Martial Gueroult The History of Philosophy As A Philosophical Problem 1

THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM
Author(s): Martial Gueroult

Source: The Monist, Vol. 53, No. 4, Philosophy of the History of Philosophy (October, 1969), pp.
563-587
Published by: Oxford University Press
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THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS A
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM
The history of philosophy has only recently become a problem

for philosophy. It was first necessary for the human mind to en
gender through the centuries a tradition with which it had to
confront itself with increasing urgency. This required that philoso
phy reflect on the works it had created and which it acknowledged
as its own. Philosophy therefore had to be of long standing in order
to raise itself to that philosophy of philosophies: "The owl of
Minerva takes flight only when the shades of night are falling."
The problem of the relationship between philosophy and its
history, which bears on the validity and legitimacy of this history, is
complicated because it rests on two levels, that of philosophy and
that of history. On the level of philosophy, we ask ourselves how
philosophy can admit and legitimize the very principle of its his
tory; and, if it can, how it will arrive at justifying philosophies as
a
objects worthy of possible history. On the level of history, we first
examine how in fact this history was formed and then how philoso
phy has in fact reacted through the course of time not only to its
past, but to the discipline which purports to display its past to it.
The latter question entails a double undertaking: (1) to establish a
history of philosophical historiography; and (2) to trace the history
of a philosophical problem, namely the history of the problem its
own history raises forphilosophy.
This latter task brings us up against a number of different
points of view which show us the difficulty of the question. In
speaking of the relationship of philosophy to its past, it is clear that
this past is not given as such to philosophy but given by a certain
a certain "face" for this
historiography which sketches past. Now,
this historiography has never stopped varying in the course of time,
and the face of the past has never ceased to vary along with it. The
result is that philosophy's reactions to this past with its ceaselessly
changing face must necessarily differ, even were itself to

philosophy
564 THE MONIST
remain the same. But in the course of time, philosophy itself keeps
its own essence; and its reactions to its
changing conception of its
past, even if that past always looked the same, could not fail to be
constantly different. Finally, with history taking as itsmission the
search for the essential (because the essential alone merits being
raised to the dignity of the historical) the ends and methods of
own essence
historiography vary each time philosophy conceives its
differently. Thus, the of the a whole range
history problem presents
of alternating and overlapping on the one
perspectives: wherein
hand the change in historiography, in modifying the image of the
past, conditions the change in philosophy's reactions to its past; and
on the other hand the changes of philosophy influence the profound
changes in its historiography.
Let us consider first the philosophical problem: that of the

legitimacy and validity of the history of philosophy.
On the one hand, the problem arises necessarily from the mo
ment one considers the definition that all philosophy gives of itself:
philosophy presents itself as an expression of the truth and as
something timeless and eternally valid, since truth is by definition
timeless. And on the other hand it arises from the moment one
considers the fact that philosophy also presents itself as a series of
doctrines succeeding one another in time and swallowing up one
another in the completed past. As something past, philosophy can
without difficulty be the object of history, which is defined as the
effort to exhume all that is past. But as past that is completed, past
that is surpassed, it seems to exclude the history of philosophy. For
is it not, by virtue of being completely past, not truth, since truth
does not pass? Philosophy could not therefore be the object of a
history of philosophy since, being without truth, it would be with
out philosophy. History is only possible by virtue of a value which
raises itsmaterial to the dignity of a possible
object for history. But
if the past of philosophy is, thanks to being historically past, de
an
prived of the value (truth) which would justify it as object
worthy of history, the history of philosophy is philosophically illegit
imate. Hence this problem: how to reconcile the historicity of
philosophy with the philosophical truth of all philosophy. And then
this: how to define, correlatively, the concept of philosophical
truth.
THE H OF P AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM 565
But since this history of philosophy does exist in fact, does it not
prove its legitimacy? In the same way that Kant peremptorily posed,
against scepticism, the fact of science in order to determine the
conditions of possibility which were to establish its legitimacy, by
a history of
posing against scepticism the fact of philosophy philo
valid (quid facti), we can strive to search independently
sophically
of all previous systems for the conditions which make possible the
validity and dignity of different philosophies as objects of a possible
an a transcendental
history (quid juris). Here we have inquiry of
nature.
In this study we shall limit ourselves to establishing the urgent

need of such research investigation.
One might object that the question of legitimacy offers no in
terest: what does the question of legitimacy matter if the discipline
is very much alive in fact? Such an objection did not stop Kant.
Moreover, here the urgency is all the greater because, while the
scientist does not contest the validity of science, philosophy itself
has risen up against the legitimacy and alleged utility of its history.
Finally, the conceptions of method often depend on the answer
given to the question of legitimacy. The structure of a science is
profoundly influenced by the intentions which guide the scientist,
by the idea he conceives of his object, by his awareness of its goal
and of its interest. For an example concerning historical research,
we know that historical methods in general have completely
changed according to whether they were practiced in the interests of
a national
apologetic (the annalists of antiquity), of glorifying a
reign or sovereign (official historiography), of a political consolation
a or a rhetorical, esthetic, and
(Petrarch), of poetic end (Boccaccio),
moral one (Leonardo Bruni and his disciples, and most seventeenth
century French historians). Because of their intentions and objects,
such types of historiography were foreign to the desire for historical
ly objective truth. Thus they were warped, uncritical, and without
character. The answer to the
any scientific question of the object
and ends which justify research is, therefore, decisive for itsmethod,
its principle, and its destinies.
At the same time we see that it is always the same answer which
is the very condition, in any discipline, for its institution as a
science properly speaking: it is that the end of any science is purely
and simply the search for, if not the possession of, truth. In that way
566 THE MONIST
it assumes the disinterested character which not only gives it its

