A History of Philosophy Preface

A History of Philosophy

PREFACE

I need to explain the aims and intentions in writing this history of Philosophy for two reasons. Firstly, I know that I lack the aptitude and inclination to be a good historian, and therefore I fall far short of achieving those aims or making my intentions apparent in this history of Philosophy. Hence explicitly stating my aims and intentions may be necessary for the reader to understand what I am trying to do. Secondly, I appear to be the first person to have these particular aims and intentions, despite the numerous histories of Philosophy that have been written, and they require some explanation. Unfortunately, discussion of these aims and intentions can only occur appropriately through the course of the historical account rather than at its beginning, and I cannot rely on readers to read the whole history of Philosophy before appreciating what I have been trying to do.

Note on language:
The word ‘history’ has three different meanings in English: 1) The changes or developments that have occurred in something over time; 2) The enquiry into what and how the changes or developments in something have occurred over time; 3) The account which someone has given into what and how the changes or developments in something have occurred over time. In practice, the particular meaning is almost always clear from the context. However, I find it helpful to stress the differences, and so I will usually reserve the word for the first meaning, and coin the word ‘Historiology’ for the second, and use ‘historical account’ or ‘historical narrative’ for the third.

I have two aims in view in writing this historical account of Philosophy, or perhaps one could say two aspects of a single aim: to be a work of Historiology; and to be a historical account of Philosophy in particular (as opposed to one of the Roman Empire, or of Chemistry, or whatever.) (I hope it may serve certain external purposes for Philosophy, but only through having these two intrinsic aims.) I believe that Historiology is as worthy of being described as a science as Physics is, but I shall not be concerned to argue that here. (I am indebted to R. G. Collingwood’s book, The Idea of History for originally alerted me to this fact.) The combination of these two aims present special problems and I hope to be able in this preface to suggest how they can be solved. As a work of Historiology there should be a clear distinction between hypotheses, elements of what may go into the historical narrative, and data, so that there can be argument for (or against) the former based on the evidence of the latter. Lacking the patience of a serious historian, my references to the data and my presentations of historiological arguments will tend to be rather scanty. A serious historian should present all the evidence for the narrative, so that others can correct errors, and can make allowances for prejudices (i.e. if your prejudices are different, you are not forced to jettison the whole lot, but can modify according to the effect on the evidence). The results of historical research must include arguments that conform to the standards expected by historians.
The composing of a historical account of a science is intimately bound up with our idea of what that science is. Accordingly, what in our view is important and suited to our purpose, what sort of historical data is relevant, is settled for us in advance, and the relation of the past to it involves a selection of the events to be recounted, a way of interpreting them, and points of view from which to arrange them. Thus one must have a conception of what Philosophy is when writing a history of Philosophy, or at least a conception of Philosophy sufficiently clear and coherent to provide a basis for arguments about how one should go about writing a historical account of Philosophy. For how can one begin to deal with its history when one only knows its name, Philosophy, but not yet what it is? To proceed without knowing what it is would be to have no other guidance but researching into wherever or whatever is given the name Philosophy or described as philosophic, and trying to assemble all that one finds into a single historical narrative. But in fact, if the true conception of Philosophy is to be established in a scientific, and not in an arbitrary, way, then it must emerge from a historical treatment of Philosophy. For although the historian of Philosophy must base his or her research on a conception of Philosophy, that conception, unlike, say, a conception of art for a historian of art (whose research must be based on a conception of art) does not exist as something separate from the historical narrative that will be established, but rather appears as the result of that whole course of treatment.

