The Logic of the History of Ideas

Description

This book provides a philosophical analysis of the reasoning appropriate to the history of ideas. It addresses three main questions: what sort of meanings do historians study? How can historians justify claims to have objective knowledge of such meanings? What sorts of explanations are appropriate to such meanings? By answering these questions Mark Bevir seeks to clarify the nature of the history of ideas so as to guide historians in their practice, and to illuminate the process by which human thought develops.

"...ambitious and well-reasoned book...[Bevir] gives us a more valuable - if less ground-breaking - book. It is more valuable precisely because it engages the methodological and phenomenological literatuer to a degree that a rigidly defined 'logic' would not...this worthwhile study should be of interest not only to philosophers of the history of ideas but also to those who see themselves primarily as practicing historians of ideas." The Review of Politics