Revolutions in the History of Ideas - Some Methodological Issues

Revolutions are not made by ideas, but they certainly affect them. How can we assess the effects revolutions have on ideas and concepts? A social history of ideas can help to provide a few answers. From this point of view, the history of ideas is not the history of intellectual traditions, but the intellectual product of social conflicts. In these conflicts, the main actors are not great authors, but social groups, whose members directly participate to controversies under certain historical conditions - such as moments of political crises. As a result, revolutions are fundamental events in such a social history of ideas. This Paper will explore a few issues for a social history of ideas centred on revolutions, by following the insights of three French authors or schools of thought. First, the "conceptual history of politics" theorized by Pierre Rosanvallon ; then the pragmatist sociology of justifications developed most notably by Luc Boltanki; and finally Michel Dobry's sociology of political crises.