Parallel, Additional, or Alternative Histories of Philosophy? Questions on the Theory and Methodology of the History of Philosophy — (original) (raw)
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Future Human Image, 2019
The paper touches upon some issues on the present condition and prospects of the research methodology in the field of history of philosophy. The author claims that modern Ukrainian history of philosophy is mostly grounded on the principles of a classical theoretical approach which date back to the philosophical traditions of Hegelianism and Marxism. The classical approach is determined by a specific theory of the hitorico-philosophical process in which it appears as a particular linear set of events objectively connected and influencing each other. Such theory presupposes a certain set of methods and rules of their application. This peculiarity makes the system isolated from the others and provides limitations that influence the effectiveness of the research. The author asserts that to optimize the effectiveness and increase the heuristic potential of the research in the field of history of philosophy the classical methodological approach should be gradually replaced by the non-classical. The main properties of the non-classical approach are openness, methodological communication with the other research fields, equal evaluation of the importance of various philosophical notions, personalities and events. Author, generalizing the modern research experience in the field of methodology of history of philosophy, suggests several strategies for improvement and transformation of the existing research methodology and the development of a non-classical approach to the history of philosophy.
Studia Philosophica, 2017
This paper develops Bernard Williams' suggestion that for philosophy to ignore its history is for it to assume that its history is vindicatory. The paper aims to offer a fruitful line of inquiry into the question whether philosophy has a vindicatory history by providing a map of possible answers to it. It first distinguishes three types of history: the history of discovery, the history of progress, and the history of change, and offers reasons to think that much of philosophy, including in part the philosophy of mind and metaphysics, lacks a vindicatory history. The paper then reconstructs Williams' conception of what it means for philosophy to engage with its own history. The paper concludes that it is a mistake to think that a vindicatory history is what we would really like to have, and that in fact, the resulting picture gives philosophy several reasons to engage with its own history.
Philosophy and "Byzantine Philosophy" (co-authored with Dimitri Gutas)
The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, ed. Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglou, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2017
Would the term “Byzantine philosophy” be meaningful to the Byzantines themselves, and would it be at all acceptable to them? Put otherwise: Is “Byzantine philo- sophy” a historically valid category, that is, one that the agents commonly regarded as its major representatives, such as the great Orthodox theolo- gians John of Damascus, Maximos the Confessor, and Gregory Palamas, would find applicable to what they were doing intellectually, especially if they were told that they were thereby engaged in the same enterprise as, say, John Italos, condemned as a heretic in the addenda to the Synodikon of Orthodoxy? And vice versa: would self-styled “true” philosophers such as Psellos and Italos approve of their reclassification among false philosophers whom they mocked, or those “teachers who sit with smug faces and long beards, looking pale and grim, with a frown, shabbily dressed,” i.e. prob- ably monks?4 The following analysis will not rest on any exclusive, specific, and trans- historical definition of philosophy. There may be several views about what that is, what it should be or do on this or that basis, or absolutely, but ours is a historical study and we are interested in what the Byzantines thought about “philosophy” as apprehended in their particular context, and whether recent conceptualizations of an intrinsically “Byzantine philoso- phy” would be acceptable or meaningful to them. Though we are careful not to commit ourselves to an objectivist view of philosophy, we are equally wary of the anachronistic uses of the word philosophia that are now widely observable: its valorized Byzantine meanings have been “liquidated” and reinvested in relativist modern approaches. As we believe that modern scholars rely on relativist arguments to maintain the ostensibly distinct field of “Byzantine philosophy,” we shall show that these “specialists in Byzantine philosophy” invariably confuse ancient, Byzantine, and modern approaches to philosophy; and they only rarely note that the Byzantines themselves used the word according to standards and priorities very different to those employed by the Hellenes and of course by the moderns too.
Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval, 2019
Can the historical perspective on philosophy contribute to current philosophy? What is its contribution? Is it dependent on a specific method? To what extent do we learn what philosophy is from the history of philosophy? How do our assumptions about the relationship between the historical and the systematic perspective affect our conception of philosophy itself (and vice versa)? These questions, quoted almost verbatim from Marcel van Ackeren's introductory chapter (p. 2), constitute the horizon of problems that leading scholars seek to resolve in fourteen essays. The publication aims to make headway on a via media between two extremes of doing philosophy: between philosophy construed primarily as analysis of 'historical texts without reference to current debates and their terminology' on the one hand, and philosophy seen merely as solving 'current first-order philosophical questions without references to their predecessors' on the other hand (p. 1). In his introduction, van Ackeren reviews these tensions, chiefly within analytic philosophy, and he outlines how the subsequent essays contribute to solving the five questions above. His overview is so succinct and commendable that there is hardly any value in summarising the essays in yet another way. Nor do I dare to offer an alternative overarching theme to classify and assess the contributions, as this would amount to weighing in on the debate myself.
BOOK REVIEW The Philosopher: A History in Six Types
Metaphilosophy, 2017
This book offers an answer to the question "What is philosophy?" by using a novel, semi-anthropological approach that carefully engages with various self-conceptions of philosophy drawn from different historical eras and contexts. In the process, we are offered six different "job descriptions" that have made up the main social roles that philosophers have tended to play at various times and places. Smiths historical narrative seeks to place the practice of philosophy within a broader cultural setting than that usually found in professional philosophical circles. Rather than argue for a particular conception of philosophy or a distinctive view of its proper function and province, Smith wants to enrich and possibly expand our current conception of the project of philosophy through a critical engagement with forgotten selfconceptions from its past. The book is wide ranging, covering various cultures and historical periods, and unorthodox in its methods, including scholarly accounts coupled with autobiographical elements and short fictional interludes. As a result, it has a kind of exploratory feel to it, not shy in the defense of its main claims but also raising many interesting questions left to the reader to reflect on further. My discussion, then, must be selective.
Philosophy and the Study of Its History
Metaphilosophy, 2008
This article's goal is to outline one approach to providing a principled answer to the question of what is the proper relationship between philosophy and the study of philosophy's history, a question arising, for example, in the design of a curriculum for graduate students. This approach requires empirical investigation of philosophizing past and present, and thus takes philosophy as an object of study in something like the way that contemporary (naturalistic) philosophy of science takes science as an object of study. This approach also requires articulating a sense in which philosophy might make, or might have made, progress.
The main aim of this thesis is to offer a solution to questions concerning the historical nature of the inquiry into the past of philosophy. In order to provide answers, two consecutive steps are proposed: First part of the thesis is focused on contemporary philosophical discussions concerning the nature of history as a discipline and covers the issues raised by narrativists and epistemological philosophers of history in the last sixty years. It also deals with the concepts of historical realism and anti-realism. Eventually, a moderate version of historical anti-realism combined with constructivism is offered as an inclusive and fruitful account of what history is about. In the second part of the thesis, the concept of historical inquiry from the previous chapters is applied to the general issues which are often discussed in relation to the methodology of history of philosophy: historicity of philosophy, context, contextual reading, canon formation, anachronisms, etc. It is shown that the account of history, usually presupposed in philosophical discussions about the history of philosophy, is often based on the naive form of historical realism, although its disadvantages can be easily avoided. History of philosophy thus have both: philosophical and historical aspects. Historical approach to history of philosophy does not lead to a mere chronicle of past opinions, but it can provide a valuable historical and philosophical image of the world.
The History of Philosophy and the Persona of the Philosopher
Modern Intellectual History, 2007
Although history is the pre-eminent part of the gallant sciences, philosophers advise against it from fear that it might completely destroy the kingdom of darkness—that is, scholastic philosophy—which previously has been wrongly held to be a necessary instrument of theology.