In the 19th century, the history of philosophy becomes the history of a particular science. Modern philosophical historiography is an ambivalent project. On the one hand, we find an affirmative concept of Bildung through tradition and historical insight; on the other, there arises a critical reflection on historical education in the light of an emerging critique of modern culture. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the debate.

What does it mean to do philosophy historically, and when does the legend of philosophy begin? When Hegel tried to give a logical explanation of philosophy's history, was he doing the same thing as Eduard Zeller in his account of Creek thought, or Kuno Fischer in his narrative of modern philosophy? l do not believe so, and I shall sugges t in the following that we should carefully differentiate between the different activities commonly referred to as the history of philosophy. (...) I will point out the enormous productivity of the 19th century in terms of printed books devoted to the history of philosophy. I will also point to the context in which these were produced and used rather than examining individual works or authors. There is an entirely new context in the 19th century, which is the study of philosophy. A proper culture developed around the historical interest in philosophy, and it is this culture I want to sketch here. (shrink)

The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a rich new perspective on (...) the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity. (shrink)

A survey of the current positions, relating historical and systematic perspective, including Williams’s view on the “alienation effect.” Also argues that this earlier method is distinct from the later method of genealogy.

En este artículo pretendo analizar las ideas que Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo defendió sobre la esencia de la historia de la filosofía en el contexto de la polémica de La ciencia española. Frente a una metodología histórica que considera demasiado idealista, Menéndez Pelayo aboga por un estudio más empírico de la historia de la filosofía, centrado en el detalle y la investigación, el cual permitirá dar razón de la complejidad del desarrollo histórico de la filosofía. La insistencia de Menéndez Pelayo en (...) el empirismo se manifestará en el rechazo de cuatro principios sobre los que se forja el discurso idealista sobre la historia de la filosofía. De este modo, Menéndez Pelayo aparecerá retratado como uno de los grandes defensores del método empírico para estudiar el complejo y contingente desarrollo de la historia de la filosofía. (shrink)