The work to which this is a preface, a history (historical account) of Philosophy, endeavours to focus on the historical aspect of Philosophy. It is arguably a philosophic work, but not a philosophic exposition in its own right. It does not directly grapple with many of the problems it discusses, dealing rather with the history of such problems. But being concerned with Philosophy as a whole, there is not a single philosophic problem that does not fall within the scope of its discussion. Besides which, the historical account is concerned also with problems which are not part of Philosophy as such. These are the problems of the emergence and development of Philosophy, its objective dependence on social conditions, its epistemological roots, etc. Nevertheless, its contribution is not marginal to Philosophy, its subject-matter lies not in some boundary between Historiology and Philosophy, of two relatively independent sciences, but in the historical development of philosophic knowledge, its critical appreciation and its self-reference.
No matter how important it is for the historian of Philosophy to be scrupulously efficient in investigating the social (and psychological) conditions that gave rise to a certain philosophy, it is even more important to investigate the philosophic conditions that gave rise to it (the direct influence of previous philosophic works, contemporary discussions which immediately provoke the articulation of the philosophy, etc.). Thus, while the historian of Philosophy is not concerned with directly declaring his own philosophic judgements on the issues raised in the philosophies he or she is discussing, the historian cannot avoid engaging in Philosophy in justifying the selection and interpretation of historical materials. Simply to justify giving attention to a particular work, for instance, the historian must make claims about the nature of Philosophy. (And also, what is excluded implies something about what philosophy is not.)
It is impossible to treat the history of Philosophy purely as something externally given, without being guided by Philosophy itself. Even the application of the term ‘development’ to the history of Philosophy makes certain philosophic assumptions, e.g. the assumption that one can meaningfully talk of changes occurring in Philosophy for the better, i.e. make some kind of value judgement.
There is a kind of historical research into manuscripts which is concerned only with ascertaining the exact wording of an original manuscript. Before the development of printing, no two copies of the same manuscript were ever the same; no matter how good the copyist, minor errors were sure to creep into the copy, and errors would accumulate as they passed from copy to copies of that copy. However, the historian of Philosophy, while drawing on the results of such research where available, is focussed on any particular work as a contribution to, as playing a part in the history of, Philosophy, and a concern about the wording is only to serve that end. Thus the historian of Philosophy has to interpret the works which are the deeds, the facts, in that history. But interpretation of a philosophic work and criticism, i.e. assessing its truth or value, are inseparable from one another, and criticism, or at least criticism which is rationally justified, is incompatible with refusal to take up any philosophic position. For this reason the demand that one should remain dispassionate or neutral in writing the history of Philosophy merely forces one to remain in disagreement with oneself, with one’s philosophic conscience. There is no unanimity on the criteria to be used to evaluate philosophies – such criteria have to be worked out within Philosophy itself as it develops. The historian of Philosophy does not require unanimity on that level, but it does require unanimity on the criteria to evaluate the way the historical material has been treated in constructing the historical account.
These criteria for evaluating how the historical material has been treated must always prove unsatisfactory to the historian of Philosophy who adopts the opposite kind of error, i.e. to presume to have a fixed conception of Philosophy prior to looking at the historical material. This kind of error is not made just by those who believe they already have the absolute system of Philosophy, such as Thomists, Hegelians or Marxists, but also those, like Bertrand Russell, for whom it is self-evident what Philosophy is, and for whom assessing historical material is just a matter of demanding immediate intelligibility and applying common sense. With the former (those who believe that they already have the absolute system of Philosophy) the explicitness of their preconceptions of Philosophy renders their preconceptions more open to being challenged than those of the latter, and their historical accounts more readily adjustable by those not sharing those preconceptions.
In order for a historical account of Philosophy to be a scientific history (a historiological account) of Philosophy, the historical account itself must provide the theoretical basis on which the detailed construction is justified. The historical account cannot directly cover the present or future of Philosophy, but the conceptions of Philosophy which are articulated in the course of its history themselves anticipate the whole development of Philosophy through all future ages. The Historiology of Philosophy must critically analyses the many conceptions of Philosophy so that its own basis can be produced as a deduction from the whole development of Philosophy. (This deduction does not have to produce a single coherent conception of Philosophy, only such coherence as to be a practical basis for the historiological arguments, produce sufficient criteria for evaluating the selection and treatment of historical material in the historical account constructed.)
Whatever the conception of Philosophy used in constructing a historical account of Philosophy must reject on principle the idea of a complete finite exposition of a philosophic system. In this conception Philosophy must be constantly in motion, on the road to new discoveries. It is constantly grappling with its unsolved problems and, while criticising its opponents, also criticises itself. The historical account must treat each philosophic work as an approximate reflection of reality, as the unity of relative and absolute truth, the latter being understood dialectically, i.e. relative within its own frame of reference. The significance of any particular work or philosophy for the Historiology of Philosophy is not to be found in any claim to offer the Historiology of Philosophy cut-and-dried solutions and formulas, but in its ability to guide enquiry into the development of Philosophy along a truly scientific path.
The basic question of Philosophy will be a matter of dispute among the different philosophies, but I think that the question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ can be agreed by historians of Philosophy to be the basic question of the Historiology of Philosophy? This question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ does not seek a merely formal definition, but a critical generalisation affecting the development of Philosophy, enabling it to solve problems that were posed in Philosophy in the past and still confront us in Philosophy today. Hence we reach the conclusion that the main problem of Historiology of Philosophy is the problem of Philosophy. To understand this social phenomenon that is Philosophy, to understand its necessity, its irremovability, its hiddenness – its not immediately obvious significance in the intellectual development of people, to discover its role in the struggles among religions and ideologies, to disclose the potentialities for Philosophy and how to realise them – all this is an urgent necessity not only for the historians of Philosophy but for every philosopher.

