Review of Bordoni, Stefano. When historiography met epistemology: Sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in French-speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. Reviewed by Jean-François Stoffel.

This paper aims to apply contemporary theories of causation to historiography. The main purpose is to show that historians can use the concept of causation in a variety of ways, each of which is associated with different historiographical claims and different kinds of argumentation. Through this application, it will also become clear, contrary to what is often stated, that historical narratives are (in a specific way) causal, and that micro-history can be seen as a response to a very specific (...) (causal) problem of Braudelian macro-history. (shrink)

Imre Lakatos' conception of the history of science is explicated with the purpose of replying to criticism leveled against it by Thomas Kuhn, Ian Hacking, and others. Kuhn's primary argument is that the historian's internal—external distinction is methodologically superior to Lakatos' because it is "independent" of an analysis of rationality. That distinction, however, appears to be a normative one, harboring an implicit and unarticulated appeal to rationality, despite Kuhn's claims to the contrary. Lakatos' history, by contrast, is clearly the history (...) of a normatively defined discipline; of science and not scientists and their activities. How such history can be written, the historiographic and critical tools available for its construction, and its importance as history, are considered in detail. In an afterword, the prevalence of Lakatos' treatment of history in philosophical discussion is indicated: A related approach is shown to arise in social contract theory. (shrink)

Krzysztof Pomian’s works on history are one of the most interesting theoretical achievements of contemporary humanities. Being one of the prominent revisionists, Pomian took part in an important period of Polish history. Revisionist movement has also played an important role in shaping some basic ideas of Pomian’s later work. Article shows the meaning of revisionism in Polish tradition concerning historiography, and more specifically the meaning of Pomian’s ideas on historiography.

Hobbes's interest in the power of the Image was programmatic, as suggested by his shifts from optics, to sensationalist psychology, to the strategic use of classical history, exemplified by Thucydides and Homer. It put a great resource at the disposal of the state-propaganda machine, with application to the question of state-management and crowd control.

The article aims at clarifying the historical status and cognitive potentials of such a genre of contemporary historiography of philosophy as biographical encyclopedia (dictionary). Based on extensive bibliographic material, the author demonstrates that in the late XX – early XXI centuries in the English-speaking countries there was a real outbreak of interest in encyclopedias and dictionaries, compiled from personalized articles about the life and works of philosophers of certain epochs, countries, trends, etc. According to the author, the increasing popularity (...) of this genre can be considered as a logical continuation of the historical and biographical turns that took place in the Anglo-American (analytic) philosophy in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. The author specifically emphasizes that it caused the appearance of a significant number of encyclopedias and dictionaries, which contain the well-known facts as well as the significant elements of scholar novelty. The article also shows that similar tendencies have taken place in the contemporary Ukrainian historiography of philosophy. It is shown that Ukrainian experts also made their own significant contribution to the development of this genre. They have successfully developed a special approach, which presupposes the focus on life and works of the representatives of a particular academic institution. The intellectual value of this approach is demonstrated by the example of the recently published two-volume encyclopedia “Kyiv Theological Academy in Names: 1819-1924”. It contains a systematic and very informative presentation of the biographies of many representatives of the national philosophy, whose activities were associated with this institution. The author also shows that from the perspective of the historiography of philosophy, the general methodological foundations of this encyclopedic research is a matter of special interest. (shrink)

This article considers the implications of inferentialist philosophy of language for debates in the historiography of philosophy. My intention is to mediate and refine the polemics between contextualist historians and ‘analytic’ or presentist historians. I claim that much of Robert Brandom’s nuanced defence of presentism can be accepted and even adopted by contextualists, so that inferentialism turns out to provide an important justification for orthodox history of philosophy. In the concluding sections I argue that the application of Brandom’s theory (...) has important limits, and that some polemics by contextualists against presentists are therefore justified. (shrink)

This paper attempts to give a critical appraisal of Professor Suresh Chandra’s views on Historiography of Civilization with reference to Dravidian Civilization. “Historiography of Indian Civilization: Harappans, Dravidians, Aryans and Gandhi’s freedom struggle” (published in JICPR June 1996) and “Demythologizing History: Dravidians in Relation to Harappans and the Aryans” (presented in the seminar on Dravidian Philosophy organized by Dravidian University, Kuppam) are the two significant works which are devoted to Historiography of civilization by Prof. Suresh Chandra. This (...) paper mainly confines to the first article since the second one, as the author himself stated, is an offshoot of the first. (shrink)

