왜 ‘지구적 지성사’가 요구되는가? -지구사적 지성사 기획. 방향과 지향의 문제를 중심으로-

Abstract

In recent years, Global History has firmly established itself as a new and highly productive field of historical research. In the field of Intellectual History also, historians seek to internationalize and globalize their perspectives on the past. Their work increasingly transcends the history of particular nation-states and instead investigates transnational and other long-distance intellectual connections throughout human history. In this paper we will try to summarize this recent trend of research and catch its meaning in Intellectual History. It is nowadays implausible to deny that all efforts to gain new visions of global intellectual connections aim to betray the Eurocentrism in the historical understanding which proposes that the European intellectual development took the lead in the history of humanity. So, the call for an alternative to Eurocentrism gains more attraction. But it is still difficult to question the viewpoint that regards European dominated world history especially in modern times as historical facts. In the field of intellectual history, it is taken for granted that modern global intellectual heritages originated in Europe. So, until today the belief of its spread to the non-European world is taken for granted in the global intellectual development. But many researchers nowadays insist on the necessity for an alternative research in order to provide a more solid basis for a non-Eurocentric interpretation of Global Intellectual History. Accordingly, some approaches are worthy of note in going beyond the Eurocentrism. This paper presents some tentative suggestions in order to overcome this Eurocentric concepts and seek new possibilities in historical research. This paper suggests, first of all, to deny the hegemonic position which the European intellectual heritages have occupied up to the present in the historical interpretation of human intellectual development. Raising a question about the universal meaning of the European intellectual heritages, this paper suggests to shed light on the impact of ‘non-European knowledge’ on the (re-definition) of Global Intellectual History. In addition to this, history of interaction and cultural transfers is considered as an alternative field of research for non-Eurocentric Intellectual History. Concentrating on connected histories or a history of connections, researches from now on can contribute to overcome the Eurocentric Intellectual History. As a result, the western intellectual heritages can be examined as embedded in global spaces of communication and interaction rather than as principally endogenous and autonomous processes.