This article offers considerations not on the past, not even on the present but on the hope-for future of the history of economic thought. Five components of this discipline are successively discussed: history of ideas/theory, textual exegesis, epistemology, philosophy, and the type of audience historians of economic thought intend to address. The profession will fortunately never agree on the ideal combination between these five components. The author is in favour of a history of economic ideas/theories centred on the development of intellectual and analytical concepts more than on the way through which they have been reached by the scientific community.