The History of Philosophy as a Discipline

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-171
Author(s):  
Michael Frede
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of philosophy as a discipline. Part of the confusion not only as to what historians of philosophy try to do but also as to how they ought to go about doing it, seems to be due to a misleading ambiguity in the term ‘history of philosophy’. Historically, it has been used in two rather different ways, each of which corresponds to a very different tradition of treating the history of philosophy, both of which persist to the present day, but which tend to get conflated. From roughly the middle of the seventeenth century onwards, we find treatises with the title ‘History of Philosophy’. These treatises show themselves to stand in a much older tradition that goes back to antiquity; namely, the doxographical tradition. But towards the end of the eighteenth century, a very different tradition emerges. As opposed to their doxographical predecessors, histories which adopt a chronological disposition are written out of the conviction that the philosophical positions of the past are no longer worth considering philosophically, that they are out of date. If they are still worth considering at all, it is because they constitute the steps through which we historically arrived at our present philosophical position.

HOW THE STOICS BECAME ATHEISTS

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
The Way

In the middle of the seventeenth century, scholarship on ancient Stoicism generally understood it to be a form of theism. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Stoicism was widely (though not universally) reckoned a variety of atheism, both by its critics and by those more favourably disposed to its claims. This article describes this transition, the catalyst for which was the controversy surrounding Spinoza's philosophy, and which was shaped above all by contemporary transformations in the historiography of philosophy. Particular attention is paid to the roles in this story played by Thomas Gataker, Ralph Cudworth, J. F. Buddeus, Jean Barbeyrac, and J. L. Mosheim, whose contributions collectively helped to shape the way in which Stoicism was presented in two of the leading reference works of the Enlightenment, J. J. Brucker's Critical History of Philosophy and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert.

Presidential Address: Can the History of Science be History?

1969 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Rupert Hall
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
International Meeting ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Century Thought

It was in the closing year of the nineteenth century that Paul Tannery organized at an international historical congress the first international meeting devoted to the history of science. If antiquity would make a scholarly subject respectable, scholarship in the history of science must be beyond reproach; still earlier than Tannery and his colleagues in many European countries were the German historian of chemistry Kopp, and William Whewell, Master of Trinity; the eighteenth century had produced substantial works like those on mathematics and astronomy of Montucla and Delambre; Isaac Vossius and others virtually take these studies back to the Renaissance and Polydore Vergil. Just as in our day such classical scholars as Heiberg, Bailey, Housman, Drachman or Peck have chosen scientific texts as their subjects, so in the past, too, learning and science have met on this common ground. Few creative mathematicians of the seventeenth century thought that attention to the writings of Euclid or Archimedes was a waste of time.

Doxographical, Philosophical, and Historical Forms of the History of Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-188
Author(s):  
Charles Brittain
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Form ◽  
Philosophical Importance ◽  
Contemporary Context

This chapter examines the doxographical, philosophical, and historical forms of the history of philosophy. The aim of doxography is to reconstruct and present philosophical views or positions that have been proposed in the past and to do so in a way that makes clear the interest they may retain for contemporary philosophical discussions. However, the inadequacy of ancient doxographical writers seems so great that the term ‘doxography’ itself has acquired a pejorative connotation. The criticism is twofold: first, one has the feeling that the ancient doxographers did not have historical awareness or a sensitivity to history; second, one tends to associate doxography with a kind of philosophical failure. People then abandoned the assumption that the positions of the past retain their philosophical importance in the contemporary context. In its place, they began to suppose that the views of the past were only of interest as stages, even if necessary ones, of the evolution of thought. This sort of history represents the philosophical study of the history of philosophy. It is precisely this philosophical position which, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, provokes a reaction. But this reaction takes two very different forms. On the one hand, it gives rise to the historical study of the history of philosophy and, on the other, to a modern form of doxography.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

Acta Fluens – Generatives Handeln und Improvisation im Jazz

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.

The Convent of Santa Clara, the Elite and Social Change in Eighteenth Century Querétaro

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELLEN GUNNARSDÓTTIR
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This article focuses on the changes that occurred within Querétaro's elite from the late Habsburg to the high Bourbon period in colonial Mexico from the perspective of its relationship to the convent of Santa Clara. It explores how creole elite families of landed background with firm roots in the early seventeenth century, tied together through marriage, entrepreneurship and membership in Santa Clara were slowly pushed out of the city's economic and administrative circles by a new Bourbon elite which broke with the social strategies of the past by not sheltering its daughters in the city's most opulent convent.

WHY STUDYING THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY MATTERS

Think ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (60) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The debate over whether and how philosophers of today may usefully engage with philosophers of the past is nearly as old as the history of philosophy itself. Does the study of the history of philosophy train or corrupt the budding philosopher's mind? Why study the history of philosophy? And, how to study the history of philosophy? I discuss some mainstream approaches to the study of the history of philosophy (with special focus on ancient philosophy), before explicating the one I adopt and commend.

scholarly journals M. Mandelbaum and Historiography of Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-244
Author(s):  
Marina N. Volf
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Holistic Approaches ◽  
History Of

The views of M. Mandelbaum on the historiography of philosophy have undergone a certain evolution. The paper shows the epistemological foundations of Mandelbaum’s historical and philosophical position. From the standpoint of critical realism and its application to social sciences Mandelbaum shows the advantages and disadvantages of the monistic or holistic approaches, partial monisms and pluralism. He considers A. O. Lovejoy's history of ideas to be the most reasonable pluralistic conception, although its use as a historical and philosophical methodology is limited. Intellectual history, which replaced it, should be called a partial monism, however, according to Mandelbaum, it gets a number of advantages if it begins to use a pluralistic methodology. In this version of methodology, the history of philosophy and intellectual history can be identified. The paper also presents some objections of analytic philosophers against this identification.

scholarly journals Making the States’ Translation (1637): Orthodox Calvinist Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 440-463
Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

In the study of the history of biblical scholarship, there has been a tendency among historians to emphasize biblical philology as a force which, together with the new philosophy and the new science of the seventeenth century, caused the erosion of universal scriptural authority from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. A case in point is Jonathan Israel's impressive account of how biblical criticism in the hands of Spinoza paved the way for the Enlightenment. Others who have argued for a post-Spinozist rise of biblical criticism include Frank Manuel, Adam Sutcliffe, and Travis Frampton. These scholars have built upon longer standing interpretations such as those of Hugh Trevor-Roper and Paul Hazard. However, scholars in the past two decades such as Anthony Grafton, Scott Mandelbrote and Jean-Louis Quantin have altered the picture of an exegetical revolution inaugurated by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712). These heterodox philosophers in fact relied on philological research that had been largely developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. Moreover, such research was carried out by scholars who had no subversive agenda. This is to say that the importance attached to a historical and philological approach to the biblical text had a cross-confessional appeal, not just a radical-political one.

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