value, but constitutes its basic condition, for only this disinterested
ness permits criticism. Criticism is the essence of any scientific
method; since, in the same way the historian establishes truth by
criticizing testimony, the physicist establishes truth by criticizing
hypotheses through concordant experiments. Knowing the truth for
itself and not for an extrinsic utilitarian purpose-that is what
justifies and underlies all science. That is what in all research
whether in a science bearing on the material world or on the
or physics, philosophy or history-is at the
spiritual, mathematics
heart of method. A search for the foundations of the validity of the
history of philosophy is therefore of capital interest for its own
future, and it is of no less capital interest to philosophy itself insofar
as it can only lead to a determination of its essence, a determination
founded not on a priori concepts, but on our living experience of it
in history.
Nevertheless, these considerations are not sufficient to give us the
key to the riddle. Postulating the search for truth in itself, where
the history of philosophy is concerned, cannot solve ab ova the
problems of its legitimacy and method.
The concept of the history of philosophy unites two very differ
ent notions and two very different disciplines, history and
philoso
phy, whose antagonism expresses the fundamental antinomy be
tween two different orders of truth, the historical and the philo
sophical. Thus whenever we wish to establish some discipline on the
we have made no progress by this
imperative 'Find truth for itself',
postulation because we are uncertain what truth is in question. Is it
or historical? Historical truth is the exact, authentic
philosophical
reconstruction of a fact or a series of facts in the past (in our case,
philosophical doctrines of the past). Philosophical truth is defined
on the contrary as the knowledge, through a doctrine, of the in
ternal order of things.Whether it is concerned with dogmatism or
or with the philosophy of or of life,
scepticism, knowledge philo
sophical truth always appears as enveloping a doctrinal object
a universal and timeless character, removed from the
having past
and all history. To be sure, all truth whether historical or philo
sophical, as truth, is valid timelessly and universally, but the object

of the one is in the past and in time, while that of the other is
a claiming extra-temporal validity.
conception
These two kinds of truths are then absolutely unconnected. In

the history of philosophy there is an equivocation, an ambiguity in
research. It would seem that we could hesitate in deciding on which
truth we wish to discover: are we in search of a historical or of a
philosophical truth or of the two at the same time? Can philosophy,
which is always expressed through a doctrine given as truth, and
thus as timeless, allow itself to be submitted to history, which
reduces all philosophy to an event which passes, thus to something
without truth (since truth never passes) ?Reciprocally, can history,
which reduces all philosophy to a passing event, admit a philosophy
which always claims to be a truth, which in itself escapes the
vicissitudes and laws of history, even though it came into being at a
certain moment of history?
At first sight, we are tempted to reject this difficulty as a false
problem. Philosophy, it could be said, is concerned solely with
philosophical truth; the history of philosophy is concerned solely
with historical truth. It has to question what this or that author of
another period really thought, and for what historical reasons he
thought as he did, without asking himself questions about philo
sophical truth itself. Therefore, philosophy does not have to con
cern itself with its history, it has only, as
requested by Descartes, to
dismiss its history for good and, on the other hand, the history of
philosophy does not have to be concerned with philosophical truth.
The case of philosophy and that of its history in the long run would
be the same as that of any discipline confronting its history.
Whether the history of mathematics, physics, or any other science is
involved, it is evident that we must distinguish between two truths:
on the one hand mathematical truth, physical truth, etc., a scientific
truth of the discipline the growth of which we are studying, and on
the other the utterly different historical truth, which consists of the
exact description and explanation of the growth of that
specific
science throughout time. In this history of science, the truth of the
science and the truth of its history-in brief, science and history
situated on two different levels, can neither meet nor contradict one
another. But should it not be the same with philosophy and its
history?
no, because the case is a very different one.
As it happens:
He who studies the history of mathematics (as, for example,
Montucla, Bossut, Charles, Milhaud, Tannery Brunschvicg, Koess
568 THE MONIST
1er, Cantor, et al), the history of astronomy (Laplace, et al), or

that of physics (Jouguet, Bouasse, Duhem, et al.), ceases to be a
mathematician, astronomer, or physicist, in order to become a his
torian. Certainly he must possess sufficient scientific competence,
and it is in terms of current science that he draws up the perspec
tives which from the remote past have led up to it. But here
scientific knowledge is not the goal. The goal is a history. Converse^
ly, historical knowledge is not a means to promote the science. It is
true that from historical knowledge we can deduce consequences
from the point of view of logic, epistemology, and even of the
psychology of discovery, but few consequences from the point of
view of the very science whose history we are writing. It is very
exceptional when, in this case, the past enriches the present and
gives rise to discovery. In any event, science can only make use of its
most recent past in this respect. This is why the younger the science
(biology, psychology, and sociology, for example), the less sterile the
study of its past will be. On the other hand, the present of science in
some way enriches its past, revealing
conceptions lost in that past
which ought to have had a happier fate. Thus the new physics has
put in relief a long misunderstood precept of Newtonian physics:
the occasional compensation of the wave theory by the corpuscular
theory; but this combination in quantum physics of today did not
arise from the study of that Newtonian past. If the study of the past
of science is useful to the scientist in
showing him the dangers of
scientific dogmatism capable of stopping progress, still it is not
through this study that he educates himself. He does that through
contact with current science and
through his own practice of the
most recent methods, not through the
practice of its history. Even if
the history of a science could suggest hypotheses and indicate obsta
cles, itwould never be part of that science because science resides in
established theory, not in the avatars of its constitution. As Bou
troux quite correctly put it: "An established
theory has no more to
do with historic documents than a house, once built, has with its
scaffolding."1 There is therefore an area well

separated from the
sciences on the one hand and from their on the other.
history
Philosophy works quite differently. Enunciating the absolute
lAct s du s de Gen ve, 1905, Vol. II, p. 56.

Congr
separation of philosophy and its history brings us up immediately

against impossibilities of fact and of legitimacy.
From the point of view of the historian of philosophy, this
separation consists of declaring that the historian is concerned with
the history of doctrines without being interested in the philosoph
ical truth which those doctrines may or may not be able to express,
in other words that the history of philosophy disregards philosophy.
Such an affirmation immediately seems untenable from all points of
view. In fact it is a purely philosophical interest which leads the
historian to consider doctrines from the past, and it is in order to
see what philosophical reality theymay contain that he reestablishes
them as exactly as possible, and in depth. The historian of philoso
nor neglect
phy cannot legitimately be indifferent to philosophies
the philosophical significance of their substance, that is, of their
possible connection to philosophical truth, since it is that interest
which establishes these philosophies as objects worthy of a history. If
they were supposed empty of philosophical truth, or treated as if

they were, they would be reduced to absolute nothings, and the
history of philosophy could never have been established. It is not
that the historian of philosophy must necessarily take sides or reject
some doctrines as false and exalt others as true.Were he to do this,
he would be leaving his role of historian. He does not, in fact, have
to determine the real connection between a philosophy and a philo
sophical truth which he himself ventures to enunciate in abstracto
as real and absolute, since he would then stop being a historian and
become a pure philosopher; but he must merely see a priori all
doctrines as philosophical substance having a reality and a merely
possible connection with philosophical truth which he, as a his

torian, need not determine.
necessarily
Thus, while not necessarily taking sides, the separation existing
between all scientific disciplines and their history never occurs
between philosophy and its history.
The second thesis, that the philosopher as philosopher has noth
ing to do with the history of philosophy, is just as inadmissible.

