Conclusion

Summary

We can now look back at what we have seen and raise the basic question implicit there: Why study the “new intellectual history”? One main reason is that it has represented a particularly productive moment, in terms of the development of new approaches, theoretical perspectives, and methodologies, a “golden age of methodological enquiry,” in Mark Bevir’s words. According to him, it came to an end in the 1990s. Yet, it has established the premises that still permeate the different perspectives in the field. In fact, the authors we have analyzed in the preceding chapters (particularly Skinner, Koselleck, and Foucault) remain the fundamental points of reference, even though their main theoretical works date from half a century ago, or indeed more.