Philosophy and Its History

Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy

Edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser

Takes a measure of the current range of views on what type of methodology one should follow in studying the history of philosophy
Contributors include both specialists in the history of philosophy, as well as philosophers who work primarily on current problems in systematic philosophy but who have a pronounced interest in history

Philosophy and Its History

Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy

Edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser

Description

This volume collects contributions from leading scholars of early modern philosophy from a wide variety of philosophical and geographic backgrounds. The distinguished contributors offer very different, competing approaches to the history of philosophy.

Many chapters articulate new, detailed methods of doing history of philosophy. These present conflicting visions of the history of philosophy as an autonomous sub-discipline of professional philosophy.

Several other chapters offer new approaches to integrating history into one's philosophy. These do so by re-telling the history of recent philosophy. A number of chapters explore the relationship between history of philosophy and history of science.

Among the topics discussed and debated in the volume are: the status of the principle of charity; the nature of reading texts; the role of historiography within the history of philosophy; the nature of establishing proper context.

Philosophy and Its History

Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy

Edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser

Introduction
Mogens Lærke, Justin E.H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser
Chapter 1 : The Anthropological Analogy and the Constitution of Historical Perspectivism
Mogens Lærke
Chapter 2 : The History of Philosophy as Past and as Process
Justin E. H. Smith
Chapter 3 : Philosophy and Genealogy. Ways of writing history of philosophy.
Koen Vermeir
Chapter 4 : Understanding the Argument Through Then-Current Public Debates or My Detective Method of History of Philosophy
Ursula Goldenbaum
Chapter 5: The Contingency of Philosophical Problems
Joanne Waugh and Roger Ariew
Chapter 6 : Philosophical Problems in the History of Philosophy: What are They?
Leo Catana
Chapter 7: Philosophizing Historically/Historicizing Philosophy: Some Spinozistic Reflections
Julie R. Klein
Chapter 8 : Is the History of Philosophy a Family Affair? The Examples of Malebranche and Locke in the Cousinian School
Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine
Chapter 9 : The Taming of Philosophy
Michael Della Rocca
Chapter 10 : Philosophic Prophecy
Eric Schliesser
Chapter 11 : Philosophical Systems and their History
Alan Nelson
Chapter 12 : Charitable Interpretations and the Political Domestication of Spinoza,
or, Benedict in the Land of the Secular Imagination
Yitzhak Melamed
Chapter 13 : Mediating between Past and Present:
Descartes, Newton, and Contemporary Structural Realism
Mary Domski
Chapter 14 : What Has History of Science to Do with History of Philosophy?
Tad M. Schmaltz
Bibliography

Philosophy and Its History

Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy

Edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser

Author Information

Edited by Mogens Laerke, Senior Research Fellow, Professor of Philosophy, École Normale Supérieure and University of Aberdeen., Justin E. H. Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Concordia University, and Eric Schliesser, Bijzonder Onderzoeks Fond Research Professor and Associated Professor of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent University

Mogens Lærke is Senior Research Fellow at the École Normale Supérieure, Lyon and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. Justin E. H. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University. Eric Schliesser is Bijzonder Onderzoeks Fond Research Professor and Associated Professor of philosophy and moral science at Ghent University.

Contributors:

Roger Ariew
Leo Catana
Michael Della Rocca
Mary Domski
Ursula Goldenbaum
Julie Klein
Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine
Mogens Lærke
Yitzhak Melamed
Alan Nelson
Eric Schliesser
Tad M. Schmaltz
Justin E. H. Smith
Koen Vermeir
Joanne Waugh

Philosophy and Its History

Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy

Edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. H. Smith, and Eric Schliesser

Reviews and Awards

"Most of the 15 contributors to this quality collection are committed to the value for contemporary philosophy of thorough, historically situated studies of earlier thinkers' philosophies. This text should be required reading for all philosophers who think mere analysis of textual meaning is sufficient for philosophical analysis" - S. Young, McHenry County College, CHOICE