The accent on scientific and empirical character of alchemy, especially from the field of the history of science, promotes the idea that one can understand the cryptic and metaphorical language of alchemy mainly through the laboratory chemical practice. As a result, the tendency is to interpret the spiritual and esoteric language of alchemy, as metaphors for laboratory work and the most representative research on historiography of alchemy that point the spiritual character as being contaminated by esoteric sciences and Victorian (...) occultism. This paper is paying attention to this dichotomy by attempting to understand the exclusivist position of the position that alchemy is a proto-chemistry and to see the consequences of such an interpretation. It is reviewed one of the most representative voices that interpret alchemy as spiritual by Carl. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade, and their rejection, as it is illustrated by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, showing the boundaries of both approaches and the hazarded character of understanding alchemy merely as part of the history of chemistry. (shrink)

History has been disparaged since the late 19th century for not conforming to norms of scientific explanation. Nonetheless, as a matter of fact a work of history upends the regnant philosophical conception of science in the second part of the 20th century. Yet despite its impact, Kuhn’s Structure has failed to motivate philosophers to ponder why works of history should be capable of exerting rational influence on an understanding of philosophy of science. But all this constitutes a great irony and (...) a mystery. The mystery consists of the persistence of a complete lack of interest in efforts to theorize historical explanation. Fundamental questions regarding why an historical account could have any rational influence remain not merely unanswered, but unasked. The irony arises from the fact that analytic philosophy of history went into an eclipse where it remains until this day just around the time that the influence of Kuhn’s great work began to make itself felt. This paper highlights puzzles long ignored regarding the challenges a work of history managed to pose to the epistemic authority of science, and what this might imply generally for the place of philosophy of history vis-à-vis the problems of philosophy. (shrink)

The history of holography, the technology of three-dimensional imaging that grew rapidly during the 1960s, has been written primarily by its historical actors and, like many new inventions, its concepts and activities became surrounded by myths and myth-making. The first historical account was disseminated by the central character of this paper, George W. Stroke, while a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan. His claims embroiled several workers active in the field of holography and information processing during the (...) 1960s, but transcended personality conflicts: they influenced the early historiography of holography and the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physics to Dennis Gabor in 1971. An extended discussion of these episodes, based on archival research, publications analysis and interviews with participants, reveals the importance and extraordinary allure of intellectual priority for practicing scientists, and how its history and explanations are woven from multiple accounts and contemporary interpretations. (shrink)

Abstract: There are such issues in world history that over the years will not lose their relevance and importance. One of these issues is the English-Russian rivalry, which began in Asia in the middle of the XIX century, which means the policy of “the Great Game”. This issue is reflected in the monographs of all the world’s largest historians, many books, magazines and newspapers on international relations and diplomacy.

This investigation concerns first what Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricœur consider to be «the question of writing» in Plato’s Phaedrus, and then whether their conception of a general philosophical problem of writing finds support in the dialogue. By contrast to their attempts to «determine» the «status» of writing as the general condition of knowledge, my investigation has two objections. (1) To show that Plato’s concern is not to define writing, but to reflect on what is involved in honest and dishonest (...) inquiry. (2) To argue that Derrida’s and Ricœur’s determination of the instrumental (epistemic and moral) «status» of writing, overlooks crucial difficulties of dishonest writing that Plato’s discussion of the pharmakon reveals. The argument proposed is that honest and dishonest inquiry is not tied to the moral status that writing, as an invention or instrument, unconditionally involves, but to the moral quality of what a human being does when inquiring. (shrink)

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the historiography of philosophy, it explores the benefit to philosophy of a deep and broad engagement with its history. It comes to the conclusion that doing history of philosophy is a way to think outside the box of the current philosophical orthodoxies. Somewhat paradoxically, far from imprisoning its students (...) in outdated and crystallized views, the history of philosophy trains the mind to think differently and alternatively about the fundamental problems of philosophy. It keeps us alert to the fact that latest is not always best, and that a genuinely new perspective often means embracing and developing an old insight. The upshot is that the study of the history of philosophy has an innovative and subversive potential, and that philosophy has a great deal to gain from a long, broad, and deep conversation with its history. (shrink)