Nevertheless, it has been upheld by many philosophers. The
phi
must be able tomake tabula rasa of
losopher, Descartes affirms, past
doctrines. He adds that it would even be preferable were he never
570 THE MONIST
to have known them.2 Philosophy emerges from the necessary se

quence of notions. It presents the character of unity and rational
interiority. The history of philosophy, on the contrary, brings doc
trines, notions, and concepts from the outside, as facts. It is there
fore the negation of philosophy which, far from being the passive
acceptance of ready-made solutions or the empirical knowledge of
an external giver, is knowledge through internal reason. Philoso
phy, by definition, challenges any history because it is science
grasped in its fundamental form as the necessary sequence of evi
dent truths which owe their certainty to this evidence, and their
usefulness to this certainty. History, the knowledge of facts, a
knowledge exterior to its object, can never be deduced from in
ternal reasons; accordingly it is uncertain and consequently useless.
Even if it reaches certainty about a fact, this knowledge of con
tingent and single facts never leads to a science properly speaking,
which is always necessary and universal. To wish to subject philoso
phy to history under these conditions is to bring the corruption of
philosophy to its highest point.
We need not be astonished that the radical affirmation of pure,
rational philosophy brings with it the radical negation of the his
tory of philosophy. But such an excommunication is inadmissible.
First, in fact, we can establish that philosophy has a history, an
indestructible tradition, and that no philosophy can detach itself
from this tradition which always shapes it. Even the example of
Descartes proves this.We find in his philosophy a whole collection
of problems and notions which he inherited from tradition. Certain
people, like Daniel Huet, went as far as to reproach him for having
"pillaged the ancients he scorned,"3 an unjust reproach to be sure,
because he submits the ideas he garners to a profound transforma
tion. But renewing the tradition is the exact opposite of rejecting it;
it is living off it. Next, from the point of view of legitimacy, the
opposition Descartes established between philosophy and its history,

and in general all history, is conceivable only in the
perspective of a
certain conception of the relationship between reason and the uni
2Descartes, Principes, Preface, ed. A.T., IX, 2, p. ll; Regulae, R. III, A.T., I,
p. 336; Recherche de la V rit , A. T., X, pp. 495ff., 523; Discours, first part;
M ditations, firstMed.
3D. Huet, Censura philosophiae cartesianae, 1689, Chap. VIII, 8.
verse which was peculiar to him. Now, philosophy itself has been
able to contest this conception. Dilthey notes that these sciences of
nature, which forDescartes and Comte constitute themodel for any
possible science, have an object outside the intelligence which is
applied to it, and, consequently, that intelligence can only know
the object superficially and symbolically. In the science of themind,
on the contrary (in history for example), the object to which the
mind applies itself is internal to it, since its object isman, a living
mind. The object is, then, entirely penetrated from within, no
longer known but comprehended. This internal intellection, based
on actual experience, is the character of history, history being
possible only to the extent that actual experience permits us to
understand from within the human conduct which is at the source
of the historical fact.4 The excommunication of history by philoso
phy results from a misunderstanding of this effort for intimate
comprehension. In fact, Descartes himself did not refuse to make
this effort; he was able to go beyond tradition only by assimilating
it; and he recognized, in his letter to Voetius, the necessity of such
an assimilation.
Thus philosophy cannot isolate itself from its history any more
than the history of philosophy can isolate itself from philosophy.
The radical separation of scientific and historical truth, which
characterized the history of science and avoided the conflict between
the two orders of truth, is impossible here.
What is the cause of this phenomenon? It derives from the
difference between the natures of philosophical and scientific truth:
science has as its object acquired truthswhich are universally recog
nized as such, and which are for that reason timeless; the history of
science has the acquisition of these truths as its object, and this
acquisition is temporal. Thus science is outside history and history
outside science because history is searching not for scientific truth,
but for that kind of historical truth which is relative to the tem
poral appearance of scientific truths given elsewhere. Scientific and

historical truths are, then, on two different levels and will never
clash. This is all the more so because scientific truth imposes on
history a norm which history readily accepts: since the history of
^Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Ges. Werke, Vol. I, pp. 28-29,

36) ; also see Ges. Werke, Vol. VII, pp. 136-37.
572 THE MONIST
science is that of the discovery of truth, it is necessarily the history

of progress, since all decadence or error lie outside truth and there
fore outside science. A history of art can be the history of a deca
dence; the history of science is, by definition, that of progress. In
on the other hand, unlike the positive sciences, truths at
philosophy,
present considered as acquired do not revoke everything in the
tradition which contradicts present-day philosophy as if this present
day philosophy were
a definitely
acquired truth subsisting non
temporally. Nor does philosophy have anything to do with a pro
cess of acquisition, which would be developing in time a growing
science whose regular progress we could follow, no matter what
revolutionary crises it were to undergo. Philosophy's past presents
itself in effect as a succession of doctrines which reject each other
reciprocally, without their pr tentions to a timeless, universally
valid, and permanently acquired truth ever triumphing. Each doc
trine claims that it contains within itself the beginning and end of
all speculation. The radical distinction between the science and its
acquisition then disappears. At the same time, the truths which are
objects of science and those which are objects of history are situated
on the same plane, and scientific and historic interest intermingle
and tear one another to pieces endlessly. Thus the historian of
philosophy cannot cease being a philosopher: as previous doctrines
have not been rejected in the past by virtue of the presence of a
body of acquired truths, they remain before him in an eternal
like a collection of latent philosophical
present, possibilities offered
for meditation, from which the philosopher can indefinitely draw
his inspirations. Neither can philosophy, for its part, isolate itself
from its history.
Two consequences result from the antinomy which tears the very
concept of history of philosophy fromwithin.
First, that every historian of philosophy finds himself torn be
tween two contrary tendencies. As historian, he must immerse all
philosophies in the fleeting course of time, see them all from the
same point of view, and refuse 'diem all the absolute value which
each one demands for itself; he must be persuaded that the future
will never witness the appearance of any one capable of succeeding
where all the others have failed, and he must be convinced of the
infinity of history. This attitude is nothing other than that of the
most radical form of
philosophical scepticism. And this scepticism
tends to associate itselfwith a method. Considering philosophies not

