Lectures in Intellectual History

Stefan Collini, FBA.Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge.The Donald Winch Lectures in Intellectual History.University of St Andrews.11th, 12th & 13th October 2022.In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, universities expanded to include a wide range of what came to be regarded as academic ‘disciplines'. In Britain, the study of ‘English literature' was eventually to become one of the biggest and most popular of these subjects, yet it was in some ways an awkward fit: not obviously susceptible to the ‘scientific' treatment considered the hallmark of a scholarly discipline, it aroused a kind of existential commitment in many of those who taught and studied it. These lectures explore some of the ways in which these tensions worked themselves out in the last two hundred years, drawing on a wide range of sources to understand the aspirations invested in the subject, the resistance that it constantly encountered, and the distinctive forms of enquiry that came to define it. In so doing, they raise larger questions about the changing character of universities, the peculiar cultural standing of ‘literature', and the conflicting social expectations that societies have entertained towards higher education and specialized scholarship.Handout - Lecture 2: Careers1. ‘His tastes and pursuits would no doubt lead him to lecture on the Structure of the English Language and its affinities with cognate tongues, rather than upon Rhetoric or the Art of Composition, but when it was mentioned to him that the latter formed part of the duties of the chair, he made no difficulty about undertaking it.'2. ‘We think that the Professor of the English Language and Literature at our College ought, if it were possible, to unite all the qualifications which we think desirable, to be a thoroughly educated man, a man whose peculiar learning is based upon the sound scholarship which is the general training of English gentlemen. He ought to have made a systematic study of the English Language and English Literature: a systematic study of the Language, so as to be thoroughly conversant with its etymological structure, and the history of its formation through its successive stages; a systematic study of the Literature, so that his familiar knowledge of it may not be confined within the limits of one or two periods. He ought to have experience as a Lecturer, and to be able to lecture well: but he ought to be prepared not only to lecture, but to teach. We must bear in mind, and our Professor must bear in mind, that the practical end of our English Class is to teach our students to use their own language well both in speaking and writing.'3. ‘All the world is standing, every chatterer in every newspaper thinks he is good enough for English language and literature.'4. ‘The lecture list of Easter Term was considered. It was agreed that the Reader in Phonetics should be asked either to change the subject of his lecture on Ugrian Phonetics or to remove it from the list, as in the opinion of the Board the subject did not fall within the scope of the school.'5. ‘The main point, of course, was to choose a scholar and not a chatterer; now the chatterers have command of the newspapers and the scholars have not. That's all. I have no doubt that to any maker of paragraphs, Matthew, Ealdorman of babblers, seems a greater man than William of Chester'.6. ‘In those early years everyone, whatever her natural bias, read for the English School at Oxford, because that was the only course for which adequate preparation could at that time be secured.'7. ‘Well, I have no hesitation in de-classing the whole professorial squad - Bradley, Herford, Dowden, Walter Raleigh, Elton, Saintsbury'... [Saintsbury is allowed to have some strengths, though in spite of his style rather than because of it] ...For the rest: Professor Walter Raleigh is improving. Professor Elton has never fallen to the depths of sterile and pretentious banality which are the natural and customary level of the remaining three.' 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, FBA. Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge.The Donald Winch Lectures in Intellectual History. University of St Andrews. 11th, 12th & 13th October 2022. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, universities expanded to include a wide range of what came to be regarded as academic ‘disciplines'. In Britain, the study of ‘English literature' was eventually to become one of the biggest and most popular of these subjects, yet it was in some ways an awkward fit: not obviously susceptible to the ‘scientific' treatment considered the hallmark of a scholarly discipline, it aroused a kind of existential commitment in many of those who taught and studied it. These lectures explore some of the ways in which these tensions worked themselves out in the last two hundred years, drawing on a wide range of sources to understand the aspirations invested in the subject, the resistance that it constantly encountered, and the distinctive forms of enquiry that came to define it. In so doing, they raise larger questions about the changing character of universities, the peculiar cultural standing of ‘literature', and the conflicting social expectations that societies have entertained towards higher education and specialized scholarship.Handout.1. ‘Neglected and despised as it is in comparison with its favoured competitor, how far more does it deserve the notice bestowed on her. It is not partial in its cultivation of the intellect, but tends at once to correct the taste, to strengthen the judgement, to instruct us in the wisdom of men better and wiser than ourselves, to exercise the reasoning faculties on subjects which demand and deserve their attention, and to show them the boundaries imposed on them by Providence. It is literature which fits and prepares us best of all for the examination of those moral and intellectual truths, which are not only the worthiest exercise of our reason, but most concern our future destiny.'2. ‘The teaching of English literature will contribute to the formation of sound conclusions on social and political questions; to right feeling and right thinking in all that appertains to morality and religion; to largeness, to sanity, to elevation, to refinement in judgement, taste and sentiment, to all, in short, which constitutes in the proper sense of the term the education of the British citizen.'3. ‘By the humanizing power of literature we mean the development of the higher faculties, the imagination, the sense of beauty and the intellectual comprehension, clear vision, mental harmony, a just sense of proportion, higher illumination.'4. ‘In all my Lectures, more particularly when treating upon that glorious and inexhaustible subject, the LITERATURE of our country - I shall esteem it my duty - and I trust I shall find it my delight - to inculcate lessons of virtue, through the medium of the masters of our language.'5. ‘A chief burden in maintaining and keeping uppermost the spiritual element in man must rest, for a variety of reasons, more upon the teaching of English and English literature than upon any other subject.'6. ‘The value of critical training, and of the various methods of study that I have touched upon, is simply that they educate our power of appreciation and make it possible for us to enter into the life and meaning of the highest poetry. Without some such mental discipline we shall always be in danger of accepting the second-rate for a masterpiece, and shall either be content with this shallower outlet for our emotions or be inclined to dispute the power of art to satisfy us at all. But if we submit our taste for poetry to education, the highest in ourselves will be drawn out to meet what is highest in the great artist: we shall realize our kinship with him and participate in his vision.' 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