In a topic as controversial as the Turin Shroud, it is always surprising to note that there remains a large area of consensus among scholars who hold opposite opinions on the origin of this piece of fabric. According to the consensus view, neither science nor history can prove that the Turin Shroud shows signs of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. However, the reasons provided for this important claim are not convincing, especially in light of recent developments in historiography (...) and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In the last few decades, the historiographical categories rationalism and empiricism have been criticized for their limitations to explain the complex positions and the links held by the philosophers tradiotnally attached to them. This narrative was firstly conceived by Kantian German historians and began to become standard at the turn of the twentieh century. Nonetheless, nineteenth-century French historiography developed other narratives by which early modern philosophers were classified according to alternative criteria. In the first edition of Histoire comparée des (...) systémes de philosophie (1804), Joseph-Marie Degérando distinguishes three first-order early modern schools founded by Bacon, Descartes and Leibniz, respectively. Degérando introduces the empiricism and rationalism distinction as one among others, and not as the fundamental one. In addition, he separates empiricism from experimental philosophy. The last one, along with speculative philosophy, is said to conciliate senses and reason. As a result, this account offers philosophical groupings different from those constructed by the standard narrative. Furthermore, it draws on labels and classification criteria which were part of the early modern philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Two stories have dominated the historiography of early modern philosophy: one in which a seventeenth century Age of Reason spawned the Enlightenment, and another in which a skeptical crisis cast a shadow over subsequent philosophy, resulting in ever narrower "limits to knowledge." I combine certain elements common to both into a third narrative, one that begins by taking seriously seventeenth-century conceptions of the topics and methods central to the rise of a "new" philosophy. In this revisionist story, differing approaches (...) to the central subject matter of early modern metaphysics--knowledge of substances through their essences and causal powers--arise as a result of disagreements about the powers of the human cognitive faculties. Methodological writings are seen as attempts to direct readers in the proper use of their cognitive faculties. The early modern rejection of the Aristotelian theory of cognition ranks equally in importance with rejection of Aristotelian doctrines about nature. Skepticism is more often than not a tool to be used in teaching the reader the proper use of the cognitive faculties, or indeed in convincing the reader of the existence or inexistence of certain cognitive faculties or powers. Instead of early modern "epistemology" or "theory of knowledge," one speaks, with seventeenth century writers, of theories of the cognitive faculties and their implications for the possibility of human knowledge. The early modern rejection of Aristotelian logic can then be seen as reflecting a negative assessment about the fit between syllogistic reasoning and logic as an art of reasoning or thinking which refines the use of the cognitive faculties. -/- Central to this new historiography is the story of the relation between the intellect and senses as cognitive faculties or powers. The development of philosophy from Descartes to Kant can be portrayed as a series of claims about the power of the intellect to know the essences of things, with resulting consequences for ontology and the foundations of natural philosophy. I illustrate this revised narrative by comparing three conceptions of the intellect in three philosophical settings, provided by several late scholastic Aristotelians, Descartes, and Locke. I have two aims: first, to exhibit the central role played by the conception of intellect or understanding in these authors, and, second, to locate their discussions of the cognitive faculties in relation to recent understandings of psychology, epistemology, logic, mind, and their relations. Early modern writings do not easily fit into the modern categories of epistemology and psychology; more generally, the early modern concern with the workings of mind does not coincide with recent conceptions of naturalism. These findings can help us to see problems with our current categories. (shrink)