as eternal truths, but as temporal and contingent events, the his
torian will explain them historically, like other historical events, by
the conjunction of individual and social factors, milieu, time, etc.
He will not explain them by the connection between the thoughts
and that absolute of truth which legitimize them in their own
terms.Taken to the limit, this tendency leads to treating the details
of contents and the techniques used to establish and demonstrate
doctrines as illusory epiphenomena, and to reducing them to a
small number of fundamental themes, which would be the only
ones to which historicopsychological causes are applicable. One will
not go deeper into the mysteries of the system, just as classical
psychopathology does not trouble itself to note the details of a
raving man's visions, rather contenting itself with characterizing
them in order to diagnose the nosological entity. Similarly, reduced
to the state of symptoms of psychological or social complexes, phi
losophies will be stripped of the details of their insights and summed
up in terms of their outlines which reveal the underlying tendencies
of a man and of a society. The psychological and sociological will
ultimately be substituted for the philosophical in establishing the
essential of a history of philosophy which would no longer be
philosophical.
But, in truth, the historian of philosophy never goes that far
down. He finds himself being stopped by an inverse and truly
philosophical tendency. By professing such total scepticism and
substituting the psychic and social for the philosophical, he would
destroy his object. Sceptical as a historian, in one sense he must be
dogmatic as a philosopher. He must believe in the presence of a
certain real substance in every philosophy. It is this very substance
which constitutes it as a possible object of history. The value of the
replacements-psychological, epistemological, sociological-which
in this respect can be substituted for philosophical value, would
only reduce the history of philosophy to the role of an auxiliary
science of psychology, epistemology, and sociology. Furthermore, the
philosophical exigency guiding the historian tends to limit ever
more narrowly his desire for explanation by means of external
causes (individual or collective psychological factors), to the benefit
of explanation by means of freely chosen spiritual influences and
the logic of concepts. Soon this exigency raises historical explana
574 THE MONIST
tion to the intrinsic point of view of internal reasons where, in the

eyes of the creator of the doctrine, lies the very principle of its
establishment and existence.
The second consequence is that throughout history, philosophy

has never ceased to do violence to its history, sometimes joining
forces with it, sometimes violently divorcing itself from it,modify
ing its historiography and slowly becoming aware of the problem
created for it by the existence of its history.
Let us retrace in succinct steps the phases of this yiyavTOfmx^ In
to have been cognate
antiquity, the history of philosophy appears
with philosophy itself. As Mario Dal Pra has noted, 5 no philosoph
ical doctrine originates in any other way than under the form of a
refutation of some previous doctrine or, briefly, in a polemic.
Nevertheless, though polemic is inherent to philosophy, it is in no
way history. History a sense of the past. Polemic, on the
implies
contrary, considers as belonging to the present the doctrines it
fights; it deprives them of all historical coloration; it is passionate
and partial, while history attempts to be cold and objective, and is
directed toward a historical truth, not toward a philosophical truth.
We must therefore examine the relationship of philosophy to its
history from themoment when doctrines are said to belong to the
past.
We may think of Aristotle as the true founder of this history,
since he systematically reviewed the doctrines of his predecessors
before tackling the study of these questions dogmatically himself.
This historiography shows four different forms in the Peripatetic
period: the history of sects, doxography, the lives and succession of
philosophers (Theophrastus, Aristoxenes of Tarento, Dicearcus,
Diogenes, et al), and commentaries on authors. its differ
Through
ent forms, this history looks more like documentation than real
history; time and becoming fault it is concerned with collections

of opinion, not with the digging up of the past as such. Consequent
ly, no dramatic conflict arises here. History, ifwe can call this kind
by that name, dissociates itself but little from philosophy, although
it is distinct from it as one of its materials. One might say that a
BMariodal Pra, La storiografia

filos fica antica (Milan, 1950).
tranquil union with the past reigns here, the polemics and refuta
tions elsewhere notwithstanding.
The advent of Christianity upset everything and brought about
a violent divorce for the first time.
First-and many philosophers, Dilthey in particular, have noted
this-Christianity, as a temporal drama, was favorable to the
a
growth of historical consciousness and to the idea of history as
creative development. It introduced simultaneously the sense of a
rupture in time. There was then a startling confrontation between
the whole philosophical tradition and the new religion which
itself as a new or rather, as the only
quickly presented philosophy,
true philosophy. This confrontation is of considerable interest, not
so much for its contents, in that opposing doctrines come to grips
with each other, but for its form, that is to say, for the principle to
which it refers in order to affirm its own independence. For it does
not have to do, as has often been said, only with to
opposing faith
reason, but of opposing the tradition to living philosophy. For the
first time, philosophical consciousness, drawing together its past in a
solid block as profane or pagan philosophy, projected it into times
past and judged it as historical, in short, gave it the coloration of
history and of temporality that ancient historiography, which was
nothing but nontemporal erudition, let go unnoticed. For the first
time, and above all, the problem of the value of philosophy's past
was brought before the consciousness. It was not only
philosophical
a of wondering if this tradition was true in the face of
question
Christian truth, but of wondering if it had rights, by virtue of its
antiquity and prestige, and in the face of free thought. It was a
question of finding that that which defined true philosophy was
precisely a freedom liberated from the weight of tradition, a full
autonomy of judgment which as its condition and consequence
refused a past for philosophy insofar as itwas tradition and author
ity. Two voices, those of Tertullian and Lactantius, spoke out to

proclaim this necessary freedom of philosophizing thought. "God,"
said Lactantius particularly,
has given to everyone the amount of discernment needed to know
those thingswhich are necessary for him and to distinguish those
which he must believe. Those who precede us chronologically do
not precede us in wisdom for that reason. If discernment had been
equally divided, it could not have been monopolized by our an
576 THE MONIST
cestors: since the love of wisdom, that is, the desire to search for
truth, is innate in all, those who, without discernment, approve
the opinions of the Ancients and allow themselves to be led about
by others like a herd stifle thiswisdom. Their error comes from be
lieving that those who are called Ancients (majores) are more
knowledgeable than they, the Moderns (minores), and that the
are of mistake.6
majores incapable
These are words of an entirely modern accent, which certain his

