Journal for the History of Ideas

Journal for the History of Ideas
Title	Journal for the History of Ideas
Discipline	Intellectual history
Language	English
Abbreviation	J. Hist. Ideas
Publisher	University of Pennsylvania Press
Country	United States
History	1940–present
Frequency	Quarterly
Issn	0022-5037
Eissn	1086-3222

Contents

Journal for the History of Ideas is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1940 that publishes research on the historical development of philosophy, political thought, and related intellectual movements. The journal has appeared under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Press and has featured work engaging figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx. Contributors have ranged from scholars affiliated with Harvard University, Oxford University, Yale University, Columbia University, Princeton University, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, Stanford University, and University of California, Berkeley.

History

The journal was founded in 1940 during a period marked by debates contemporaneous with the Second World War, the New Deal, and the rise of analytical movements exemplified by figures tied to Princeton University and Cambridge University. Early editors included scholars trained at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, who sought to bridge research on Renaissance thought, Enlightenment figures such as Voltaire and Denis Diderot, and modern theorists like John Stuart Mill, G. W. F. Hegel, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Over successive decades the journal published work on intellectual histories connected to events like the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the intellectual responses to the Cold War, engaging historians from institutions such as Columbia University and New York University. Editorial transitions have paralleled shifts in historiography, including increased attention to scholars associated with Cambridge School and thinkers tied to Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin.

The journal covers intellectual history and the history of ideas across periods linked to figures like Herodotus, Thucydides, Cicero, Saint Augustine, Maimonides, Marsilio Ficino, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Giambattista Vico, as well as modern theorists including Jeremy Bentham, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Rawls, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. Articles frequently explore intersections with institutions such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, the United States of America, and the Soviet Union, and address intellectual responses to events like the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, and the Industrial Revolution. The journal regularly publishes archival studies, philological analyses, intellectual biographies, and comparative essays engaging sources tied to Greek Anthology, Latin Fathers, Hebrew Bible, and texts associated with Renaissance humanism, Enlightenment salons, and the circulation networks connecting Venice, Paris, London, and Amsterdam.

The editorial board has historically included professors affiliated with University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan, University of Toronto, and Princeton University. The journal operates on a peer-review model drawing referees from departments such as those at Yale University, King's College London, University of Oxford, and University College London. It appears quarterly and issues often contain an editorial introduction, research articles, review essays, and book reviews of monographs published by presses like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, Harvard University Press, and Routledge. Special issues have been guest-edited by scholars associated with programs at Columbia University and research centers such as the Institute for Advanced Study.

The journal is abstracted and indexed in major bibliographic services used by researchers at institutions like Harvard University, Stanford University, and Yale University and is listed in indexes alongside titles from Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. It appears in academic databases consulted by scholars working on materials tied to World War II historiography, French Revolution studies, and intellectual traditions spanning Ancient Greece through the 20th century.

Notable contributions have focused on reinterpretations of texts by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Foucault, and Arendt, as well as thematic special issues addressing topics related to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the intellectual dimensions of the Industrial Revolution, and debates surrounding secularization examined alongside scholarship from Max Weber and Émile Durkheim. Guest-edited volumes have mobilized scholars from Princeton University, Oxford University, Harvard University, Yale University, and Stanford University to reassess canonical texts and archival discoveries linked to libraries in Venice, Paris, London, and Berlin.

Category:Intellectual history journals