In this book, I defend the present-centered approach in historiography of science (i.e. study of the history of science), build an account for causal explanations in historiography of science, and show the fruitfulness of the approach and account in when we attempt to understand science. -/- The present-centered approach defines historiography of science as a field that studies the developments that led to the present science. I argue that the choice of the targets of studies in (...) class='Hi'>historiography of science should be directly connected to our values and preferences in an intersubjective process. The main advantage of this approach is that it gives a clear motivation for historiography of science and avoids or solves stubborn conceptual and practical problems within the field. -/- The account of causal explanations is built on the notions of counterfactual scenarios and contrastive question-answer pairs. I argue that if and only if we track down patterns of counterfactual dependencies, can we understand history. Moreover, I define the notions of historical explanation, explanatory competition, explanatory depth, and explanatory resources. -/- Finally, I analyze the existing historiography of science with the framework built in the previous chapter, and I show that this framework clarifies many first-order (i.e. concerning the history of science) and meta-level issues (i.e. concerning the nature of science in general) that historians and philosophers tackle. As an illustration of the philosophical power of the framework, I explicate the notion of local explanation and analyze the question of whether the developments of science were necessary or contingent. (shrink)

This essay uses Arnaldo Momigliano's genealogy of antiquarianism and historiography to propose a new method for engaging the past. Momigliano traced antiquarianism from its advent in ancient Greece and later growth in Rome to its early modern efflorescence, its usurpation by history, and its transformation into anthropology and sociology in late modernity. Antiquarianism performed for Momigliano the work of excavating past archives while infusing historiographical inquiry with a much-needed dose of contingency. This essay aims to advance our understanding of (...) the mutual imbrications of antiquarian methods with modern conceptions of history, while also suggesting how antiquarianism can generate alternatives to historical inquiry. (shrink)

Abstract Most histories of philosophy make us believe, that there is a line of thought from the Greeks on until today. This impression should be checked by this article. At first we contrast some pros and cons of the view that philosophy in general has a history. Then we come back to the question, if Plato or / and Aristotle are really the founders of historiography in philosophy. As test-piece we take the passage in the centre of Plato's Sophist, (...) which shows that the references to past thinkers don't have the purpose to inform us historically, but, first, to continue the current dialogue about being, second, to lead us to the aporie about being, which allows a fresh start for this question. A glance at the doxographies of Aristotle shows (we have a look at that of De Anima), that they have the same target in view, namely to reveal the fundamental opinions of being in a respective world. This way the “history of philosophy” becomes an account of succeeding worlds and the related reflection on it. – This article is an extended version of a short lecture held in Geneva, 15. sept. 2016, within the scope of the Symposium of the Schweizerische Philosophische Gesellschaft. Unfortunately it was not accepted for publication. (shrink)

Several scholars observed that narratives about the human past are evaluated comparatively. Few attempts have been made, however, to explore how such evaluations are actually done. Here I look at a lengthy “contest” among several historiographic narratives, all constructed to make sense of another one—the biblical story of the conquest of Canaan. I conclude that the preference of such narratives can be construed as a rational choice. In particular, an easily comprehensible and emotionally evocative narrative will give way to a (...) complex and mundane one, when the latter provides a more coherent account of the consensually accepted body of evidence. This points to a fundamental difference between historiographic narratives and fiction, contrary to some influential opinions in the philosophy of historiography. Such historiographic narratives have similarities with hypotheses and narrative explanations in natural science. (shrink)

In a topic as controversial as the shroud of Turin, it is always surprising to notice that there still exists a large area of consensus among scholars holding opposite opinions on the topic. According to the consensus view, neither science nor history can ever prove that the Turin Shroud shows signs of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. However, the reasons given for such an important claim are not convincing, especially in regard of recent developments in historiography and analytic (...) philosophy. (shrink)

The distinction of whether real or counterfactual history makes sense only post factum. However, modal history is to be defined only as ones’ intention and thus, ex-ante. Modal history is probable history, and its probability is subjective. One needs phenomenological “epoché” in relation to its reality (respectively, counterfactuality). Thus, modal history describes historical “phenomena” in Husserl’s sense and would need a specific application of phenomenological reduction, which can be called historical reduction. Modal history doubles history just as the recorded history (...) of historiography does it. That doubling is a necessary condition of historical objectivity including one’s subjectivity: whether actors’, ex-ante or historians’, post factum. The objectivity doubled by ones’ subjectivity constitute “hermeneutical circle”. (shrink)

