Arthur O(ncken) Lovejoy

Philosopher and intellectual historian, born in Berlin, Germany. Brought by his American parents to Boston (1874), he took his MA from Harvard where he studied under Josiah Royce and William James, and then went on to the Sorbonne in Paris. After teaching philosophy at Stanford (1899–1900), Washington University (St Louis) (1901–9), and the University of Missouri (1909–10), he spent the rest of his career at Johns Hopkins (1910–38). He turned away from the traditional concerns of philosophy to concentrate on tracing the historical evolution of certain fundamental concepts, effectively founding the modern discipline of the history of ideas. He founded and was first editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas and was one of the pioneers in encouraging an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship. His masterwork was The Great Chain of Being (1936), which proved to be highly influential well beyond philosophy faculties. Other works include Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (1935, with George Boas) and Essays in the History of Ideas (1948). He was also active in settlement work, academic freedom issues, and anti-fascist organizations during both world wars.

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (October 10, 1873, Berlin – December 30, 1962, Baltimore) was an influential American intellectual historian, who founded the field known as the history of ideas.

Lovejoy was born in Berlin, Germany while his father was doing medical research there. Lovejoy studied philosophy, first at the University of California, then at Harvard under William James and Josiah Royce. In 1901, he resigned from his first job, at Stanford University, to protest the dismissal of a colleague who had offended a trustee. Over the subsequent decade, he taught at Washington University, Columbia University, and the University of Missouri.

As a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University from 1910 to 1938, Lovejoy founded and long presided over that university's History of Ideas Club, where many prominent and budding intellectual and social historians, as well as literary critics, gathered. Lovejoy insisted that the history of ideas should focus on "unit ideas," single concepts (often with a one-word name), and study how unit ideas combine and recombine with each other over time. He helped found the American Association of University Professors and the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. However, his belief in civil liberties did not extend to everyone: at the height of the McCarthy Era (in the February 14, 1952 edition of the Journal of Philosophy) Lovejoy stated that, since it was a "matter of empirical fact" that membership in the Communist Party contributed "to the triumph of a world-wide organization" which was opposed to "freedom of inquiry, of opinion and of teaching," membership in the party constituted grounds for dismissal from academic positions. Harvard University Press. Row, ISBN 0-674-36150-4, 2005 paperback: ISBN 0-674-36153-9.