In this work I do not aim to relate us to people living in the cultures of earlier times, but rather to their writings, and indeed more narrowly to the philosophic element in their writings. Philosophy is manifested in works written in particular places at particular times. Philosophy consists of the processes of reading, debating and writing philosophic works. Insights and explanations are conveyed through actual, physical symbols (including, not just marks on paper or sounds, but even patterns of magnetic domains) and in their relations to one another in time.
There is further reason to concentrate on the works themselves. It arises from the very nature of Philosophy that a philosophic work will tend to leap across the barriers of time and culture without the aid of external props such as endorsement by social institutions etc. – it is the aim of Philosophy that its works be self-regenerating. Every philosophic work is striving to transcend all time and space and contingency, including its authorship. It strives to be so persuasive that it propagates itself and develops itself, with philosophers being merely its instruments for doing this, for they cannot help but serve it.
But this transcendence of all historical circumstances is not to be understood as abstraction from all historical circumstances. It is through transcending its own history that Philosophy becomes able to assess the nature of Historiology, its own history providing the basis of any Philosophy of Historiology. Historical events and developments happen to communities, not merely to isolated individuals, and their meaning is what is passed on through generations in those communities – their meaning is a social phenomenon. It is in Philosophy reflecting on itself as a social phenomenon (and therefore also as historical), that it can relate to Historiology as a science. Thus, in the Philosophy of Historiology, historical events must be related to the history of Philosophy.
Much philosophy has been done by people who consulted predecessors’ works without any regard to historical perspective, and the history of an issue often seems to be only of secondary and incidental importance to it. (This is due to some degree of success in attaining the aim to be self-regenerating mentioned above.) This leads to the belief that the nature of Philosophy must be taken to be timeless, limited, unchanging, and determinate, necessarily having the same features throughout its history. And although historians of Philosophy are ready to allow that ways of doing Philosophy and the content of philosophic theories may vary with time and place and from work to work, at the same time these historians conflate different conceptions of Philosophy – and so they end up by suggesting that although what is held to be true and meaningful is not always the same, roughly the same conception of Philosophy is universal.
However, Philosophy is manifested in works which use the concept of Philosophy to relate themselves to an enterprise which completes them. For each such work, Philosophy may be defined as the activity generating it (as its own philosophy), but the concept of Philosophy would be useless if it had only the application which defined it. It is only because no philosophic work can last (and self-regenerate) by itself that there is any need for the concept of Philosophy. (Indeed every philosophic work is vulnerable to transformation in significance, and even to distortion of meaning, by developments in Philosophy.)
Even a work which rejects Philosophy, and which therefore rejects the suggestion of being completed in Philosophy, can nevertheless be philosophic, effectively attacking only a particular philosophy, testifying, in so far as it has understood its target, to a wider conception of Philosophy. (We may replace ‘Philosophy’ with ‘rationality’ or ‘reason’ here: much the same remarks may be said about some attacks on reason and rationality.)
Each philosophy exhibits its own distinctive conception of Philosophy, i.e. its own understanding of what the concept of Philosophy is. Philosophic works are the means whereby a philosophy exhibits itself and its conception of Philosophy. If we examine how a work is to be conceived as expounding its theory, we shall lay bare the particular norms of philosophic debate to which it makes appeal, and therefore the implicit conception of Philosophy. A conception of Philosophy is embodied in, and is partly constitutive of, a philosophy.
Hence it follows that, as a philosophy develops, so also does its conception of Philosophy. But it follows that we cannot use the concept of Philosophy without doing Philosophy. We cannot, therefore, attempt a history of Philosophy by imposing a ready-made conception of Philosophy on our subject matter, we cannot simply award marks to each work according to how it measures up to an ideal or standard of Philosophy. On the other hand, what Plato thought Philosophy was is relevant to what Descartes thought it was. Every philosophic work marks simultaneously continuity and a break in the development of the conception of Philosophy.
Philosophy plays a part in developing the conceptions of itself. We do not have first a straightforward history of Philosophy and then a separate history of discussion of the concept of Philosophy. The latter must be contained in the former. Indeed Philosophy is what it is partly because of the discussions of what it is by philosophers of previous ages. The concept of Philosophy is an essential concept within any Philosophy. It follows that a history of Philosophy must give an account of the concept of Philosophy in the historical development of Philosophy. But one must also use the concept in selecting material for the history – a history of Philosophy should be the result of a correct application of the concept of Philosophy. Each conception of Philosophy we come across has to be harmonised with the conception of Philosophy implicit in our history of Philosophy. Thus no philosophy can be treated merely as a stepping-stone to others. There must be no complete separation between the patterns observed in history and the content of particular works in that history, a content that assimilates predecessors and anticipates successors. It is not simply that there can be no knowledge of Philosophy in general independent of knowledge of philosophic works in particular; the concept of Philosophy in philosophies determines their future development ("determines" in the sense that application of the concept to the philosophy just is the philosophy developing), and therefore the future course of Philosophy, but the latter equally determines the concept of Philosophy itself. If a work could completely determine the concept of Philosophy, then it could completely determine its own future, and the future of all Philosophy, and thus Philosophy would no longer have a future.
Thus the complete opposition between the concept of Philosophy and the anticipations of particular works, so conceived that the concept of Philosophy appears to impose a plan upon the history of Philosophy irrespective of the intentions expressed in particular works, leads inevitably to the idea that a particular work’s intentions make no difference to the course of Philosophy and that the only force which determines it is an abstract concept of Philosophy.
One result of this is that in the anxiety to detect the general plan of the history of Philosophy, people tend to look for explanations of what Philosophy is outside Philosophy itself, by looking away from the manifest meaning of words in order to detect hidden intentions; and consequently the actual detail of philosophic texts seem to become unimportant – so failing to take unlimited pains over discovering what was actually said (and meant).
The only centre of gravity around which a history of Philosophy should revolve is the concept of Philosophy itself. Struggles like that between Locke (empiricism) and Leibniz (rationalism) are looked at impartially with an eye not to the success of one disputant but to the upshot of the debate from the standpoint of the future posterity of Philosophy. Nevertheless this impartiality must always presuppose a particular conception of Philosophy. Hence philosophic neutrality is an illusion even when conceived as something to be approximated to in a history of Philosophy.

