Bifurcation as a Model of Description — A Means of Making the Historiography of Philosophy More Historical?

Abstract

Historians of philosophy are a kind of go-between. It is their task to bring about a relation between two disciplines — history and philosophy. It is thus no wonder that the complaints about them have come from both sides. An example of the complaints from the side of philosophers may be found in the Preface to Kant’s Prolegomena. In his opinion, historians of philosophy tend to overemphasise the resemblances between contemporary philosophical ideas and philosophical ideas from the past. Kant’s suggestion is that by doing so they discourage philosophers. Therefore they “must wait until those who attempt to draw from the fountain of reason itself (i.e. the philosophers, F.V.) have made their case; it is then their task to tell the world what has been done”.