torians of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
such as Vossius and Boureau-Deslande, cited on the same plane as
the words of Descartes.
Nonetheless, this confrontation, even when it resulted in excom
munication, never led to the rejection of tradition. Agreement was
reached between the past and present of philosophical thought, and
from that arose two new forms of the history of philosophy: Historia
stultitiae and Historia sapientiae, two histories in false perspective
and each founded on an a priori value judgment.
The firstmakes a nullifying value judgment on tradition, but it
thereby keeps it as the history of the aberrations of the human
mind, in order to show the weakness of that mind when left solely
to the light of its own reason (Tatian, Hippolytus, Ireneus, Lac
tantius, et al.). This kind of history continued until the eighteenth
century; we find Condillac and Bayle both practicing it.The second
kind treats the history of philosophy as that of eternal wisdom,
Sapientia perennis, the expression in man of the divine Logos which
is immanent in him. Ancient philosophy in its entirety then ap
pears, in spite of its imperfections, as preparing for the new philoso
phy. This is, for example, Justinian's point of view. Thus quite
naturally, a new idea arose which had a real future, that of divine
teaching (Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria). A double teach

ing: that of the philosophy which leads up to faith, that of faith
which leads up to gnosis. The firstwas to redeem Graeco-Latin
philosophy, the second to authorize modern philosophy (Male
branche, Lessing). With Saint Augustine, who was himself an ad
vocate of theHistoria sapientiae, the idea of providential progress
which completes and universalizes that of divine teaching appeared.
Saint Augustine introduced that magnificent comparison, the germ
GLactantius, Instit. Div., II, Chap. 8.
of which is in Saint Paul, which would be taken up again century

after century: humanity is like the lone man who grows in wisdom
as he grows in age. This notion permits a link to be made, possibly
external and superficial but real nonetheless, between philosophy
and its past.
These two kinds of history which were added to the four
by Antiquity are beyond a doubt objectionable. Both
bequeathed
proceeded systematically by arbitrary assimilation and accommoda
tion; both led, in different ways, to syncretism, which is the nega
tion of philosophical originality and historical authenticity. Fur
thermore, these two opposed kinds frequently intermingled, and
what was presented on the right side of Historia stultitiae appeared
on the reverse as Historia sapientiae (Lactantius, Minucius Felix) ;
thiswas the case, later, with Daniel Huet.
The conciliation obtained by patristic studies between past philo
sophical tradition and contemporary philosophy became such that
in theMiddle Ages philosophy ended up being utterly devoured by
its own history, and the task of the philosopher became that of
ancient and commenting on them. The
rediscovering philosophies
evolution of philosophy was not conditioned by the invention of
new sciences, but by the discovery of ancient Two
philosophies.
different kinds of history of philosophy, which had only sub
sidiary existence in Antiquity, were born of that discovery: free
commentary (Abelard, Albertus Magnus) and literal commentary
. But since
(Averroes, Saint Thomas) philosophy was at the time
ancilla theologiae, these commentaries were destined to use authors
with a view to the formation of a Christian philosophy. One might
say, then, that if philosophy was the prisoner of its history, its
history was in turn the prisoner of theology.
At the time of theRenaissance, a new dissociationcame to light:
to liberate itself from theology, the philosophical mind began by
freeing the history of philosophy from the constraints imposed on it

by scholasticism. On the ruins of the scholastic Plato and Aristotle,
it claimed to resuscitate in their authenticity Plato and Aristotle
themselves and all the other sects. The
history of sects was therefore
reborn, not merely under the old form of documentation, but as the
untrammeled restoration of ancient thoughts then considered as
active philosophies. This freedom did harm to authenticity, and no
578 THE MONIST
period is richerin pseudo-Platos, pseudo-Aristotles, and pseudo

Epicureans (Ficino, Pomponazzi, Laurentius Valla, et al.).
However, having leaned on its past to free itself from scholas
ticism, and having broken the chains with which scholasticism im
prisoned its history, philosophy with newly summoned strength
chose to lead its own life and free itself from its own past; itwanted
to jettison its history in order to flywith its own wings. Montaigne
represents the first signs of this revolution. He thought a science of
understanding based on personal and free judgment would lead to
a universal character/'
knowledge "of Consequently, he repudiated
both the authority of the past knowledge and this knowledge itself,
made up of contradictions and disparities. But, incapable of finding
in our mind, which is no more than a "wandering, dangerous and
presumptuous instrument," the rational method and criteria which
could make this science possible, he was finally thrown back, as if in
spite of himself, on that tradition which he wanted to reject at the
start. "Since I feel incapable of choosing," he wrote, "I accept
someone else's choice; failing reason which is certain, let us avoid
new doctrines. In such a feeble century, there is
nothing wrong with
limiting oneself to what is laid down by opinion and credited."
Finally, he formulated the desire that a vast history of
philosophy
be composed in which all the doctrines of ancient philosophy would
be methodically collected. "What a beautiful and useful work that
would be," he concluded.7
Thus the philosophical mind felt sufficiently vigorous to show its
will to function on its own and to
aspire to reject the support of
tradition; but this will was still powerless. Let a philosopher come
to discover the criterion and method which will make this certain
and definite science possible, let him this will the power it is
give
lacking, and immediately, the rejection of tradition thatMontaigne
wanted but could not bring about will by itself become a fact. It
was just thatwhich
happened with Descartes.
Cartesian philosophy excommunicated tradition in the name of
philosophy, and again philosophy divorced itself from its past. This
excommunication hits the heritage from the past in two ways:
(1) to
the extent that it claimed to take the of science and
place philoso
phy (as the Renaissance erudites did) and (2) to the extent that it
^Essais, II, Chap. X.
claimed to subsist side by side with science, in the way Aristotelian

