Abstract

The interaction of intellectual history and cultural history with political history represents one of the fruitful lines of development in political history studies. Political history cannot renounce including in its analytical toolkit the study of intellectual phenomena, which are connected in a relationship of mutual influence to the political sphere and the actions of its actors. Important methodological suggestions for the historical study of political phenomena come from Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte. The historical approach to concepts establishes a connection, along lines of constant tension, between the conceptual dimension and socio-political historical reality. The historical plurality of concepts contributes to making political history more alert to possible simplifications produced by an excess of linearity and consequentiality in the analysis of political phenomena, as well as by a sometimes insufficiently thought-out recourse to modelling. The concept of «political culture», elaborated by political science, has penetrated into historical research, which has paid attention to the set of representations, values, sentiments and political beliefs of different societies, in its persistence and changes. The complementarity between intellectual history and political history contributes to enriching the analytical tools with which to grasp the entanglements that make history, a history that appears increasingly multifaceted, antinomic, and complex.