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Reviewed by:
  • Analytic Philosophy and the History of Philosophy
  • Gabriel Rockhill
Tom Sorell and G. A. J. Rogers , editors. Analytic Philosophy and the History of Philosophy. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 239. Cloth, $65.00.

It has often been assumed that history is one of the major dividing lines between analytic and continental philosophy. Participants in the latter tradition have primarily been preoccupied with deferent interpretations of the philosophical auctores, expressing their own ideas through a form of "exegetical thinking" by which present philosophical intuitions are validated when they are discovered in the great texts of the past (43). Analytic philosophers, on the other hand, are largely hostile to the ventriloquism of textual commentary as well as to the authority exercised by the philosophical tradition over truth claims in the present. As Daniel Garber puts it, "what seems to count in analytic philosophy is the argument, not its pedigree" (131). In this sense, analytic philosophy has maintained a greater proximity to the natural sciences, where history is often perceived to be nothing more than an inventory of past errors.

One of the primary objectives of this collection of articles is to thwart these assumptions. Catherine Wilson and Gary Hatfield argue that they are not valid for an important group of thinkers working within the analytic tradition. It is clear from the ample bibliographical and biographical information they provide that the analytic history of philosophy, in spite of national differences and chronological variations, has had a rather robust past, which stretches back to Russell and Frege.

Although these historical arguments are among the most interesting in the collection, they remain secondary to the primary concern of the book as a whole, which is to provide arguments for the way in which philosophy should relate to history. There is not a single shared thesis, but all of the authors agree that historical study can be of value to analytic philosophy. The controversy amongst them turns on what type of history should be studied, what kind of historiographical method should be used, and what the relationship between philosophy and history should be. The panoply of positions ranges from Daniel Garber's antiquarianism to Yves Charles Zarka's assertion that "it is both the historicity and the transhistoricity of philosophy which need to be brought out by the history of philosophy" (156). The central issue of the relationship between philosophy and history leads, moreover, to a series of adjacent questions: what is the relationship between text and [End Page 678] context or between argumentation and the study of the past? Is the writing of history itself a philosophical endeavor? Is there progress in the history of philosophy? Does philosophy have a transhistorical nature or has it changed through the course of time? A number of authors are also interested in larger questions concerning the philosophic discipline and its relationship to other fields of inquiry: is philosophy a science or part of the humanities? Has the relationship between philosophy and science changed over time? Are there limits to the problem-solving practice of analytic philosophy? Is the "normal science" of analytic philosophy in a state of crisis and, if so, can historical perspective help resolve this crisis?

It is worth noting that all of the contributors to the collection are specialists in early modern philosophy. This has both advantages and disadvantages. To begin with, the seventeenth century is far enough removed from the contemporary era to provide the authors with numerous examples of historical changes that can serve to denaturalize current philosophic practice and reveal its underlying assumptions. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons that some of the best work in the analytic history of philosophy is currently being done on the early modern period, as attested to by the illustrious list of authors having contributed to this book. All of those interested in this period will gain useful insight into some of its major developments and find a plethora of helpful bibliographical references. However, the structure of the book is compromised by the prevalence of early modern specialists insofar as the final essays depart rather drastically from the central questions of the collection and could have just as well been...

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