind of emancipatory impulse: to
expose the contingency and constructed quality of a
discourse in the hopes that it might then be
destabilized and even dismantled. This is especially
the case for intellectual and cultural historical work
on discourses that are most dramatic in their social
or normative effects, e.g., discourses that regulate
sexual behavior, discourses that promote colonial
activities in the name of civilizational betterment,
discourses that justify extremist forms of
governmental intervention or even torture in the
name of public safety, or discourses that articulate
the rules for membership within a certain national
community. In sum, scholars who adopt the
Foucauldian view of socially effective discourses
often appeal covertly to the readers understanding
that of course we are meant to disapprove of the
discourses in question. But this judgment and its
theoretical supports remain unstated: the scholars
own stance remains crypto-normative. (A famous
and highly influential critique of Foucauldian
discourse-theory along just these lines can be found
in the book by Jrgen Habermas, The Philosophical
Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures
(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990). The political
motives behind such discourse-histories are
frequently laudable. But it is important to notice
when such motives come into conflict with the
metaphysical antirealist position that discourses are
the only reality there is. Is torture merely its
representation? The historical condemnation of
past inhumanity seems to require that we can say
such inhumanity actually occurred, that certain
individuals died or suffered, especially when
agencies of government may insist they did not.
Some critics have accused Foucault of quietism,
since they regard his narratives as disabling our
capacity for moral and political judgment. But we
should take care to note that Foucault himself was
deeply committed to the political betterment of the
world, and he would have objected strenuously to
the suggestion that his theories somehow
obstructed efforts at achieving greater freedom. He
actually saw himself as continuing the eighteenth-
century project of both intellectual and practical
enlightenment, as summarized by Immanuel Kants
formula, sapere aude, or dare to know. On a
more technical note, we should realize that there is
nothing all that novel or strange about the thesis
that the social world as we live it is shaped by
language or discourse. Such a thesis has an old and
distinguished pedigree, which reaches back from
European structuralist theories of language to Kant
himself, who believed that the world is only
intelligible to us thanks to a certain set of a priori or
necessary forms (called categories) that the mind
itself brings to experience. Foucaults thesis that the
world is shaped by discourse might well be
understood as an historicized and socialized version
of Kantian categories, i.e., the basic forms that
govern human experience are on Foucaults view
not eternal structures of reason but changeable
elements of a given social order, and they therefore
yield a host of practical or power-laden effects. And
just as Kant believed there is a world out there
independent of the categories (though Kant was
careful to note we have no access to that world in
itself, since without the aid of the a a priori forms
that world is unintelligible), so too Foucault
believed historical events are not reducible without
remainder to their discursive effects. Although he is
sometimes dismissed as an anti-realist (i.e., as a
theorist who denies there is any reality external to
discourse), there is very little in his actual work to
support so radical and implausible a position. In
Foucaults writing about torture and punishment,
for example, he never suggests that the events he
describes were somehow unreal. And, to take
another example, when Foucault writes about sex,
he suggests that various sexual behaviors or
identities became thinkable or real only because a
certain discourse arose permitting society to
categorize them as such. Thus, the homosexual,
on Foucaults account is really a creation of the
nineteenth century. In this sense there just were no
homosexuals prior to the discourses that named
them as such. But this is hardly to deny there were
activities or experiences that only later were
attached to certain persons identified as
homosexual. Foucault therefore speaks about the
putting-into-discourse (mis-en-discours) of
various sexual practices, a phrase which strongly
suggests that the practices pre-existed their
discursive identification. In sum, Foucaults point is
epistemological, not ontological. In this regard, it is
useful to note that Arnold Davidson, a scholar who
has helped us perhaps more than just about any
theorist in North America to understand Foucaults
work, describes Foucaults method as historical
epistemology. The various ramifications of
Foucaults methodology are difficult to summarize,
in part because his most successful works are those
that set out to investigate a given historical
phenomenon; and their appeals to method often
appear to be more afterthoughts than strictly
reasoned statements of historical philosophy. This
in itself has opened the door for all sorts of
interpretations and transformations, some of which
adopt the dramatic language of full-blown anti-
realism. So it is important to emphasize once again
that Foucault himself was not an anti-realist, though
many scholars who profess deep admiration for
Foucaults theoretical contributions have
misunderstood him on just this point. Intellectual
historians are supposed to be highly attentive to the
philosophical ramifications of their own method.
One of the most regrettable features of the turn to
discourse amongst intellectual and cultural
historians today is their frequent yet unthinking
recourse to philosophical theories that ultimately
work to disable any reference to an independent
world. The discursive turn is nonetheless a critical
and important innovation in recent historical
method, and one that has opened the way to a
better understanding of the symbolic or
representational dimension of both culture and
social power. Conclusion I have tried in this essay to
outline some of the main trends in intellectual
history, and to discuss what binds them with, and
distinguishes them from, other practices in history,
the humanities and social sciences. I have also
offered some of my own remarks on these trends.
While some of these remarks are no doubt
controversial, their purpose is not so much to
promote my own opinions as to stimulate further
reflection and debate about what intellectual
history presently is and where it should go from
here. I do not feel sufficiently confident to endorse
any one definition as generally correct. Naturally, I
have my personal preferences, but laying out
methodological guidelines that may be applicable
only for myself seems at once immodest and
irrelevant. The only desideratum which perhaps
deserves mention is my deeply-felt conviction that
intellectual history should continue to promote the
attitude that intellectual life is valuable for its own
sake. I therefore remain wary of methodologies and
argumentative strategies that encourage us to
regard ideas as nothing more than ideological
weapons or instruments of social power. To be
sure, ideas also have an instrumental character; to
deny this would be nave. But thought also makes a
claim upon us which remains irreducible to its
instrumental function. To universalize the view that
ideas may be reduced wholly to something other
than themselves is to call into question the basic
premise of intellectual history. It should be obvious
that intellectual history continues to mean many
things. I believe this is very much for the good.
Indeed, one of the great benefits of intellectual
history today, in my view, is that it functions as a
kind of preserve for interdisciplinarity within an
increasingly streamlined and regimented university
system, where most disciplines are quick to police
their boundaries against methodological
transgressors, and where departmental
administrators cast anxious glances at the numbers
that indicate funding and enrollment rates in rival
departments. Intellectual history sustains its
intellectual character in part because it recognizes
the protean nature of thought itself: its
boundlessness, and its refusal to confine itself to
any one discipline. It is of course helpful to erect
canons of legitimacy, to insist that certain topics or
methods are proper to a given discipline whereas
others are excluded. But such canons often function
as barriers against creativity. Intellectual history at
its best traces out the paths of thinking, without
excessive regard for the rules of the disciplines,
wherever those paths may lead.

