Historian of ideas in the context of "Isaiah Berlin"

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⭐ Core Definition: Historian of ideas

Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual history is that ideas do not develop in isolation from the thinkers who conceptualize and apply those ideas; thus the intellectual historian studies ideas in two contexts: (i) as abstract propositions for critical application; and (ii) in concrete terms of culture, life, and history.

As a field of intellectual enquiry, the history of ideas emerged from the European disciplines of Kulturgeschichte (Cultural History) and Geistesgeschichte (Intellectual History) from which historians might develop a global intellectual history that shows the parallels and the interrelations in the history of critical thinking in every society. Likewise, the history of reading, and the history of the book, about the material aspects of book production (design, manufacture, distribution) developed from the history of ideas.

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👉 Historian of ideas in the context of Isaiah Berlin

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBA (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks were sometimes recorded and transcribed, and many of his spoken words were converted into published essays and books, both by himself and by others, especially by his principal editor from 1974, Henry Hardy.

Born in Riga (now the capital of Latvia, then a part of the Russian Empire), he moved to Petrograd, Russia, at the age of 6, where he witnessed the Russian Revolution. In 1921 his family moved to England, and he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1932, at the age of 23, Berlin was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. In addition to his own output, he translated works by Ivan Turgenev from Russian into English. During the Second World War he worked for the British Diplomatic Service.

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Historian of ideas in the context of Giambattista Vico

Giambattista Vico (born Giovan Battista Vico /ˈviːkoʊ/; Italian: [ˈviko]; 23 June 1668 – 23 January 1744) was an Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist during the Italian Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, finding Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism impractical to human life, and he was an apologist for classical antiquity and the Renaissance humanities, in addition to being the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics. He is recognised as one of the first Counter-Enlightenment figures in history.

The Latin aphorism "Verum esse ipsum factum" ("truth is itself something made") coined by Vico is an early instance of constructivist epistemology. He inaugurated the modern field of the philosophy of history, and, although the term philosophy of history is not in his writings, Vico spoke of a "history of philosophy narrated philosophically." Although he was not an historicist, contemporary interest in Vico usually has been motivated by historicists, such as Isaiah Berlin, a philosopher and historian of ideas, Edward Said, a literary critic, and Hayden White, a metahistorian.

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Historian of ideas in the context of Crane Brinton

Clarence Crane Brinton (February 25, 1898 – September 7, 1968) was an American historian of France, as well as a historian of ideas. His most famous work, The Anatomy of Revolution (1938) likened the dynamics of revolutionary movements to the progress of fever.

Born in Winsted, Connecticut, his family soon moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he grew up and attended the public schools there before entering Harvard University in 1915. His excellent academic performance enabled him to win a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1923 for a thesis on The political thought of the English romanticists, 1789–1832. Brinton then began teaching at Harvard University that same year, becoming full professor in 1942 and remaining at Harvard until his death. He was McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History from 1946 to 1968.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Isaiah Berlin ← Giambattista Vico ← Crane Brinton
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
History of human thought → Intellectual → Conceptualization → Ideas → Kulturgeschichte → Geistesgeschichte → Reading → History of the book → Book →