In the last third of the 20th century, the Bielefeld School of social history, headed by Hans- Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka, rose to prominence. It had contrasting concerns: the focus on structures and processes of development sidelined intentional action and coexisted with a political rewriting of the past that indicted the interests and decisions of dominant elites in Germany from 1870 to 1933. History was viewed, oddly enough, as retrospective politics. This article analyses the main aporiae implied by both (...) the School’s programme and its scholarly output. How did a structuralist historiography contrive backward-looking political denunciations? Is our time entitled to judge and accuse the past? Notwithstanding the weight of structures and processes, were there real alternatives for the historical agents? Did systemic causality grant elbowroom to intentional action? What chances were then missed and why? Overall, the surmise that there were always choices clashes with received narratives of inevitability. (shrink)

Born in 1898 in South-West Germany, the son of a lumberjack, a student of Karl Korsch in Jena, a colleague of Georg Lukács in Moscow, a militant of the Communist Part of Germany (KPD), and later a member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPB), Schmückle was a prominent Marx expert, a literary critic and an editor of the first Marx- Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA1). This article examines whether Schmückle can be called a Western Marxist. To this end, it first investigates (...) the theoretic, geological and social patterns of Western Marxism and then detects similarities and differences between Schmückle and some pioneering figures of Western Marxism. My main contention is that Western Marxist historiography potentially excludes much of what stands and falls with Schmückle’s intellectual biography and political identity. The way Western Marxism would read Schmückle leads to the conclusion that Schmückle was a Westerner and a Marxist, but hardly a Western Marxist. This suggests that either Western Marxism applies to him in a very loose sense or, alternatively, the term can be empirically falsified in Schmückle’s case. (shrink)

This paper analyses the methodological writings of the nineteenth century historian Johann Gustav Droysen. It explores how Droysen integrates the political and methodological aspects of historiography. The paper shows that Droysen relies on a procedure of “affirmative genealogy” which, in turn, is based on a concept of historical continuity. On Droysen’s account, historical continuity enables “historical understanding”. And the understanding of historical continuities provides the statesman – the “practical historian” – with a solid basis for political decision making.

Centre and Periphery in the Historiography of Philosophy: Peter Olivi and Medieval Psychology The paper inquiries into the (historiographical) question what does it mean to be a “marginal thinker” in the context of the medieval philosophy. The question is investigated on the example of Franciscan philosopher and theologian Peter Olivi (1248/49–1298) and his philosophical psychology. First, a preliminary option is introduced: for a thinker, being “marginal” depends on his relation to who is considered to be canonical. Since the most (...) famous thinker of the Middle Ages is Thomas Aquinas (at least according to the traditional canon of medieval philosophy), Olivi’s positions in psychology are compared with these of Aquinas. It is revealed that Olivi’s psychology is very different from the Aquinas’ one. (E.g. Olivi stresses the activity of perception, proprioceptual nature of the sense of touch, and direct access of the intellect to its own acts.) Moreover, Olivi is very critical towards the Aristotelian philosophy as is done by some thinkers of his time. Nevertheless, it does not follow that Olivi is a marginal thinker only because of his dissimilarity from the more Aristotelian-minded ones. It is argued that “centre” and “periphery” in the history of medieval philosophy depends not on the canon (which is rather a historians’ construct and instrument), but rather on the tradition. Hence, although Olivi can be considered as a marginal thinker if we take into the account the Aristotelian tradition of medieval philosophy, he is definitely a central and important thinker, if considered as a member of the Augustinian tradition. (shrink)

This is a critical review of J. B. Schneewind's Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy which both praises and raises worries about some of the main claims found in select articles in the volume. It engages with Schneewind's remarks on the historiography of moral philosophy.

This paper develops under-recognized connections between moderate historicist methodology and character (or virtue) epistemology, and goes on to argue that their combination supports a “dialectical” conception of objectivity. Considerations stemming from underdetermination problems motivate our claim that historicism requires agent-focused rather than merely belief-focused epistemology; embracing this point helps historicists avoid the charge of relativism. Considerations stemming from the genealogy of epistemic virtue concepts motivate our claim that character epistemologies are strengthened by moderate historicism about the epistemic virtues and values (...) at work in communities of inquiry; embracing this point helps character epistemologists avoid the charge of objectivism. (shrink)

Triumphalist histories of science are nothing new but were, in fact, a staple of the 19th century. This article considers one of the more famous works in the genre and argues that it was motivated by doubt more than by faith.

