Philosophy and Its History: Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy

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 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.

Mogens Lærke is Senior Research Fellow at the CNRS (UMR 5037, ENS de Lyon) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen.

Justin E. H. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VII -- Denis Diderot.

Eric Schliesser is Bijzonder Onderzoeks Fond Research Professor and Associated Professor of philosophy and moral science at Ghent University.