Intellectual history and history (Dominick LaCapra's 'Tropisms of Intellectual History')

In 'Tropisms of Intellectual History' LaCapra highlights a tension between intellectual history and the historical discipline generally. This tension is in part a result of intellectual history's status as an interdisciplinary field. But it also results from historians' too-quick dismissal of the notion that 'ideas' (ethical, juridical, religious, philosophical, aesthetic) can play any sort Of significant role in history. LaCapra's insistence on taking such ideas seriously might well be seen as continuing, in a secular register, an early religious commitment.