ABSTRACT
I concluded Chapter Four by raising the question of whether the world of the intellect is amenable to a properly historical treatment-in other words, in what sense do thoughts and ideas ‘have a history’, or is this merely metaphor? The latter would imply either that ‘the history of thought’ has no coherent rationale, being instead an amalgam of intellectual biography, philosophical exposition, and the like; or that it does have a coherence, but not that of history. But this is not the only reason why the term, ‘the history of thought’, might be taken merely metaphorically; if we were to make a conventional distinction between thought and action, no one could take seriously the notion of ‘the history of action’. Neither, then, should one take the notion of ‘the history of thought’ literally.