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 25 September 2024. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 18 September 2024.

This lecture was delivered on 3 April 2024 at the University of St Andrews.

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 13 March 2024. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 31 January 2024. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 24 January 2024. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 17 January 2024. 

This talk was given at Toppings in St Andrews on December 7, 2023. 

The barely known story of the 30-year rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke is a fascinating case study in late-Elizabethan-Jacobean court politics. But it can also be a means by which to explore the limits of historical truth, and the uses of fiction. Jesse Norman is a Visiting Research Fellow at St Andrews, a Fellow of All Souls and a Member of Parliament (UK).  This lecture was given on the 17th of November 2023 at the University of St Andrews. 

This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on 15 November 2023. 

The barely known story of the 30-year rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke is a fascinating case study in late-Elizabethan-Jacobean court politics. But it can also be a means by which to explore the limits of historical truth, and the uses of fiction. Dr Jesse Norman is a Visiting Research Fellow at St Andrews, a Fellow of All Souls, and a Member of Parliament (UK). 

Adam Sisman in conversation with Richard Whatmore. Recorded on 8 November 2023. 

This lecture was delivered on 11 October 2023 at the University of St Andrews. 

This lecture was delivered on 5 April 2023 at the University of St Andrews. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St andrews on March 15, 2023. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on February 15, 2023. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on February 1, 2023. 

specializes in Dutch overseas expansion in the early modern period, especially its implications for political thought and practice. She is also a book historian. Her research focuses on the social history of knowledge, including the materiality of texts, the archaeology of archives, and the history of canon formation. She has taught European, Atlantic and global history at the University of Dundee since September 2003.

During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history.  In this sixth interview, we present a conversation with Maria Rosa Antognazza. is a professor of Philosophy at King's College London. Her research interests include the history of philosophy, epistemology and the philosophy of religion, including the relationship between science and religion. She has published extensively on early modern philosophy and specifically on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Notably, her book Leibniz - An Intellectual Biography (CUP, 2009) was the winner of the 2010 Pfizer award. More recently, she was awarded the 2019-2020 Mind Senior Research Fellowship for work on her book Thinking with Assent: Renewing a Traditional Account of Knowledge and Belief (forthcoming with Oxford University Press). 

