This paper investigates the intellectual biography of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader (1919–1998) as a contribution to the sociology of intellectuals and history of ideas. We trace Krader's career trajectory to his intellectual self‐concept, his scholarly and political worldviews, and his financial independence. Krader entertained a self‐concept of a lone pioneer that led him to reject the competition for attention as highlighted in the current literature, dominated as it is by an emphasis on field, habitus, the accumulation and reproduction of power, and symbolic capital. His self‐concept and his happier financial circumstance kept him relatively aloof from key intellectual networks and narrow institutional constraints. Our paper seeks to combine the new sociology of ideas with its focus on institutions and networks with traditional Wissenssoziologie that emphasized the role of class, status, and worldviews to explain the rise and fall of theories and thinkers.