Mentalités - Philosophical Concept | Alexandria
Mentalites, a term whispered in history departments and debated in academic circles, represents far more than just 'mentalities' or 'ways of thinking.' It is, at its heart, an attempt to reconstruct the collective thought-world of past societies – the assumptions, beliefs, and ingrained habits of mind that shaped their actions and experiences. But this endeavor, popularized by the Annales School of historians, is not a simple matter of reading old texts; it’s an immersive excavation into a shared cognitive landscape, a realm often opaque and subtly resistant to direct interpretation.
The seeds of mentalites history were sown in the early 20th century, notably with the work of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. Though the term wasn't yet enshrined, their efforts to understand medieval magic or 16th-century unbelief hinted at this new path. One might point to Febvre's "The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century," published in 1942, which looked at the world through the eyes of Rabelais. These scholars sought to move beyond purely political or economic narratives, daring to explore the often-irrational, emotionally-charged undercurrents of historical change.
Over time, mentalites history blossomed. Thinkers like Georges Duby, with his exploration of the three orders of feudal society, and Robert Mandrou, who explored judicial records for hints of popular conceptions of sorcery, expanded its possibilities. It became clear that folk tales, religious pamphlets, even legal documents could be mined to reveal not just what people did, but why they thought it acceptable, inevitable, or desirable. The allure lay, and lies, in reconstructing a reality radically different from our own and perhaps from what the elites of the past conveyed.
Today, the spirit of mentalites infuses various fields, from cultural studies to anthropology. While scholars debate its methodologies and question its assumptions of collective consciousness, the quest to understand the deep-seated beliefs that mold human behavior remains central. What unnoticed assumptions are shaping our present, and how will future historians – mentalites historians, perhaps – decipher them? The challenge lies in understanding that our own view is necessarily myopic, no less skewed by the mental universe we inhabit than those we seek to understand.