During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history.  In this fifth interview, we present a conversation with Jamie Gianoutsos. is Associate Professor of History at Mount St. Mary's University in the US. In the interview, Jamie shares insights into her university experience, her motivation to become a researcher and her discovery of the intellectual history of seventeenth-century Britain as a research field. She discusses her time as a Ph.D. candidate and traces the early stages of her academic career and the work on her book The Rule of Manhood: Tyranny Gender and Classical Republicanism in England, 1603-1660 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which won the The 2020. For an interview with Jamie about her book, .

During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history.  In this fourth interview, we present a conversation with Carole Levin. Carole Levin is Willa Cather Emerita Professor of History at the University of Nebraska. She specialises in early modern English women's and cultural history. Her books include Shakespeare's Foreign Worlds: National and Transnational Identities in the Elizabethan Age, co-authored with John Watkins (Cornell, 2009); Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); The Reign of Elizabeth I (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); and The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). She is the former president of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, the co-founder and president of the Queen Elizabeth I Society, and is Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history.  In this third interview, we present a conversation with Tae-Yeoun Keum.    Dr Tae-Yeoun Keum is a political theorist specialising presently in the place of myth in political thought. Her first book was on the role of symbols and myths in politics. Her first book, , examines Plato's myths and their modern legacy, in particular in the political thought of More, Bacon, Leibniz, the German Romantics, and Cassirer. The book won the for 2020.

During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history.  In this second interview, we present a conversation with Professor Jacqueline Broad. Jaqueline Broad is Head of the Philosophy Department at Monash University. After being awarded her PhD in 2000, she won funding from the Australian Research Council 2004-2007 and 2010-2016. She is Series Editor of Cambridge University Press's new  on Women in the History of Philosophy as well as serving on the advisory boards for Oxford University Press's  series. Jacqueline specialises in the history of philosophy, particularly focusing on the contributions of women philosophers and their interactions with the world in the early modern period. Her most recent publication seeks to provide commentaries to women philosophers letters in a a two-volume edited collection of women's philosophical letters:  (2020) and  (2019).

During the final weeks of the summer, the Institute of Intellectual History brings a series of new interviews with leading intellectual historians about their career and work in intellectual history.  In this first interview, we present a conversation with Eileen M. Hunt. Eileen Hunt is a professor of political science and a political theorist whose scholarly interests cover modern political thought, feminism, the family, rights, ethics of technology, and philosophy and literature, from feminist, comparative, and international perspectives. She has taught at Notre Dame since 2001. Her first book (2006) inspired her further research into Mary Wollstonecraft, and in-depth research into her daughter Mary Shelley's political philosophy.

This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on April 20, 2022. 

This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on April 13, 2022. 

This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on April 6, 2022. 

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 23 March 2022 and subsequently at George Mason University, where it was recorded. For a video of this lecture with the powerpoint slides, please vist:  

This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 1 April 2022. 

This lecture was given on 16 February 2022 at the University of St Andrews. Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His most recent projects include The Political Philosophy of Fénelon, and a companion translation volume, Fénelon: Moral and Political Writings, both of which was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

Professor John Robertson (Cambridge & St Andrews) delivered this lecture at the University of St Andrews on February 27, 2020. The event was organised by the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research in collaboration with the Institute of Intellectual History.

Dr Giulia Delogu (Venice) delivered this lecture on February 5th 2020.   

Professor Thomas Maissen (Heidelberg/Paris) delivered this lecture on January 28, 2020 at the University of St Andrews.

Professor Ian MacLean (Oxford/St Andrews) delivered this lecture at the Institute of Intellectual History on November 19th 2019. 

Professor David Weinstein (Wake Forest) delivered this lecture on November 12, 2019 at the University of St Andrews. 

