Abstract

Since Schleiermacher and Hegel it has been part of the tradition of German philosophy to view the history of philosophy as an essential aspect of philosophy itself. The topic of “Heidegger and the History of Philosophy” should be considered with this in mind, which means that our question is as follows: Within this general attitude towards the history of philosophy, which has dominated German philosophy since Hegel, what distinctive attitudes are to be found in Heidegger? The context assumed by the question is clear: it is that created by the rise of historical consciousness. It was part of the heritage of German Romanticism that not only historical research as a whole but also the position of philosophical theories would henceforth be affected by the problem of the nature of history. Before the Romantic period there was no such thing as the history of philosophy in the sense we are concerned with here. There was only the sort of scholarship which compiles lists. Hegel’s concept of a history of philosophy was itself in the fullest sense “philosophy;” it was a special subdivision of the philosophy of history, which was itself an attempt to demonstrate the presence of reason in history. Indeed, Hegel termed the history of philosophy the very heart of world history. However, the substantive portion of the Hegelian history of philosophy—its attempt to exhibit the necessity underlying the sequence of forms of philosophical thought, and thus the “rational” character of the history of thought—did not survive the criticism of the “historical school.”