Does Philosophy Have a Vindicatory History? Bernard Williams on the History of Philosophy

Studia Philosophica 76: 137–52. 2017. doi:10.24894/StPh-en.2017.76008

Develops Williams’s suggestion that for philosophy to ignore its history is for it to assume that its history is vindicatory. The paper aims to offer a fruitful line of inquiry into the question whether philosophy has a vindicatory history by providing a map of possible answers to it. It first distinguishes three types of history: the history of discovery, the history of progress, and the history of change. It then suggests that much of philosophy lacks a vindicatory history, for reasons that reflect philosophy’s character as a humanistic discipline.

historiography, metaphilosophy, philosophy of history, analytic philosophy, 20th century, Williams

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