ABSTRACT
In general, the history of ideas deals with the field of discourses as a domain with two values; any element located there may be characterized as old or new; traditional or original; conforming to an average type or deviant. One can distinguish therefore between two categories of formulation: those that are highly valued and relatively rare, which appear for the first time, which have no similar antecedents, which may serve as models for others, and which to this extent deserve to be regarded as creations; and those, ordinary, everyday, solid, that are not responsible for themselves, and which derive, sometimes going so far as to repeat it word for word, from what has already been said. To each of these two groups the history of ideas gives a status; and it does not subject them to the same analysis: in describing the first, it recounts the history of inventions, changes, transformations, it shows how truth freed itself from error, how consciousness awoke from its successive slumbers, how new forms rose up in turn to produce the landscape that we know today; it is the task of the historian to rediscover on the basis of these isolated points, these successive ruptures, the continuous line of an evolution. The second group, on the other hand, reveals history as inertia and weight, as a slow accumulation of the past, a silent158sedimentation of things said; in this second group, statements must be treated by weight and in accordance with what they have in common; their unique occurrence may be neutralized; the importance of their author's identity, the time and place of their appearance are also diminished; on the other hand, it is their extent that must be measured; the extent of their repetition in time and place, the channels by which they are diffused, the groups in which they circulate; the general horizon that they outline for men's thought, the limits that they impose on it; and how, in characterizing a period, they make it possible to distinguish it from others; one then describes a series of overall figures. In the first case, the history of ideas describes a succession of events in thought; in the second, there are uninterrupted expanses of effects; in the first, one reconstitutes the emergence of truths of forms; in the second, one re-establishes forgotten solidities, and refers discourses to their relativity.