doxography did, in order to procure credible knowledge wherever
science is impossible.
This radical antinomy, "either philosophy or tradition," pre
for by a long evolutionary process, posed the problem of its
pared
to a matter of fact, itmay
history philosophy for the second time. As
have been the first time, since in Patristic times tradition was called
to appear before a religious tribunal (in the name, to be sure, of
the right of the freedom of thought) ; whereas with Descartes, the
tribunal before which itwas called was that of reason. The conflict
was situated within philosophy itself, this time without ambiguity.
The antinomy is one of interiority and exteriority, of the eternal
and the temporal, of necessity and contingency, of the autonomy of
reason and external authority.
With Descartes' disciples, and above all with Malebranche, the
divorce of philosophy from its history seems complete. The abyss
between them will be difficult to fill. Even the anti-Cartesian de
fenders of tradition began by accepting the Cartesian antinomy as
an undeniable fact. For them, as for Descartes, one had tomake an
ineluctable choice between philosophy and the history of philoso
phy. It never occurred to them to contest the alternative. And itwas
thus that the anti-Cartesians, in order to save the history of philoso
phy, believed that they had no other recourse than to deny the
privileged certainty of mathematics and to abolish dogmatic phi
losophy, of which, according to them, Descartes' was the most ar
rogant type. In their eyes, philosophical scepticism alone could save
history because if no certainty is possible, tradition is all that is left,
thereby regaining its rights within the realm of a mitigated aca
demicism. Such was Daniel Huet's attitude: there can be no phi
losophy, said Descartes, if one does not make a clean sweep of
tradition. There can be no tradition and history, answered Huet, if
one does not make the slate clear of the mathematical pr ten
tion and of dogmatic philosophy. Hence his Censura Philosophiae
cartesianae which censures all dogmatic
philosophy. Daniel Huet
became then the source of a whole philosophical current which,
passing through Bayle, influenced Vico and in particular his De an

tiquissimu Italorum sapientia ex originibus linguae latinae eruenda
(Naples, 1710) and contributed to the strong current of the
philosophy of history in Italy of which this work is one
580 THE MONIST
of the origins, and which, in France, passing through Bayle once

again and from him to Fontenelle, Boureau-Deslande, and Condil
lac, brought the eighteenth century to a close by overturning Huet's
position though all the while it had arisen from it. It transformed
mitigated academism with respect to tradition into a general in
tegral and radical scepticism, scepticism with respect tometaphysics,
to the benefit of a philosophy increasingly inspired by the exact
sciences. In France, the end product was the Encyclop die, little
favorable, as can be seen, to philosophical tradition and to the
history of philosophy properly speaking. Rational dogmatism,
which Huet had put aside for the benefit of tradition, was restored
in favor of a "seienticism" through the denial of metaphysics, and
even of
philosophy.
A new marriage of philosophy and its past was brought about
through an entirely different process, namely, that of Leibnizian
philosophy. This conciliation of the past and the present proceeded
naturally from the principle of continuity which Leibniz opposes to
Descartes. "The present," said Leibniz, "is pregnant with the fu
ture, the future could be read in the past, the distant is expressed in
the near; we could know the beauty of the Universe in each soul if
we could unfold all its folds." In Germany, this principle of con
tinuity commanded a general reform of all histories, political his
tory under Justus Moser, literary history under Herder, art history
under Winckelmann, the history of philosophy under Tennemann.
The new union between philosophy and its history which was then
achieved had its influence on methodology as usual. Under the
domination of Leibniz' ideas and on the other hand of those of the
French eighteenth century concerning the relativity of all concepts
to space and time (milieu and the history of
moment), philosophy
tended to join itself with the large general syntheses which at that
time dealt w ith the history of the human mind. From 1770 to 1800,
more than thirtyworks treated this sort of
history, and for themost
part their authors were among Germany's most illustrious. The
history of philosophy renounced the erudite fragmentation of the
history of sects, it tended to encompass broader trends, organized
under the idea of progress and punctuated by periods, and ages.
This was the triumph of Periodisierung (Joel). Finally, through its
union with philosophy, it tended to become systematized in schemes
a
produced priori by the great doctrines of the period, notably by
Leibnizianism and Kantianism. In the latter case, it took the form

of an abstract history in which doctrines were necessarily engen
dered by means of a sort of spiritual geometry which was the phe
nomenal expression of the logical development of reason. This
conception, which Kant schematizes in the Critique of Pure
Reason,* has been further by a whole group of Kantian
developed
thinkers: Reinhold, F lleborn, Goess, Gurlitt, Grohmann.
From 1791 to 1799, in a journal which he founded and edited,
Beitr ge zur Philosophie, towhich Reinhold, Forberg, Niethammer,
Jacobi, Bardiii, Carus, Thienemann and others contributed, F lle
born expounded this conception (especially in his "Was heisst den
Geist einer Philosophie darstellen" in Vol. 5, pp. 190-96, 1795).
"
Reinhold agreed with him in essentials in his ber den Begriff der
Geschichte der Philosophie" (Vol. 1,pp. 5-21, 1791), and in his own
Beitr ge (Vol. 2, 1794). The same conception was defended by
Gurlitt in his Abriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Leipzig,
1786), which Reinhold considered the best specimen of this genre
(Beitr ge, Vol. 1, 1791), and by Goess in his ber den Begriff der
Geschichte der Philosophie (Erlangen, 1794). Finally itwas pushed
to an extreme by Grohmann in his ber den Begriff der Geschichte
derPhilosophie (Wittenberg,1797-1798).The historyof philosophy
is thus considered under the form of a purely logical system from
which the temporal and properly historical element ought to be
definitively banished.
Hegelianism arose from these different currents, which are
united in its total synthesis: the history of speculation, the history
of the mind, abstract history, etc. With Hegel, the conciliation of
philosophy and its past seemed to have been achieved: The differ
ent moments in the history of philosophy identified themselves with
those in the history of themind, and its stages were only to reflect in
time the eternal categories of logic: the history of philosophy trans
lates temporally the external dialectic of the Idea, while still being
the very life of the absolute spirit.
Are we at the end of our difficulties? Not at all. The past
remains the stone of Sisyphus of philosophy.
The Hegelian synthesis, in spite of its fecundity, was to collapse
in turn. If indeed philosophy was devoured by its past in the
In Krit. d. r. Vernunft, Transzendantale Methodenlehre, IV.

