Lectures in Intellectual History

Benjamin Franklin's interest in physiocracy and the radical implications of French economic ideas extended from Turgot and Condorcet to the British radical milieus. In this lecture, Manuela Albertone highlights Franklin's ability to deliver economic reflection and radical thought, and his passionate belief that only a new attention to the nature of land ownership and its role could combat the forces of corruption so prevalent in commercial societies and shape a modern republic. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

With the general loss of interest in Marx as an analyst of capitalism, argument over the development of his thinking, from his early writings to Capital Vol. I, has given way to a more or less uncritical acceptance of Capital as the centrepiece of his endeavours, and a neglect of its sources. However, in 1913 Lenin rightly noted that there were "three sources and component parts" of "Marxism": German philosophy, English political economy, and French socialism. Curiously, few readers of Marx have taken this point seriously; while some attention has been paid to "German philosophy", little attention has been paid to the importance of Proudhon and others, while almost none at all has ever been paid to Marx's debt to the writings of David Ricardo and Adam Smith. In this lecture, Keith Tribe seeks to readdress this imbalance in Marx scholarship. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

Arnold Toynbee's Oxford lectures on the 'Industrial Revolution' were once thought to have been responsible for coining and diffusing an idea that has remained essential to students of British history since the lectures were posthumously published in 1882. Toynbee has also been credited with transmitting an interpretation of the revolution that became known, in the words of E. P. Thompson, as 'classical catastrophic orthodoxy'. In this lecture, Donald Winch re-examines Toynbee's role as historian of catastrophe and his remedies for dealing with its consequences with the aim of establishing the nineteenth-century political, moral, and intellectual context within which his interpretation of the industrial revolution can best be understood. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

French author Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America in the nineteenth century influenced his book 'Democracy in America'. Jeremy Jennings explores Tocqueville's fascination with America's social equality, criticism of slavery, and aesthetic inspiration from the American wilderness. The podcast also discusses Tocqueville's observations of Native Americans, the tension between the U.S. and France, and his approach to analyzing American society.

How has the language of social science penetrated its way into the everyday discourse of educated people, particularly in the period after the Second World War? In this lecture, Peter Mandler examines the extent to which people in mid-twentieth century Britain and America used the conceptual tools of psychology, sociology and anthropology to view their personal 'issues' also as social 'problems'. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

It is well known that many of the leaders of the Wars of Independence invoked Rousseau in support of their challenge to colonial authority, but how exactly were Rousseau's works read and interpreted in early nineteenth-century Latin America? In this lecture, Nicola Miller identifies variations in how Rousseau's ideas were adopted and adapted by different actors, in different parts of the region, in order to explore the problems and possibilities of explaining how and why ideas travel. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

Is there such a thing as 'the Irish mind', or is that the ultimate Irish joke? If there is a distinctive Irish intellectual history, how did it develop in the face of the disruptions of a complicated and traumatic political and social history? Somehow, new ideas and initiatives keep bubbling up in every generation, but where do they come from? Is there an Irish intellectual aristocracy, or should that be aristocracies? In this lecture, Norman Vance explores these and other Irish questions. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

Stefan Collini offers a few brief reflections on the history and current state of the institution we call the university, and then goes on to propose a vocabulary and a perspective which enable us to discuss the role of such institutions in more fruitful terms than the clichés about 'contributing to economic growth' which currently dominate public debate on the topic. This lecture was given in memory of John Wyon Burrow (1935-2009), who was the first holder of a chair in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex and was one of the founder members of the subject at this university. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

First published in two parts in 1678 and 1683, 'Pilgrim's Progress' was to become the most popular religious work in English after the King James Bible. In this lecture, Isabel Rivers explores its fortunes in the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century: how it was made into a polemical text in the battles between Arminians and Calvinists; how it was used for pastoral purposes, both in print and in society meetings; and how it became a means of writing the history of dissent and evangelicalism. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

How was the Hobbesian proposition - that man was not naturally sociable - answered by recourse to sacred history, the account of the ancient Hebrews and contemporary peoples found in the Old Testament? Focussing particularly on the Neapolitan historians Giambattista Vico and Pietro Giannone, in this lecture John Robertson shows how they adapted and extended the framework for the study of sacred history laid down by the authorities in Rome, and from this, produced remarkably original accounts of the formation of society. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com