On intellectual innovation and the methodology of the history of ideas

Mark Bevir's Logic of the History of Ideas is discussed, focusing on the pr oblematic of intellectual innovation. Sharing Bevir's anti-foundationalist position and his Wittgensteinian view of language, the article criticizes t he overly rationalistic and individualist bias in his proposed logic for th e history of ideas. It is further argued that Bevir's critique of contextua lism is unconvincing because it is based on a far too crude view of the act ual practice of historians of ideas.