It is inevitable that a philosophic work should fail to predict how it will be received and what it will lead to. (There is a risk in opening up the future.) Such unpredictability in Philosophy is to be regarded as a permanent element in Philosophy, arising out of the freedom of debate (words communicate in freedom). The achievements of a philosophic work are due not simply to the power of its explanations (their coherence), its arguments (compelling acceptance) and its methods (their fertility), but to the people who will read it, who will find the work serving their own ends. A work, as philosophic in its own right, may be regarded as determining its own future, but the way it is able to be determining is given by Philosophy and it is through contingent critical response that a work’s aims are seen to be realised. Thus what a philosophic work anticipates comes about not because the work has described them and argued for their value, and provided the means to bring them about, but because any reaction, no matter how hostile, will further the aims of the work.

It is not a simple either/or; the conception of Philosophy before the historical narrative of Philosophy or vice versa; but each contributes to the development of the other.
Thus, although it is necessary for this work to spell out the basis of its arguments so that the reader can assess those arguments accordingly, this work does not have to begin its account (historical narrative) by a full account of the basis of its arguments. Though the basis I have used will not be clear to the reader at the beginning of the work, this does not prevent me from having used, in writing the beginning of the work, that basis made explicit in the rest of the work.
(For historical and archeological evidence, there is a complete time order reversal, where what was later is in general more certain and carries the evidence for what was earlier. However, articulating the basis for my arguments in this work cannot be put at the end of the historical account either – it does not have a position within the narrative ordering, but throughout the narrative.)
Thus, while statements may be put forward dogmatically, the intention is that they should become, through the argument of the historical narrative itself, justifiable on the basis of historical evidence – they are not arbitrary interpretations or idiosyncratic distortions of emphasis, but are, I hope, open to criticism and improvement. In writing this work I am exposing many faults and limitations in my understanding of the history of Philosophy and of particular philosophies, and in so doing I make it possible that their distorting effect on other works I have written will be corrigible. I am no historian. Thus I refer to historical material so that the reader can correct me where appropriate. The reasons offered for interpretations should be taken in the same manner. And, above all, this applies to the basis which I am employing for deciding on the treatment of the historical material, a basis which is itself challenged by the result it produces when confronted with the historical material.

The conception (the way of understanding the concept) of Philosophy determines the philosophy in which it is conceived, so that to expect general agreement on the concept of Philosophy would be begging the question. If the Historiology of Philosophy is to make progress as a cogent scholarly pursuit (as a science), it must do so without waiting for, or presupposing, agreement on the conception of Philosophy. The divergence of answers is an integral part of the struggle and debate between philosophies. Room for this multiplicity must therefore be provided in the conceptual framework with which one approaches the task.
Whatever one’s own beliefs, one must not approach Historiology with an assurance that one knows in advance the content or the validity of a philosophy. I bring to this work the conviction that my own philosophy, and my own conception of Philosophy, is valid; but I am proceeding ineptly if I presuppose that therefore another philosophy or conception of Philosophy is not. Thus I cannot directly appeal to my own particular philosophy or conception of Philosophy in my (historiological) arguments for my historical account of Philosophy.
The conception of Philosophy used in this history of Philosophy can be taken as something yet to be written rather than as something already written, and its complete articulation does not have to be anticipated. One can ascribe works, not to the particular philosophies, but to the One Philosophy, as if they are collectively expounding the one theory (combining to form an infinite exposition).
This work is not concerned with being direct philosophic exposition, but with providing the background for interpreting philosophic works. It is concerned with building bridges between RP among all the philosophies. It is not concerned with detailed commentary on philosophic works, but on the relations between works and between differing terminologies.
This work is concerned with describing the contingent historical facts about the particular philosophic works, the historical context in which they were written, etc., and not with presenting the transcending insights contained therein, but only with being a channel for such presentation.
The intention in writing this work is not for it to be itself an argument for the truth of some particular philosophic theory or conception of Philosophy, nor an argument against other kinds of theory or conceptions of Philosophy. The aim is to set forth some historical background and perspective for interpreting philosophies. (Thus the emphasis is on the historical relations between works rather than on interpreting and criticising the works themselves.)
A balance must be struck between what might be called the empirical and rational aspects of constructing a historical account of Philosophy. I must use my present limited conception of Philosophy in viewing past philosophies. To set out to write the history of Philosophy involves me in selecting from the past what falls under the heading of Philosophy as I now conceive it. But it is important that I should, as far as it is possible, allow the history of Philosophy to break down my present preconceptions, so that my views of what can and cannot be thought, said, and done in Philosophy are changed in the face of what has been thought, said, and done in Philosophy. I have to steer between the danger of a dead antiquarianism, which presumes that I can approach the past without preconceptions, that I discuss Philosophy without doing it; and that other danger, so apparent in Hegel, of treating past philosophies as if they were being fully manifested in the present historical narrative, as if the present historical narrative is a direct exposition of the theory of everything. We should, as far as possible, allow what we find in the history of Philosophy to challenge our current explanations.