Criteria of historical assessment are applied to the Turin Shroud to determine which hypothesis relating to the image formation process is the most likely. To implement this, a ‘Minimal Facts’ approach is followed that takes into account only physicochemical and historical data receiving the widest consensus among contemporary scientists. The result indicates that the probability of the Shroud of Turin being the real shroud of Jesus of Nazareth is very high; historians and natural theologians should therefore pay it increased attention.

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed a (...) philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...) follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. -/- This book offers a comprehensive study of Quine’s naturalism. Building on Quine’s published corpus as well as thousands of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, this book aims to reconstruct both the nature (chapters 2-4) and the development (chapter 5-7) of his naturalism. As such, this book aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. (shrink)

This article outlines the gradually changing attitude towards instruments and materials in the philosophy and historiography of science and confronts contemporary revaluations of the material culture of science with Hans-Jörg Rhein- berger's concept of an experimental system and Don Ihde's notion of an epistemology engine.

This chapter traces the development of relativist ideas in nineteenth-century debates about history and historical knowledge. It distinguishes between two contexts in which these ideas first emerged. First, the early-to-mid nineteenth-century encounter between speculative German idealism and professional historiography. Second, the late nineteenth-century debate between hermeneutic philosophy and orthodox Neo-Kantianism. The paper summarizes key differences between these two contexts: in the former, historical ontology and historical methodology formed a unity, in the latter, they came apart. As a result, the (...) idea of universal history became increasingly problematic. In light of these differences, the paper seeks to (partially) explain why it was only towards the late-nineteenth century that historical relativism became an explicit concern. (shrink)

The theory of knowledge in early twentieth-century Anglo American philosophy was oriented toward phenomenally described cognition. There was a healthy respect for the mind-body problem, which meant that phenomena in both the mental and physical domains were taken seriously. Bertrand Russell's developing position on sense-data and momentary particulars drew upon, and ultimately became like, the neutral monism of Ernst Mach and William James. Due to a more recent behaviorist and physicalist inspired "fear of the mental", this development has been down-played (...) in historical work on early analytic philosophy. Such neglect assumes that the "linguistic turn" is a proper and permanent effect of twentieth-century philosophy, an assumption that distorts early analytic historiography, and begs a substantive philosophical question about thought and cognition. (shrink)

Several scholars have criticized the histories of early modern philosophy based on the dichotomy of empiricism and rationalism. They view them as overestimating the importance of epistemological issues for early modern philosophers (epistemological bias), portraying Kant's Critical philosophy as a superior alternative to empiricism and rationalism (Kantian bias), and forcing most or all early modern thinkers prior to Kant into the empiricist or rationalist camps (classificatory bias). Kant is often said to be the source of the three biases. Against this (...) criticism, this paper argues that Kant did not have the three biases. However, he promoted a way of writing histories of philosophy from which those biases would naturally flow. (shrink)

This paper traces the ancestry of a familiar historiographical narrative, according to which early modern philosophy was marked by the development of empiricism, rationalism, and their synthesis by Immanuel Kant. It is often claimed that this narrative became standard in the nineteenth century, due to the influence of Thomas Reid, Kant and his disciples, or German Hegelians and British Idealists. The paper argues that the narrative became standard only at the turn of the twentieth century. This was not due to (...) the influence of Reid, German Hegelians, or British Idealists as they did not endorse the narrative, although Thomas Hill Green may have facilitated its uptake. The narrative is based on Kant’s historiographical sketches, as corrected and integrated by Karl Leonhard Reinhold. It was first fleshed out into full-fledged histories by two Kantians, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann and Johann Gottlieb Buhle. Numerous historians, several of whom were not Kantians, spread it in the English-speaking world. They include Kuno Fischer, Friedrich Ueberweg, Richard Falckenberg, and Wilhelm Windelband. However, the wide availability of their works did not suffice to make the narrative standard because, until the 1890s, the Hegelian account was at least as popular as theirs. Among the factors that allowed the narrative to become standard are its aptness to be adopted by philosophers of the most diverse persuasions, its simplicity and suitability for teaching. (shrink)

