Abstract

Is the history of philosophy a complex history of errors? That, according to Jonathan Rée, author of the first of three essays that comprise this book, is the prevailing sentiment of contemporary philosophy, which tends to perceive the history of philosophy as a "diversion from real philosophical activity." That sentiment, Rée argues, is the by-product of a failure of the history of philosophy itself, the "unhistorical history of philosophy." Rée maintains that the nature of philosophical history is determined by concepts employed by the history of philosophy. Histories of philosophy have characteristically tended to locate a number of "eternally available and unchanging" positions to which philosophers are said to have ascribed with which they engage other philosophers "as though they were participants at a modern philosophy conference." Because it fails to "involve some conception of history," the "orthodox History of Philosophy is a fabric of illusions and distortions."