In interpreting philosophic works we must be careful not to impose homogeneity externally. E.g. Aristotle describes all the metaphysical positions of his predecessors in terms of ‘arche’ and ‘physis’, but his use of these terms does not belong to all of the metaphysical positions described by them; they are, as it were, meta-metaphysical terms so that the different descriptions can be commensurate with one another. Thus Aristotle achieves a kind of synthesis by finding a universal form, a universal jargon, in which any metaphysical position may be expressed. But if the people who held the metaphysical positions so interpreted by Aristotle could not have recognised their positions as Aristotle describes them, then we should not take Aristotle’s descriptions at face value.
Even if we are inevitably guilty of imposing homogeneity externally, we may nevertheless gain insight from the philosophies thus misinterpreted. But we must bear in mind that our interpretation fails to be exhaustive in so far as it does misinterpret.

Continuity/Discontinuity

There is a rich foreground of philosophic issues and arguments, startling associations of ideas, total inversions of theories (e.g. Spinoza’s treatment of Descartes) etc., which constitute the incidents. But that these constitute only the foreground becomes obvious if we remove all reference to the activity being engaged in and all mention of Philosophy; for what then is left is a jumble of works in which all connection, and therefore all genuine debate, is lost.
The history of Philosophy is discontinuous in that importance is attached to the historical existence of particular "seminal" works. It will make its narrative crystallise itself around the reading and writing and debating of these works and treat other works as leading up to, preparing for, the key works that follow, and developing the consequences of the key works which they follow. Interim works therefore have two aspects: forward looking, consisting in blind preparation for a work not yet written; and backward looking, commentary on seminal works that have been written.
On the one hand, the composing of radically new works is fundamental to Philosophy. Philosophy cannot proceed far without its advances crystallising round particular new works. On the other hand, however, the individual works are not to be seen simply in juxtaposition, temporal succession or a state of disconnected confusion. The historical account must discuss each new work in the light of previous philosophic works in history, as they are all parts of the one enterprise, Philosophy. In most cases the earlier work is in turn seen in a fresh light, the light thrown on it by the later work. In this way, there is in Philosophy an underlying historical continuity within the series of new works produced. Continuity and discontinuity in the history of Philosophy is to be explained by the open-ended nature of Philosophy and the lack of completeness in conceptions of it.
This continuity should not be thought of as a process of evolution in which certain tendencies from the past have an effect in the present and on the future. On the contrary, it can best be seen as a kind of bridge leading, not from the past to the present or the future, but rather in the opposite direction, i.e. from the present back into the past. This is because the philosophic activity in the present, which is ever-new (transience of meaning, unpredictability of words), throws light back on to the past, thus making people again and again mindful of the past and obliged to reconsider it in the new light of their present philosophising and make it their own. Developments in Philosophy transform the significance of already existing works. This historical continuity has clearly to be re-affirmed by every new philosophic work to justify its conception of Philosophy. This is only possible when the works are not seen as disconnected and each new work is not regarded as having no link with all that has gone before. It is, in other words, possible for us to find a connection between philosophic works because the claims later works made about Philosophy must be based on what earlier works were like, on what Philosophy had become by the time they were written.
Philosophic works continue to be contingent with the promises they fulfil. On the one hand, this introduces an aspect of unexpectedness into the promises, and, on the other hand, the fulfilment is given a provisional character. The promise points beyond it to further fulfilments, with the result that the first fulfilment itself is a promise. The re-writing of a work can be seen as fulfilling the promise of the old version and, going even further, it in turn is the promise of future versions, and our ability to see it as a re-writing is the promise of our participation in its philosophy. Fulfilment of promise does not diminish the freedom of the theory.
The contingency of works of the past and, closely connected with this, of the future too, are no longer meaningless or irrelevant, but can be seen as integral to the freedom of philosophic debate and development. Philosophic works are no longer turned away from the future, but open to everything new that comes to them from the future.

