Introduction: On the Nature of Philosophic Historiography

Abstract

As an implication of practice in some recent writers, the claim that the history of philosophy is not different from philosophy itself has come to constitute a denial of the historicity of philosophic history as such. This denial is based on an explicit, broader negation of the social situatedness and extralogical interests of all philosophic work. Just as, in Plato’s Sophist, the sophistical visitor from Elea had defined the Sophist as a mimetic fabricator (mimêtês, doksomimêtês, eironikos mimêtês, 267C10–268B4) of knowledge not a seeker of it, so today do those who believe that philosophy is applied logic also believe that the history of philosophy is only logic applied to the philosophic thought of the past. Just as a competent Sophist could appear to be a man of knowledge (sophos), the new analysts of past thinkers have found a way of appearing to practice history while extending doctrine in a covered-up (eironikos) way.