From Descartes to Collingwood: Recent Work on the History of Philosophy

Abstract

Interest in the history of philosophy shows no sign of diminishing. This article covers i6 books published between I972 and early 1974, and these are only a selection from the work in this field during the period. That philosophers should show an interest in the history of their subject is not surprising. Collingwood argued that the historian does not merely record, he re-thinks. Whatever the truth of this as an account of history in general, it is certainly true of the history of philosophy, and it is this that makes the subject more than a rummage through rooms full of old lumber. This rethinking of past thought, it should be stressed, does not involve the performance of some mysterious act of mental intuition. Rather, it involves asking such questions as, 'What issues were important to this man, and what bearing do they have on his philosophy? Are we, for example, to see Spinoza as someone mulling over old rabbinical texts, or are we to see him in the context of the new science of the seventeenth century?' The answer that is given will depend on which interpretation gives the better sense. Or again, we may ask 'When a philosopher appears to argue that one proposition follows from another-say, that the truth of all clear and distinct ideas follows from the perfection of God-does it in fact follow? If not, is it certain that we have grasped the logic of the argument?' Nor is this re-thinking something that can be done once and for all. We need to return to the classics of philosophy again and again, as our own views about philosophy change. For example, we see more in Leibniz than scholars did a hundred years ago, not just because we know more about Leibniz (though we do), but also because advances in philosophical logic have provided us with a new set of questions with which to approach Leibniz. It must be admitted that not all historians of philosophy re-think the past; the 'scissors and paste' historian, as Collingwood called him, is still with us. But it can be said that the historian of philosophy must re-think the past if his subject is to come alive, if the subject is not to be (in Hegel's phrase) a battlefield full of corpses. Happily, few of the books discussed below fail to bring their subject alive.