History of Philosophy and History of Ideas

The paper analyses the methodological tradition of the history of ideas with particular attention to A.O. Lovejoy. It is shown that some aspects of Lovejoy's approach can still be rewardingly employed by the historian of philosophy within a methodological perspective which concerns the following issues: the matter-of-fact nature of ideas, the interdisciplinary and specific character of the history of philosophy, the relationship between categorisation and contextualisation, and that of the historian to the past, interpretation and text, and historicism.