Chap.
582 THE MONIST
Middle Ages and hence had lost its efficacy by becoming the pris
oner of its past, with Hegelianism it is the history of philosophy
which, under the pretext of being founded on philosophical reality,
was swallowed up in and made the prisoner of a philosophy. Not
a
only did this philosophy impose priori on history systematic
categories which destroyed its objectivity, but it claimed to put an
end to history by revealing the last truth of philosophy. Finally,
correlatively to this notion of acquired truth, it subjected all history
to the notion of a progress in the acquisition of truth. And, al
though basing the rhythm of this progress on that of a dialectic
explaining its discontinuity and catastrophic character, it imposed
upon it a concept which is repugnant to the true relation between
different philosophies.
Nevertheless, the failure of the Hegelian system accomplished
what its advent had begun. It offered to the intelligent mind two
ways to establish the science of the mind: the speculative and the
historical. One could wonder which of the two was the more acces
sible to the capacity of the human mind. The collapse of the system
attests that of the two the historical was the only one within human
reach. Thus the history of philosophy, which Hegelianism gave back
to philosophy, regained its autonomy
through the fall of Hegelian
ism.
We should not be surprised that the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries saw a definite dissociation of history from the systematiz
ing mind occur simultaneously with an outburst of great works on
the history of philosophy. Lebensphilosophie contributed more than
any other movement to that dissociation, along with Schleier
macher's conceptions and later with Dilthey's, to which in some
ways Jaspers' are linked.
In France, the same dissociating tendency appeared in a very
different climate under the aegis of Renouvier, Boutroux, Delbos,
Bergson, Brunschvicg, and Br hier. At that time, two quite differ
ent schools of thought are to be discerned among historians. The
one tends toward the study of wide
periods, of movements, and of
currents of ideas, with interest in transitions and in trends. In some
ways it could be said that it runs horizontally-it responds to the
historical aspect of the history of philosophy. The other tends
toward monographs, with interest in the structure of a
"palace of
ideas"; it sinks vertically. It responds to the aspect of
philosophical
philosophy, to the affirmation of the absolute and unique, which is

the hallmark of all philosophical doctrines. It is the technology of
systems.
Thus we see the discord between philosophy and its past finally
reach across a thousand vicissitudes to offer the history of philoso
as an
phy object for reflection and as a problem for philosophy
itself. Almost all the great systems of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries consequently made an effort to give an account of this
history and claimed to provide the key to the enigma.
We have seen this enigma becoming clearer in the course of the

dramatic trial which has had philosophy at loggerheads with its
history from the start. On the one hand, every philosophy arises
from the negation of tradition, as the absolute beginning born of an
act of revolutionary freedom. On the other, what we call
philosophy
is not this or that system generated by the denial of the past, but the
whole past of philosophy, which constitutes a kind of cosmos of
intelligible realities sui generis, mutually related to one another.
Philosophy already acquired is there and nowhere else.
Such a circumstance brings a whole series of consequences:
1. Every philosophy, even in the act of breaking from the past
which affirms its advent, cannot separate itself from that collection
of relationships which links it to the universe of the
philosophical
systems and makes both interdependent.
2. Unlike the scientist, the philosopher cannot initiate himself in
philosophy except through its history; it is by going to school to past
philosophers that he becomes a philosopher himself.
3. Whereas historical and scientific interests are radically sepa
rated, philosophical and historical interests are intimately inter
mingled. The most original philosopher can pose or renew
philo
sophical problems only by referring to past philosophies he opposes.
Hence his necessary interest in history. If the historian of
philoso
phy turns historian, it is in view of what past doctrines may be
harboring of immanent philosophical content. His
philosophical
interest cannot be dissociated from his historical interest.
4. Historical truth and scientific truth cannot dissociate them
as they do in the sciences.
selves in philosophy
In consequence, we understand the urgent character which the
problem of the validity and legitimacy of its history takes on for
584 THE MONIST
pnilosophy itself. For it is the problem of its own validity and

legitimacy which is really at stake.
If, in effect, we were to take literally the Cartesian affirmation,
which ismore or less immanent in every philosophy, that no philos
ophy is possible without completely overturning philosophical
tradition, we would have to deny philosophy itself in the end, since
what it has already achieved never presents itself to us as the result
of a single philosophy, but as the aggregate of all philosophies
denying one another. But in fact, this overturning, so necessary for
the foundation of every philosophy, has not prevented all philosoph
ical monuments from being kept intact in the collective human
consciousness, even though, most of the time, the scientific, reli
gious, and sociological conditions which had allowed them to come to
life have completely disappeared. This invulnerability to the de
structive powers of history saves the philosophies from the pure
historicity which would annihilate them as a dead past. It attests
that they contain a "something" which grounds this indestructibil
ity, and it is that "something" which makes philosophies objects
worthy of a possible history.
What can that "something" be if not a value? And since we are
concerned with systems which present themselves as cognitions,
what can that value be if not truth? By this bias we arrive at the
formula of the problem concerning at once the essence of philoso
phy and the validity of its history, namely: search for the nature of
that truth which, irreducible to scientific truth, establishes the
various philosophies appearing in the past as objects eternally
worthy of a history. This formula is that of a transcendental prob
lem, namely: search for the conditions which make possible a priori
the actual indestructibility of philosophies as objects of a
possible
history.
This search for a transcendental nature leads to the idea of a
dianoematic which would be, with respect to philosophical monu
ments, the equivalent of an aesthetic or transcendental theory of the
possibility of works of art as possible objects for art history. There is
a certain between dianoematic and aesthetic. Philos
parallelism
ophies stand as monuments of thought having their own value,
which is impervious to history; they are as much eternal objects for
meditation as artistic monuments are eternal objects for contempla
tion and emotion. Their paradoxical permanence does not lie in
their representative truth, defined as adaequatio rei et intellectus;

