On the Definition and Research Methods of Intellectual History: Taking the Origin of Liberation Theology for example

Abstract

As a kind of historical research consisting of “ideas”and“history”, the study of the intellectual history mainly deals with two kinds of problems: one is to see what a thinker said in the dimension of ideas, and the other is to judge why he said so from the dimension of history. Therefore, the research approach of intellectual history can be divided into“external research method” and “internal research method”. The external research method pays special attention to the interactive relationship between thought and historical context, and places people in the historical context to be observed and analyzed, while the internal research method pays special attention to analyzing the circumference of the system of thought in the theoretical development. This paper analyzes the origin of liberation theology as an example with external research method and internal research method, such as qualitative analysis software, inference and deduction, transcendental dialectic, and also applies the writing patterns of“continuity” and “discontinuity”. The paper proposes that that the origins of liberation theology can be considered in terms of a number of factors, including Christian ecclesiastical base, German theological thought, Roman Catholic Reformation, and the personal situations of liberation theologians，etc.