What Is the Good of Philosophical History

Abstract

At many universities, one can find scholars who style themselves historians of some sort, who are nevertheless not employed in history departments — the historians of philosophy that no self-respecting philosophy department can be without. Such creatures are especially remarkable when they reside in primarily ‘analytic’ philosophy departments — analytic philosophy, after all, is the most ahistorical of philosophical schools. Most curious of all, perhaps, is a still-young breed — we historians of analytic philosophy. Why do beings like us exist? What purpose do we serve? Such questions form the theme which I would like to address, in at least a preliminary way, in this chapter.