The article offers a critical insight into the social history of ideas as a research trend that has been dynamically developing within French academic circles since 2010. Methodologically, the social history of ideas attempts to apply sociological tools to study the diffusion and embedding of political ideas within specific groups. After presenting the general directions of this trend's development, the author focuses on its critics, offering their own reflections on the difficulties one might encounter when applying its principles to research on Central‑Eastern Europe. To tackle this task, the author provides a methodological exercise to verify the extent to which the principles of social history of ideas can be applied to the study of (semi)peripheral ideas. In conclusion, the author emphasises the invigorating nature and critical tasks that social history of ideas can fulfill within Polish historiography as well.

The main aim of the following article is to juxtapose two methodological perspectives, influential in the field of the widely understood history of ideas, that is to say, the Cambridge School with the German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte. Presenting both opportunities and pitfalls that may result from applying these perspectives, I sketch the propositions to overcome possible shallows. In concluding remarks, I draw potential challenges for the history of ideas in Poland.