Intellectual history in estonia in the twenty­first century

Abstract

The article aims to survey the research on intellectual history in Estonia during the first two decades of the 21st century. In order to appreciate the current institutional status of the discipline and its state of research, the first part of the article gives a short overview of the earlier history of the research field in Estonia against the background of the developments elsewhere in the world. The history of ideas or intellectual history emancipated as a distinct field of study in Sweden and the United States in the 1930s, and gained broad acceptance at universities in Western countries after World War II. Although in Estonia scholarly interest in the ideas of the past can be traced back to the early 20th century, the development of the discipline was hindered by the long period of the Soviet occupation, when materialist Marxist­ Leninist doctrine as the only acceptable interpretation of history was enforced. Nevertheless, despite ideological pressure and censorship, progress was made in various aspects of the earlier intellectual history in Estonia, such as the history of education and science, or the ideas of the ‘national awakeners’ in the 19th century. Since the regaining of independence in the 1990s, intellectual history as an academic research field has gained an increasingly important status in Estonian academia, which can be explained by four factors. Firstly, historians who started their careers in the Soviet period were able to publish the results of their lifelong research without censorship. Secondly, a new generation of historians has emerged who have received their degrees in various European centres of the study of intellectual history, and have upon their return initiated similar research and teaching at Estonian universities. Thirdly, there has been a notable shift in neighbouring disciplines of the humanities towards questions and approaches characteristic of intellectual history, among them literary studies, classical studies, religious studies, history of science, art history, history of law, etc. Intellectual history has often functioned as the meeting point for these fields in a situation in which interdisciplinary cooperation has been enhanced both by the smallness of Estonian academia and the preference of funding bodies for large­scale projects. Fourthly, the key texts by historical authors have been made easily available to the general public, which has increased general interest and facilitated teaching and research in intellectual history. Most important among these is the History of Estonian Thought (Eesti mõttelugu) book series published by Ilmamaa, although one should also note the digital databases developed by Tartu University Library and the National Library of Estonia. As a result of these factors, in the early 21st century several academic positions in the field of intellectual history, the history of political thought and political philosophy have been created at the Universities of Tartu and Tallinn. The article outlines the main methods and genres that have been employed in research in intellectual history over the past two decades. One can notice a rich vari­ ety of approaches, which are not easily reduced to a clear catalogue, particularly since the scholars have not always been explicit about their methods or have used a mixture of methods. However, it seems possible to distinguish between the scholarship which, influenced by the contextualist method advanced by the Cambridge school, attempts to reconstruct the intentions of the historical authors in the particular pragmatic and ideological contexts of their era, and scholarship that studies the ‘spirit of the age’ or the emanation of some transcendent ideas across swathes of time, perhaps influenced by the German tradition of Geistesgeschichte or the Lovejoyan school of the history of ideas. With regard to genres, the (intellectual) biography has been the preferred choice, although there are also examples of collective biographies and thematically­oriented books. The article concludes with a discussion of possible methodological pitfalls associated with certain methods and genres, and with a sketch of potential avenues for future research.