Although African philosophy has become a part of the world philosophic heritage that can no longer be neglected, no comprehensive history of it is available yet. This lacuna is due to the numerous problems that affect any attempt to outline such a history. Among these problems are those inherent in the historiography of philosophy in general and many others specific to African philosophy. They include the absence of scholarly unanimity over the exact nature of philosophy and, by extension, African (...) philosophy; the dispute over the beginning of philosophy in Ancient Egypt, as well as the Afrocentrist assertion of the origin of Greek philosophy in Egypt; the problem of periodization; the status of ethnophilosophy, etc. These difficulties do not make a comprehensive history of African philosophy an impossible or irrelevant task. On the contrary, such a history is a necessity that promises to exert an enormous positive influence on the future development of African philosophy. (shrink)

Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) complicates the historiography of the reception of Darwinism. His presentation of the theory was anti-teleological, a fact that refutes the claim that German Darwinists were Romantic.

Tis paper aims to understand how we reason from historical premises to normative conclusions, tracing this question through the work of Muhammad Iqbal. On our reading, he wavers between two views of history, one a kind of natural science, and the other akin to religious interpretation. These tell different stories about the lessons we draw from history.

The paper explores the question of the relationship between the practice of original philosophical inquiry and the study of the history of philosophy. It is written from my point of view as someone starting a research project in the history of philosophy that calls this issue into question, in order to review my starting positions. I argue: first, that any philosopher is sufficiently embedded in culture that her practice is necessarily historical; second, that original work is in fact in part (...) a reconstruction by reinterpretation of the past and that therefore it bears some relation to historiographic techniques for the restoration of damaged objects and texts; and third that the special oddities of the relations of present and past do not fail to ensnare the philosopher, who must restore the past but freely break from it. I describe this relationship as proleptic. Finally, I argue that this is a moral imperative in writing philosophy, derived from the imperative to be honest. (shrink)

This paper explores Michel Foucault’s contribution to rethinking the nature of the present through his examination of the ontology of contemporary reality he locates in Immanuel Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment?” By raising a series of critical questions concerning the epochal thinking that plagues Foucault’s various engagements with this text, the article goes on to argue that the attempt to find a single concept—or question—that appropriately summarizes a given era is an endeavor fraught with methodological problems. Highlighting the limitations of Foucault’s (...) approach in spite of his attempt to rethink modernity as an attitude, the paper concludes by advocating an alternative logic of history that definitively abandons epochal thinking in favor of a topological mapping of historical force fields in which it is recognized that there is no being behind time. (shrink)

Works of philosophy written in English have spawned a massive secondary literature dealing with ideas, problems or arguments. But they have almost never given rise to works of ‘commentary’ in the strict sense, a genre which is however a dominant literary form not only in the Confucian, Vedantic, Islamic, Jewish and Scholastic traditions, but also in relation to more recent German-language philosophy. Yet Anglo-Saxon philosophers have themselves embraced the commentary form when dealing with Greek or Latin philosophers outside their own (...) tradition. The paper seeks to establish the reasons for this peculiar asymmetry by examining those factors which might be conducive to the growth of a commentary literature in a given culture. (shrink)

This chapter poses questions about the existence and character of the Scientific Revolution by deriving its initial categories of analysis and its initial understanding of the intellectual scene from the writings of the seventeenth century, and by following the evolution of these initial categories in succeeding centuries. This project fits the theme of cross cultural transmission and appropriation -- a theme of the present volume -- if one takes the notion of a culture broadly, so that, say, seventeenth and eighteenth (...) or nineteenth century European intellectual cultures are deemed sufficiently distinct that one can speak of the "transmission" of texts and ideas from the one to the other as cross cultural. I maintain that a process of transforming and assimilating seventeenth century achievements manifests itself in two distinct cultures of interpretation, one developed by historians of philosophy, the other by scientists and historians of science. The first, following actor's categories, interprets the revolution in the seventeenth century as a philosophical displacement, partly fomented by a radical change in astronomical theory; the second, retrospectively applying the post nineteenth century sense of the term "science" to seventeenth century events, finds a "scientific" revolution, or the birth of modern science. The chapter proposes interpreting the Scientific Revolution as a revolution in natural philosophy and metaphysics. (shrink)