ABSTRACT
Some feared that social history was sweeping all before it; intellectual historians appeared so out of step with the times — as constrained, elitist and marginal — that they grew defensive and embattled. A similar mix of individualism and interaction characterizes the human sciences: one might therefore apply Kant’s term to determine how productive unsocial sociability has been for intellectual history. Energies that are generative rather than destructive are more likely to spring from the collegial methods of the social sciences. If intellectual history long kept a polite distance from social history, it was positively phobic about histories of emotions and of sexuality. Emancipating intellectual history in this way opens up critical dialogue and with it increasing possibilities for the Kantian process of sociable antagonism. At other moments, people need to learn the languages and even begin to follow the social codes of those in adjacent but distinct disciplinary communities.
