Contemporary intellectual history, which has its roots in German intellectual history, thrives on many approaches. The essay presents a pragmatically oriented history of ideas, whose beginnings can be traced back to Nietzsche's horizon with the physician and philosopher William James. The German-speaking reception occurred early on, primarily through Carl Stumpf, Max Weber, Karl Jaspers, and Sigmund Freud. The reflections on the history of ideas culminate in a comparative genealogy of mental experiences, where boundary situations of psychological experience often lead to the birth of new ideas. Literary and artistic testimonies, alongside genuinely philosophical texts, form an important source of their insights. The history of ideas, with James and his successors, emerges as a science of humanity that conceptually belongs to many disciplines. Its central interest is formed by the.