Take M to be a philosophic work. We may suppose that M was written in a context which included the strand of the cumulative philosophic tradition up to that time. This strand must have changed, since after M was written it included M within it, whereas before M was written it did not. While the text of M might have become corrupted, or even lost, or details of its context relevant to its meaning lost or got wrong, it is a fortunate fact that in general there has been a net accumulation. (It may be seen as the purpose of Philosophy to ensure that there is a net accumulation – the measure of progress in Philosophy is that assurance.)
M received its own philosophy, its own way of being written, external to itself, in the form of literary styles and practices, norms, ideas, expectations in the minds of readers, associations with other works, popular sayings, vocabulary, social institutions, political or religious or commercial or whatever, the particular circumstances and temperament of the author, etc.. Yet it is only in M being written that M’s philosophy comes into being. M’s philosophy can only be said to exist in so far as we presuppose the existence of M.
M could not have been what it was had it not been for the particular form previous philosophies took at the place and time at which M was written. Yet its own philosophy was not simply the product of the convergence of strands of previous philosophies; if its author had died as a child, quite apart from any considerations of the freedom of the philosopher, M would not have been written just the way it was. M’s philosophy is the relationship between M and Philosophy, being what M takes Philosophy to be. The philosophy of M includes M, and so is not simply the continuation or extrapolation from the preceding history of Philosophy, not including M. Rather, the philosophy of M is the prolongation and enrichment of Philosophy as it is transformed by the intervention of M. (For M, Philosophy is its own philosophy, and its own existence marks the fact of making that explicit.)

Certainly some works have been more important for Philosophy than have others; and it is almost excusable to oversimplify the immense array of philosophies by thinking of the history of Philosophy simply in terms of those works that have conspicuously modified its course. The great original works have been important advances in Philosophy. Yet the commentators and popularisers, and the influence of Philosophy in other spheres, have an important role in the history of Philosophy itself, as well as in spreading the influence of Philosophy on other spheres of human activity.
An original philosopher, on the one hand stimulated and conditioned by an inherited tradition, and on the other inspired by the transcendent truth he or she saw through participating in that tradition, conceived something new and bequeathed to the subsequent ongoing tradition an exposition of that truth, a work through which that particular participation becomes universally accessible. Every reader interiorises the work to make what he or she can or will of its meaning, translating the words into his or her own in a petty (e.g. parrot fashion or eclectic) or profound way; and then in turn hands it on to others, modified perhaps by only a slight change of jargon, yet given an individual twist. If it had no real meaning for the first generation of readers, then the next generation would give it scant attention, or betray their lack of understanding by crass elaborations that make nothing clearer. No less important, in the history of Philosophy than the wisdom of innovating leaders are the preservative wisdom of followers and the propagative wisdom of popularisers.
Philosophy can decline, and this draws attention to the importance of quite ordinary thinkers, and scholars, and the general social climate. Works may seem to lose their importance, going out of fashion, or works may simply fail to be read because of their difficulty, and even when they are read and clearly written, nevertheless perversely misunderstood, as much by supporters as detractors, because of later associations or changes of idiom. Lofty insights are degraded, persuasive arguments become logic chopping, and novelties become clichés. Works can be banned, lost, mistranslated, etc..

A balance has to be struck with regard to how much non-philosophic material is included in the historical account of Philosophy. On the one hand, a discussion limited to an account of philosophic themes, omitting all reference to what was deemed to be non-philosophic would exclude an important aspect of Philosophy, viz. that no subject matter is excluded from Philosophy, or that at least Philosophy is concerned with how it is related to that which it places outside its immediate concern. On the other hand, a history not only of philosophies but also of sciences, religions and societies would no longer be a history of Philosophy, but a history of ideas, or a history in the general sense.

Logical Connections

The classic case of looking for logical connections within the history of Philosophy is Hegel’s lectures on the History of Philosophy. Hegel tries to see historical developments as logical consequences (logical in the informal sense). These logical consequences are not explicit in the philosophies concerned; indeed the making explicit is a kind of logical consequence and justifies Hegel’s conflation of historical and logical consequence. I would justify looking for such connections in terms of taking seriously the fact that every philosophy must anticipate its own development. But in most cases this anticipation is very hidden, and so finding such connections tends just to show how lacking in self-reflection such philosophies are, and often what they take to be their primary adversary is in fact a mirror image. (E.g. empiricism and rationalism.)

Ordering of Narrative

There is a preliminary working backwards by scholars and translators which makes the original texts accessible to me. For someone like Heraklitus these scholars may well be themselves confused and I have to look at the exact wording, but they are perhaps even more invaluable – so long as they themselves become invisible – i.e. they bring me closer to Heraklitus with their expertise and do not let their own philosophic preconceptions get in the way.
But the main movement is forward in Philosophy because: 1) a philosophy bases itself on experiences common to widely different cultures, and so is able to communicate in a remarkably direct way; while 2) later philosophies may build on the arguments and achievements of earlier philosophies without paying great attention to re-establishing the base. E.g. I have worked out the interpretation of Aristotle’s form/matter distinction before considering the influence of it on later philosophers, indeed relying on the interpretation of Aristotle to help in the interpretation of the use of similar or related distinctions in later philosophers. Aristotle’s arguments for it readily transfer, even if this has sometimes meant coining new jargon. Later philosophers then either take the distinction for granted, the distinction being so embedded in their own language, or else reiterate the arguments, or develop parallel ones unconsciously, not adding directly to our understanding of Aristotle, but rather only to our understanding of how the later philosophies are related to his.

