A Defense of History

How would I defend the study of the history of philosophy?

First, I would deny that there is any distinction between doing philosophy, and studying the history of philosophy. The reason is that it is impossible to do philosophy by restricting ourselves to things said in the present. We must therefore try to understand and evaluate what was said by those who came before us. But then it seems arbitrary to draw a line somewhere and say that "going back to this point, these people in the past count as contemporaries, whereas before this, it is a matter of 'history'."

When people draw such a line, they do so, not on the basis of time, but rather because someone in the past does or does not belong to the same 'school' as they. Frege is not 'history', but Herbert Spencer, although a contemporary of Frege, is 'history'--Why? Because those who draw such a distinction are in the same school as Frege, but not Spencer.

Again, much of what is called 'problem-solving analytic philosophy' is getting straight about what is claimed by someone like Quine or Davidson--both dead, both in the past, both surely now part of 'history'. And yet getting straight about Quine differs from getting straight about Aquinas only because one counts oneself in the same 'school' as the one but not the other.

It is inevitable that philosophy be done in a 'school'. A philosopher is either a 'founder', or a follower developing the ideas of a founder, or a combination of the two. Since that is so, then that one belongs to one school rather than another needs a justification. It is extremely unphilosophical to be an analytic philosopher simply because the only courses available at one's university were in analytic philosophy. But one cannot give an educated justification of this sort without being able to justify adherence to one's own school over any other--which is 'history of philosophy'.

Thus, there is no distinction between doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy. Someone who insists on this distinction, is insisting, really, that one attend to only a part of philosophy--which is imprudent and perhaps implies a poor education.

This mention of being well-educated leads to two further reasons for studying the history of philosophy. The first is that it is a mark of being a well-educated person, that barriers between the present and the past are removed. This used to be seen vividly and directly, when old books were accessible only through dead, 'scholarly' languages. Not to know the old books, then, was a sign of a poor education. The same thing holds today, even if those books are translated. Not to be conversant with those books--not to see them as interlocutors and 'contemporaries' in thought--bespeaks a poor education, a lack of intellectual development and power. It is one thing of course to reject the arguments or ideas of an Aristotle or Scotus after having a competent grasp of them; but it is another thing altogether to reject these without knowing them, or, really, not even being in a position to understand them.

A similar point may be made if one considers intellectual virtue--that is, what qualities and traits of the mind are to be valued. Those who place analytic philosophy above all others, generally do so in part because they value only some intellectual virtues, in particular, clarity and order of ideas. Thus training in mathematics and formal logic is regarded as the best background for philosophy. Yet there are other intellectual virtues, which must be acquired in other ways--through the study of history and languages, and through the development of what used to be called 'humanity'. (It is because analytic philosophy fosters only some intellectual virtues that students are rightly dissatisfied with it.) Without a broad study of the history of philosophy, one cannot in practice acquire the full range of intellectual virtues.