The Liaison between Analytic and Ancient Philosophy and Its Consequences

Abstract

Is it reasonable to expect that the occupation with history of philosophy contributes to our contemporary philosophical debate? The scholarship on ancient philosophy seems to be a paradigm case for the discussion of this kind of question. In the 1950s and 1960s, philosophers and scholars such as John L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle, G.E.L. Owen, John Ackrill and Gregory Vlastos initiated a new style of scholarship that was influenced by analytic philosophy. This analytic style of ancient philosophy scholarship encouraged philosophers to take arguments presented by Plato or Aristotle more seriously and to import ancient ideas into contemporary debates. It was objected that analytic scholars tend to be thematically narrow and to neglect the historical context. By sketching the development of the first two generations of analytic scholarship this chapter tries to show that analytic scholarship need not be anachronistic and that the gain of this method outweighs possible excesses.