Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:38:34.566Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WHY STUDYING THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY MATTERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 December 2021

Anna Marmodoro
Get access

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 21 , Issue 60 , Spring 2022 , pp. 5 - 20
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Antognazza, M. R. (2015) ‘The Benefit to Philosophy of the Study of its History’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23.1: 161–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, C. J. (2019) Essence in the Age of Evolution: A New Theory of Natural Kinds (London and New York: Routledge).Google Scholar
Barnes, J. (1979) The Presocratic Philosophers (Princeton, NJ: Routledge & Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
Cornford, F. M. (1931) The Laws of Motion in Ancient Thought: An Inaugural Lecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Mash, R. (1987) ‘How Important for Philosophers is the History of Philosophy?’, History and Theory 26.3: 287–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mourelatos, A. P. D. (1981) ‘Saving the Presocratics’, Philosophical Books: 65–77.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M., and Putnam, H. (1992) ‘Changing Aristotle's Mind’, in Rorty, A. O. (ed.) Essays on Aristotle's ‘De Anima’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 27–56.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1960) ‘Minds and Machines’, in Hook, S. (ed.) Dimensions of Minds (New York: New York University Press), 138–64.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1985) The Time of My Life: An Autobiography (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Rapp, C. (2018) ‘The Liaison between Analytic and Ancient Philosophy and its Consequences’, in M., van Ackeren (ed.), Philosophy and the Historical Perspective (London: British Academy), 120–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorell, T., and Rogers, G. A. J. (eds.) (2005) Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Vlastos, G. (1954) ‘The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides’, Philosophical Review 63.3: 319–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, R. A. (2002) ‘What is the History of Philosophy and Why is it Important?’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4: 525–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zachhuber, J. (2020) The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar