Contemporary Intellectual History: Theory, Intellectual History, and How They Collaborate

Abstract How far back must we go before we can write intellectual history? If I am working on a particular author, must that author be dead for me to investigate them as a historian? Must their private papers be available? This article argues that the tendency to respond “Yes” to these questions mistakenly assumes that it is not possible to write intellectual histories of contemporary thinkers. I make an argument for what I call contemporary intellectual history as a form of inquiry, and I claim that contemporary intellectual history is one way of doing theory. To explain these positions and build a case for them, I engage with the work of the contemporary philosopher Robert Brandom. I focus on his most recent book, A Spirit of Trust (2019), which adds crucial new elements to his decades-long project of articulating inferentialism and grapples directly with how historical inquiry and philosophical work can collaborate.