Philosophy is fully open to historical investigation. Yet this is very different from saying that the whole history and nature of a philosophy lies within the sphere of Historiology, so that a philosophy may be equated with the results of the historical investigation into it, or even an ideally true account of its historical career. Philosophies persist only in so far as they are refreshed, each generation anew, by the wisdom (hope) of the participants, and that this hope/wisdom, anticipating the future, is not confined to what lies within the scope of Historiology. Philosophy is wholly historical; but Historiology is not a closed system, since while philosophic works stand within the subject-matter of Historiology, their meaning in some degree encompasses all history and Historiology.
The historical existence of philosophic works is part of the content of any conception of Philosophy. A conception of Philosophy consists not only in an articulation of what Philosophy is but also in a conceptualisation of that articulation as philosophic. A conception of Philosophy includes something that historians can study, since a conception of Philosophy includes the fact of being articulated in the history of Philosophy, i.e. in the realm of contingency and the particular. Time and eternity meet in the pages of philosophic works, works that are available also to the historian. But the historian only seeks to explain what has been written and only in terms of how it came to be written. A philosophic work not only explains itself as a work still being written, but also sees what is written as explaining everything, while the historian can see and study that text, without perceiving transcending connotations.

Philosophy, then, not only exists within the realm of the contingent, but also ceaselessly changes. There is substantial difference between a law that is known in the freshness of its early formulation, and one that has become over the centuries encrusted with meticulous elaborations and embedded in increasingly nice refinements of super-commentaries. This fact is not evaded by imagining that the later constructs were somehow there all along, just waiting to be worked out. They were not there historically, and it is the task of the historian to show this (the historian may be of great help here where a philosophy has become garbled by later generations).

The historical method has limitations – it should not be expected to do that which it cannot. The historian of Philosophy can tell us what took place and what was said (what was meant?) reaching in these matters not a logical certainty but only a probability and no more should be asked; but, a historian cannot, as a historian, should not pass judgement on the value or truth of what was written or said. (But surely the historian cannot avoid giving greater or less importance to philosophers and philosophies in allotting space to them in the historical narrative?) Nevertheless these are questions which the philosopher must face. Those who feel no gravity in philosophic questions (about the work we are engaged in, about self-reference in this work itself) are unlikely to find much meaning or importance in questions about Being. A work can have a capacity perpetually to create linguistic apparatus and structures for discourse about itself and it is within this jargon that we shall a find a satisfactory basis for analogies of the absolute. But what categories of self-reference are there which are not themselves by analogy from physical object language as is indicated by the persistently metaphorical character of the way any work may speak of its own being? I need to attend to the general character of analogical discourse.

If the living philosophy which dwells in a work is to be revealed, it needs to be born through a kindred philosophy. It slips by the historical approach – guided as it is by some interest or other in information about opinions – takes it as an alien phenomenon, and does not disclose its inner being. Philosophy is indifferent to that fact, that it gets used for the purpose of increasing what is left of the collections of mummies and the general pile of contingencies. For during the process of gathering the information, philosophy itself has slipped between the fingers of curiosity.
To be kindred means neither to be identical nor to be the same. Kinship is not the identity of a so-called point of view (school, concepts, results). To be kindred means to be committed to the first and last necessities of philosophic enquiry arising from the matter.
The historian of Philosophy is concerned to provide the means for kinship, the materials from which kinship can grow (so that it does not remain an abstract kinship that is based on ignorance or misunderstanding of the philosophy concerned). The historian has to maintain a distance for the sake of scientific objectivity. (Historiology being a science.) The historian is as much concerned with the contingent historical details of Philosophy as with the conceptions of Philosophy articulated – not to find discrepancies between an articulation of what Philosophy is and the historical reality of that articulation, but as much as possible to take these two as in harmony. The historian is not directly concerned to judge claims made about the nature of Philosophy. (He cannot avoid not doing so, however, to some degree.)
The historian of Philosophy only applies a conception of Philosophy in so far as a historical account requires one. Philosophies can be linked in terms of issues and debates as opposed to any explicit agreement on the nature of Philosophy.

In a historical account of Philosophy we must do justice to the diversity of the phenomena and at the same time maintain the conviction that through it all there is a common concept of Philosophy. Once one postulates such a shared concept, as I claim one must, then the historian need not be concerned with whether the different conceptions and different descriptions of Philosophy are compatible or not, so long as these do not have different practical consequences for the way the historian handles the materials in constructing the historical account. If the historian is not using a single coherent conception of Philosophy, then each of the incompatible conceptions of Philosophy may require different arguments or justifications for the treatment of the materials in some part or aspect of the historical account.
The historian of Philosophy has to use the concept of Philosophy in three ways:
1) Selection of historical materials and deciding how much prominence to particular works or particular aspects of philosophies.
2) Treatment of the historical materials in constructing the historical account.
3) As something to be defined, explained, shown in the course of the historical account.