indeed on the contrary it is through it that they appear to be frail,
counter to the science of
contradicting one another, and running
today and tomorrow. It is due to their intrinsic truth, that is, to the
concept that they enclose something real (sui generis), born of their
systematic and architectonic constitution. Now, what constitutes the
immortal substance of all works of arts is precisely an intrinsic truth,
veritas in re,which is heterogeneous with all truths of judgment.
Such a parallelism ought not nevertheless tomask one essential
difference. Contrary to what takes place in art, philosophies do not
take it upon themselves to build self-sufficientmonuments, but to
attain, as in science, to a truth of judgment, to resolve a problem by
means of a theory. In this they are closer to science and further from
works of art. To be sure, this confirms that their permanence is
based on an intrinsic value (veritas in re), not on a truth of judg
ment (veritas in repraesentando), but it also confirms that they
have the latter truth and not the former as their aim. Thus experi
ence reveals that philosophical works seem to preserve their inde
structibility in tne way works of art do, by means ot an internal
truth (veritas in re) which is entirely different from their claimed
truth of judgment (veritas in repraesentando). But it reveals at the
same time that in order to create these works, the philosopher does
not aim at them in and for themselves, but always, like the scientist,
at the discovery of a truth of judgment, of a theory conforming to
the reality of things. The union of these two characters is what
establishes the irreducibility of philosophy to either science or art
Neither of these characters can be stricken out to the benefit of the
other without mutilating the fact. To uphold that all philosophy is
a
created like work of art because it can maintain itself like a work
of art through the very value of an intrinsic truth, is tomutilate the
experience which teaches us, on the contrary, that the two creations
are utterly different. Consequently, to uphold this would render the
solution to the transcendental problem impossible, a problem of
legitimacy which can only be resolved when based on the unmuti
lated fact.
It follows therefore that to search for the conditions which make
the indestructibility of philosophies in history possible is to search
forways in which, in each philosophy, the scientific establishment of
586 THE MONIST
a truth of an intrinsic
judgment males possible the foundation of
truth, independent of any truth of judgment.
The concept of the dianoematic as a discipline bearing on the
conditions for the possibility of philosophies (dianoema = doctrine)
being objects of a possible history is unambiguously determined by
this formula.9 It establishes that every philosophy proceeds from a
truth of judgment to the intrinsic truth by forcing itself to demon
strate the truth of a judgment bearing on the real, its nature and its
transcendental location. In doing this, it decrees this "real" as a
thing or spirit, sensible or intelligible, unity or plurality, being or
freedom, immutability or becoming, etc. The restraint imposed by
the scientific demand relative to this true judgment on reality leads
to the intrinsic truth by the of true reality. Consequently,
positing
we must suppose that, since there is no reality other than that
which, each time, is established by philosophizing thought, the
latter can never ground its validity on its alleged conformity to a
ready-made "real," anterior to its decree. Hence the conclusion that
as the
dianoematic, philosophy of philosophies given as fact, estab
lishes itself as the problematic of reality.
We see from this that dianoematic can remain parallel to science
as well as to aesthetics without ever
risking being absorbed into
them, revealing to us that if the philosophical mystery participates
simultaneously in art and science, it is nevertheless neither one nor
the other.
The work
treating the dianoematic is in the process of being finished. Some
indicationsof its contents may be found in the
following studies: Le on inaugurale
(made by the author at the Coll ge de France on September 4, 1951) ; "Emile
Br hier," Revista Brasileira, 2 (1952), 426-49; Brunschvicg et l'Histoire de la
Philosophie," Bulletin de la Soci t Francaise de la Philosophie of

(meeting
January 30, 1954), 48th year, No. 1; "Le Probl me de la l gitimit de l'histoire de
la Philosophie," La Filosof a della Storia della Filosofia
(1954), pp. 39-63; "La Voie
de l'objectivit esth tique," M langes d'Esth tique et de Science de l'Art offerts
Etienne Souriau (Paris: Nizet, 1952), pp. 95-127; et
"Logique, architectonique
structures constitutives des Syst mes philosophiques," die fran aise, Vol.
Encyclop
XIX; "Bergson en face des philosophes," Les tudes bergsoniennes, 5 (1960),
Paris; tudes sur Vhistoire de la philosophie en Martial Gueroult,
hommage by
P.M. Schuhl, V. Goldschmidt, Y. Belaval, H. Heimsoeth, H. Gouhier,
J. Hippolyte,
LJ. Beck, F. Brunner, Ch. Perelman, L. Texeira, G.G. Granger, H. Dumery, J.L.
cf., in particular, Perelman's r el commun et le r el philoso
Bruch; study, "Le
phique."
Thus this study ends with the definition of the Idea of a science
and the concept of its method. The precept of this method, con
forming to the principles of transcendental philosophy, is to refuse
to establish philosophy and its history beginning with the a
priori
definition of the essence of philosophy in order to deduce the
conditions of its appearance in history. This way, which was, on
different grounds, Hegel's, Dilthey's, Jaspers', Brunschvicg's, and
Bergson's, supposes that we know what is in
precisely question.
Rather, we must begin with the known; that is, with living philo
sophical experience in history, and to rise from there to the un
known: the essence of philosophy, forcing ourselves to discover
methodically the a conditions which make such an
priori experience
possible.
MARTIAL GUEROULT
COLLEGE DE FRANCE

Martial Gueroult The History of Philosophy As A Philosophical Problem 1

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THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM

Author(s): Martial Gueroult

The history of philosophy has only recently become a problem

changing face must necessarily differ, even were itself to

Let us consider first the philosophical problem: that of the

In this study we shall limit ourselves to establishing the urgent

it assumes the disinterested character which not only gives it its

sophical, as truth, is valid timelessly and universally, but the object

These two kinds of truths are then absolutely unconnected. In

1er, Cantor, et al), the history of astronomy (Laplace, et al), or

scaffolding."1 There is therefore an area well

lAct s du s de Gen ve, 1905, Vol. II, p. 56.

separation of philosophy and its history brings us up immediately

they were supposed empty of philosophical truth, or treated as if

possible connection with philosophical truth which he, as a his

ing to do with the history of philosophy, is just as inadmissible.

to have known them.2 Philosophy emerges from the necessary se

opposition Descartes established between philosophy and its history,

3D. Huet, Censura philosophiae cartesianae, 1689, Chap. VIII, 8.

poral appearance of scientific truths given elsewhere. Scientific and

^Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Ges. Werke, Vol. I, pp. 28-29,

science is that of the discovery of truth, it is necessarily the history

tends to associate itselfwith a method. Considering philosophies not

tion to the intrinsic point of view of internal reasons where, in the

The second consequence is that throughout history, philosophy

history; time and becoming fault it is concerned with collections

BMariodal Pra, La storiografia

ity. Two voices, those of Tertullian and Lactantius, spoke out to

These are words of an entirely modern accent, which certain his

teaching (Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria). A double teach

GLactantius, Instit. Div., II, Chap. 8.

of which is in Saint Paul, which would be taken up again century

freeing the history of philosophy from the constraints imposed on it

period is richerin pseudo-Platos, pseudo-Aristotles, and pseudo

^Essais, II, Chap. X.

claimed to subsist side by side with science, in the way Aristotelian

passing through Bayle, influenced Vico and in particular his De an

philosophy of history in Italy of which this work is one

of the origins, and which, in France, passing through Bayle once

Leibnizianism and Kantianism. In the latter case, it took the form

In Krit. d. r. Vernunft, Transzendantale Methodenlehre, IV.

We should not be surprised that the nineteenth and twentieth

philosophy, to the affirmation of the absolute and unique, which is

We have seen this enigma becoming clearer in the course of the

problem of the validity and legitimacy of its history takes on for

pnilosophy itself. For it is the problem of its own validity and

their representative truth, defined as adaequatio rei et intellectus;

Philosophie," Bulletin de la Soci t Francaise de la Philosophie of

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