Doxographical or Philosophical History of Philosophy: On Michael Frede's Precepts for Writing the History of Philosophy

Summary

In a series of articles from the 1980s and 1990s, Michael Frede analysed the history of histories of philosophy written over the last three hundred years. According to Frede, modern scholars have degenerated into what he calls a ‘doxographical’ mode of writing the history of philosophy. Instead, he argued, these scholars should write what he called ‘philosophical’ history of philosophy, first established in the last decades of the seventeenth century but since abandoned. In the present article it is argued that Frede's reconstruction of the history of histories of philosophy is historically problematic.     

The Idea of a Category Mistake: From Ryle to Habermas,and Beyond

Summary

The term ‘category mistake’ began to turn up regularly in public discourse in the 1990s as a general term to describe a confusion between different fields of thought with serious practical consequences. But it began its career in philosophy, introduced by Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind in 1949 to attack Cartesian dualism and assert a monistic solution to the so-called mind-body problem. This paper traces the stages by which it came into general usage, arguing that while by the later 1960s it had generally been rejected by philosophers, it was saved from disappearance by its migration into fields such as psychology and theology. From there, it moved into critical theory and then into international relations. Its entry into these latter areas first made plain its potential in political argument. Eventually, multiple meanings of the term came to coexist with one another, with the practical and rhetorical usage supplementing rather than replacing its original philosophical sense.     

Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.     

生命哲学视野下旅游研究与实践方向的探索

近年来,旅游业已然成为中国国民经济的战略性支柱产业,但以经济发展为主要目标的旅游研究却呈现出固化和乏味的态势。未来旅游研究应科学与哲学齐头并进,与生命哲学的结合,更是旅游研究顺应时代发展的应有之义。文章以生命哲学研究的主要内容梳理为切入点,探索旅游生命观的形成,以生命哲学视野下的旅游概念与本质为整个研究体系的逻辑起点,分析生命哲学视域下旅游发展的内在机理,从矛盾论、价值论的视角逐步探讨未来旅游的研究与实践方向。结合当今时代特征,发现生命哲学下的旅游本质应是体察风景、体验生活与体悟生命的统合。人与自然共同构建生命共同体,科学旅游发展观应转向“以生命为本”,未来旅游的最终目的是促进人的生命自由和全面发展,实现人与自然的生命延续。     

道书音注的语料价值

道教文献在辞书编纂和文献校勘方面具有一定的参考价值,文章利用道书中的音义材料并结合道教文化,从收字、注音等方面对《汉语大字典》的缺漏作补正,并对唐代段成式的《酉阳杂俎》作了校勘。     

经商与爱人--关于稻盛哲学的挑战性

稻盛和夫是日本京瓷集团公司的创始人。该公司“2001年3月的年营业额超过4兆日元(大约为2700亿元人民币)、税前利润达4500亿日元(大约为300亿元人民币)”。^[1](P3)是什么使稻盛和夫在经营上成就这一辉煌伟业的呢?这便是,由以“敬天爱人”的基本思想为核心构架而成的稻盛经营哲学;以及靠商业伦理道德成为赢家的超凡境界。     

HISTORY AS PHILOSOPHY

Historians have taken a beating in recent times from an array of critics troubled by our persistent unwillingness to properly theorize our work. This essay contends that their criticisms have generally failed to make headway among mainstream historians owing to a little noticed cognitive byproduct of our work that I call history as philosophy. In so doing I offer a novel defense of professional history as it has been understood and practiced in the Anglophone world over the last half‐century or so while suggesting, in conclusion, that historians could not do other than they do without serious psychic and societal loss.     

FROM NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY TO KANT'S—AND BACK

Reflecting on Anthony Jensen's Nietzsche's Philosophy of History, this essay describes Jensen's account of the three‐stage development of Nietzsche's historiographical practices and metahistorical positions: from his early philological writings, through The Birth of Tragedy, and into the mature philosophy of history that Jensen uncovers in Toward the Genealogy of Morality and Ecce Homo, which, so Jensen argues, consists in ontological realism combined with representational anti‐realism. While Jensen notes the importance of a like‐minded readership for the success of Nietzsche's historiographical projects, the essay asks whether Nietzsche did in fact have such a readership and further emphasizes that the Genealogy and Ecce Homo are structured in such a way that they seek to create one. A similar structure is identified in Kant's “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective.” The essay concludes by reflecting on the significance of this similarity in light of the doctrines of eternal recurrence that are expressed in both Nietzsche's late writings and Kant's youthful cosmology.     

Hegel,Analytic Philosophy’s Pharmakon

In this article I argue that Hegel has become analytic philosophy’s “pharmakon”—both its “poison” and its “cure.” Traditionally, Hegel’s philosophy has been attacked by Anglo-American analytical philosophers for its alleged charlatanism and irrelevance. Yet starting from the 1970s there has been a revival of interest in Hegel’s philosophical work, which, I suggest, may be explained by three developments: (1) the revival of interest in Aristotelianism following Saul Kripke’s and Hilary Putnam’s work on natural kinds, and Elizabeth Anscombe’s, Philippa Foot’s, and Putnam’s opposition to the fact-value distinction; (2) the rehabilitation of Hegel’s theories by various philosophers, including Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, Fred Beiser, Robert Stern, and Stephen Houlgate; and (3) the Sellars-inspired philosophy of mind of John McDowell and of Robert Brandom. The first and third of these reasons, I argue, have led several analytic theorists to cast Hegel in a more positive light as the “cure” for analytic philosophy. The combined outcome of these changes, both ironic and fitting, is that the Hegelian principle of internal critique has played a significant role not only in analytic philosophy’s rapprochement with Hegel’s philosophy but also in overcoming the Analytic-Continental philosophical divide.     

THE WORDS OF HISTORY

In From History to Theory, Kerwin Lee Klein writes a history of the central terms of the discipline of theory of history, such as “historiography,” “philosophy of history,” “theory of history,” and “memory.” Klein tells us when and how these terms were used, how the usage of some (“historiography” and “philosophy of history”) declined during the twentieth century, and how other terms (“theory” and “memory”) became increasingly popular. More important, Klein also shows that the use of these words is not innocent. Using words such as “theory” or “historiography” implies certain specific ideas about what the writing of history should be like, and how theoretical reflection on the nature of history and its writing relates to the practical issues of the discipline. In the second half of his book, Klein focuses more on the concept of memory and the memory boom since the later part of the 1980s. He observes that “memory” came to be seen as a kind of “counterhistory,” a postcolonial, fragmented, and personal alternative to the traditional mainstream discourse of history. Klein does not necessarily disagree with this view, but he does warn us about unwanted side effects. More specifically, he argues that the discourse of memory is surprisingly compatible with that of extremist right‐wing groups, and should be treated with suspicion. Although Klein certainly has a point, he presents it in a rather dogmatic fashion. However, a more nuanced version of Klein's criticism of memory can be developed by building on Klein's suggestion that there is an intimate connection between memory and identity.