Common use of the concept of Philosophy, agreement on what is to count as philosophic, is not the main problem; if it were, then dispute over the concept would not arise. It is agreement on a conception of Philosophy, on an explanation of the concept, that is the main issue. Different conceptions can influence the development of Philosophy differently without fragmenting the concept of Philosophy, but, even if such a danger does not materialise, that possibility clearly shows the conceptions of Philosophy to be inadequate.
From the educational standpoint, an account of the history of Philosophy is the best general introduction to Philosophy. For in such an account the reader does not remain an onlooker who is so unreflective as to take the words of others to be his or her own. To read Descartes’ statement, ‘Cogito, ergo sum,’ or even to repeat it to others, tends to create the illusion of reflection without the reality. A genuine reflection would not lose sight of the fact of those words having been taken from Descartes, and some awareness of who Descartes was. To read Descartes’ words is not necessarily to be engaged in the same enquiry in which Descartes was engaged. For Descartes’ words to generate a genuine reflection, the reflection must incorporate the fact of being generated from reading Descartes. A history of Philosophy, by concerning itself with the historical development of the enquiry (i.e. of Philosophy) enables the reader to place himself or herself in it self-consciously.
Any conception of Philosophy cannot be justified without appeal to the history of Philosophy. Without such justification the conception appears arbitrary, and therefore unimportant in Philosophy, and it is liable to be an empty formula. A history of Philosophy inevitably gives rise to a particular conception of Philosophy and its justification.

Multiple Threads

Since historical phenomena do not exist only in one dimension, in general there are many events happening contemporaneously. Hence a historical account cannot proceed in a purely chronological order when there are several different philosophies developing alongside one another but not developing primarily in terms of opposing one another.
Fortunately, this is often not the case, and indeed, often the most fruitful periods for Philosophy are either when, while there may be several philosophers, representing very different viewpoints, engaged in heated controversy, the debate itself may provide a unifying focus for the narrative; or when several seemingly incompatible philosophies are fused together in a single philosopher’s works (e.g. Kant’s fusing of empiricism and rationalism). (Fusing, not in the sense of kind of mixing, but in the sense of internalising the dialectic between them.)
Firstly, the philosophic traditions are rarely clearly demarcated. Geographical, political and cultural barriers have less of an effect on Philosophy than in many other pursuits. Even in the medieval split between Islam and Christianity a single linear narrative does not give as gross a distortion as one might expect. On purely philosophic matters Aquinas was as much in debate with Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd as he was with Anselm and Abelard.
Secondly, truly distinct traditions must either be unaware of each other, or seriously misunderstand one another, so that comparisons should be avoided prior to discussing how the traditions came to meet and interact and, while not necessarily in any meaningful sense merge, nevertheless cease to be distinct traditions. The key guideline, as indeed for the selection of philosophic material in general, is the particular conceptions of Philosophy that can be found. In such periods there are unlikely to be any very significant works – an important work will tend to be one which transforms several distinct traditions into moments or aspects of a single philosophy.
The periods which appear to present the most fragmentation are: Fifth century B.C., from the Heraklitus/Parmenides split down to Socrates; the Hellenistic Period, with a four way split between (New) Academy, Epicureanism, Stoicism and Scepticism (Pyrrhonism); Late Medieval Period (after the Ockham/Eckhart split); and the period since the wake of Hegel’s philosophy. In these periods we must consider several distinct philosophies developing alongside one another, and even if they interact a great deal, nevertheless their internal developments have more significant roles in their histories, so their histories are best given separate accounts up to the time when they cease to be separate traditions. Thus the general history must be described in an order which is not strictly chronological. A single finite work has to have a single dimensional ordering in the obvious sense. Multi-dimensionality can be encompassed only by making use of divisions within the text to interrupt the linear flow of the narrative so as to switch to a parallel history.

Dividing the history of Philosophy

In order to render the historical material manageable it is convenient to divide it into chunks, matching as best one can the patterns to be found. The basic divisions will be in terms of epochs, stretches of time, dictated to some extent by major general historical changes. Clearly periods of fragmentation have to be marked out so that we can further subdivide them into the different threads, the different cultures or philosophic schools (not necessarily "schools" in the strict sense, but more vague classes of philosophies, e.g. empiricism, rationalism, scholasticism). Being sweeping generalisations they may have many exceptions with regard to detail, yet they can still provide a useful framework within which to place philosophic material so that it is readily accessed by a reader. (It is rather like the alphabetical ordering of dictionary entries, though hopefully not quite so arbitrary.) Sometimes a period is not fragmented enough to be divided into several threads, but the lines of influence between individual philosophers may make it necessary to treat them out of chronological order. But these are the kinds of compromises that any kind of historian has to make.