Recommended Reading (On Methodological

Questions) Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being
(originally Harvard University Press, 1936) Arthur
Lovejoy, Reflections on the History of Ideas, in
Journal of the History of Ideas, I, 1 (Jan, 1940)
Quentin Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in
the History of Ideas, History and Theory, 8 (1969)
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing in
Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago, repr.
1988) Mark Bevir, The Errors of Linguistic
Contextualism in History and Theory, 31 (1992).
Martin Jay, Two Cheers for Paraphrase:
Confessions of a Synoptic Intellectual Historian, in
Fin-de-Sicle Vienna and other Essays (1988)
Dominick LaCapra, "Rethinking Intellectual History
and Reading Texts," in History and Theory (1980)
John Toews, Intellectual History after the Linguistic
Turn in American Historical Review (1987) M.
Richter, Begriffsgeschichte and the History of
Ideas in Journal of the History of Ideas, (April 1987)
Anthony Grafton, The History of Ideas: Precept and
Practice in Journal of the History of Ideas (January,
2006) Arthur Lovejoy, The Historiography of
Ideas, in Lovejoy, Essays on the History of Ideas
(1948) Peter Gay, The Social History of Ideas, Ernst
Cassirer and After in Wolff and Moore, Eds, in The
Critical Spirit: Essays in Honor of Herbert Marcuse
(1967) Richard Rorty, J.B. Schneewind, and Queintin
Skinner, eds. Philosophy in History: Essays in the
Historiography of Philosophy (Ideas in Context)
Cambridge University Press, 1984. Classic Works of
Intellectual History
See Peter E. Gordon Amabel B. James Professor of
History & Harvard College Professor Harvard
University Revised Summer, 2013

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