Dr Lucia Rubinelli (Cambridge) delivered the 18th István Hont Memorial Lecture on October 29 2019 at the University of St Andrews "This paper is the third chapter of a book manuscript, titled Constituent power: A history. The book mainly focuses on how Sieyes' first theorisation of pouvoir constituant has been used and misused by subsequent theorists, including Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt. In this chapter, I argue that Schmitt theorised constituent power as the democratic embodiment of sovereignty. Schmitt's collapse of constituent power and sovereignty is well known, but I suggest that he did not simply take the two ideas to be interchangeable. Rather, he aimed to introduce a meaning for popular power that could be consistent with his definition of sovereignty as the power to decide on the exception. This was not provided by ideas of national and parliamentary sovereignty. The latter gave birth to liberal parliamentarianism, which he accused of dissolving the essence of sovereignty; the former encouraged direct and local democracy, which prevented the prompt expression of the sovereign will. By contrast, Schmitt found in Sieyes' idea of constituent power a way to associate the extra-ordinary character of his account of sovereignty to the democratic principle of popular power. He thus presented constituent power as the meaning of sovereignty in democratic states. On his interpretation of Sieyes' theory, constituent power belonged to the nation but, to be exercised, needed to be represented by a unitary figure, approved through plebiscites, and able to embody the unity of the nation acting as a unitary instance of decision: the sovereign dictator. The result is a complete reversal of Sieyes' theory." 

Dr James Poskett (Warwick) delivered this lecture on October 15th 2019 at the University of St Andrews. Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters around the globe. James's new book, Materials of the Mind, tells the story of how phrenology changed the world—and how the world changed phrenology. It is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history can help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.

Dr Emma Hunter (Edinburgh) delivered this lecture at the University of St Andrews on September 24, 2019. 

Dr Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS) delivered the 10th James H. Burnes Memorial Lecture on April 23, 2019 at the Institute of Intellectual History. 

Richard Whatmore (St Andrews) delivered this talk at the University of St Andrews on April 3, 2019. The talk was based on the Carlyle Lectures, which Professor Whatmore gave at the University of Oxford in the spring semester of 2019. 

Dr Iain McDaniel (Sussex) delivered the 16th István Hont Memorial Lecture at the Institute of Intellectual History (St Andrews) on April 2, 2019. 

Dr Nathan Alexander (Erfurt) delivered this talk at the University of St Andrews on February 2, 2019. 

Dr Alex Douglas is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of St Andrews. 

The emergence of a Scottish 'school' of common sense philosophy has not yet been given the historical attention it deserves, despite the fact  that the rise of common sense philosophy was one of the most important intellectual developments in the Atlantic world during the second half of the 18th century. In this lecture, Professor Paul Wood examines the responses of common sense philosophers such as James Beattie, James Oswald and Thomas Reid to David Hume's perceived scepticism and irreligion as well as Hume's subsequent reply to his critics. The lecture concludes with an account of the precipitous decline of the Scottish 'School' of common sense. 

Professor Blair Worden is an expert on early modern European history and the English Civil War period in particular. He has written numerous books, the principal of which are The Rump Parliament, 1648-1653 (1974), The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia' and Elizabethan Politics (1996), Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (2001), Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham (2007), The English Civil Wars 1640-1660 (2009) and God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (2012).  In this lecture, Blair Worden explores Ben Jonson's conception of liberty in relation to the writing of history.

Ever since Mary Astell was introduced as the "First English Feminist" in 1986, scholars have been perplexed by her dual commitments to natural equality and social, political, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. But any supposed "paradox" in her though is the product of a modernist conceit that treats equality and hierarchy as antonyms, assuming the former must be prior, normative, and hostile to the latter. Seeing this, two other crucial features of Astell's thought emerge: her ethics of ascent and the psychology of superiority. These, in turn, illuminate her lifelong fascination with ambition as a feminine virtue, as well as her curious embrace of Machiavelli. Astell's politics and ethics are thus doubly worthy of recovery, both as the product of a singularly brilliant early modern mind and as a fascinating but forgotten vision of "equality before egalitarianism" that sheds light on the persistent complexities of equality and hierarchy to this day.