The History of Philosophy as Philosophy: (4). Contextual History

It is sometimes said that
there will always be work to do in the history
of philosophy, if only to reread past philosophy in terms of
(ever-changing) current problems and standards. And indeed the
themes addressed by historians of philosophy often relate to topics currently favoured in philosophy
more generally. Thus, Woodbridge’s naturalism,
together with Cohen’s presence at City College,
gave the philosophy of the sciences a presence at Columbia, where Burtt produced a history of early
modern metaphysics and science. In the first half of
the twentieth century, sense-data epistemology was a
major contemporary topic, and many of the great philosophers,
including Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, were treated as
sense-data theorists. Many philosophers held that if a theory of sense-data as the primary objects of
knowledge were combined with realismabout ordinary
physical objects, it would be difficult or impossible
to avoid scepticism about the external world, and early modern
philosophers from Descartes onward came to be seen as sceptics
or sceptic-slayers.37 Finally, philosophy of mind and cognition have been popular in recent decades, and
of late the history of theories of mind has been
undergoing a renewal.

The mere fact that
contemporary interests are brought to bear in historical
interpretation does not by itself cast doubt upon the interpretation. Each case must be examined on its own,
to determine the extent to which current tastes are
simply influencing the topics chosen
for examination, and the extent to which past texts are being bent, stretched, or discarded to fit a
Procrustean bed. Certainly, we can
easily expose as distortion any interpretation that has Descartes setting as his primary problem that of
inferring the external world from
sensory impressions. Similarly, a careful reading of the first edition of Kant’s first Critique indicates that, contrary to
common assumption, he originally saw Hume as an
ally who needed help, rather than a sceptical enemy
who needed defeating.

The doing of history cannot
be insulated from the influence of the present,
nor should it be; the past remains the past, and we are in the
present.None the less, much is to be gained by setting as a goal for history of philosophy as that of
accurately portraying the philosophical motives
and positions of past authors. This goal involves what I
have called ‘understanding past philosophy on its own terms’. Even if, owing to the inevitability of
historical distance, we cannot fully
attain this goal in some absolute sense, it can be approached by adopting some methodological principles.
We can read widely, including the major and minor
works of individual authors, as well as major
and minor predecessors; we can ask what intellectual and philosophical
aims individual philosophers had in producing their work;
and we can then seek to assess the effectiveness of a philosopher’s arguments by the standards of his or her
time. These precepts are not intended to be
exclusionary; other questions, including purely present-oriented
questions, may surely be asked. Rather, these precepts are
intended to suggest ways of giving oneself over to the problems and projects of past philosophers in
order to establish a basic reading
of their works, after which further questions may be posed.

Earlier historiographical
writers, including Passmore, identified the
‘philosophical problem’ as the relevant scale of analysis for a contextual approach. These adherents of
the problem-centred approach were not committed
to the thesis that there are eternal or
unchanging philosophical problems, existing as it were outside history. Rather, they suggested that in
interpreting each philosopher, one
should seek to discover the problems that motivated his or her
philosophizing. This is good advice: it suggests trying to ‘get inside’ the philosophical activity of a
past author, to ‘rethink’ the problems
that motivated him or her. I have
incorporated this advice in my precept to consider the
aims of past philosophers.

Philosophical aims may have a
larger scale than the typical philosophical
problem. Philosophers may have projects, within which problems cluster, or out of which
they arise. Descartes had as a main
aim the founding of a new physics (a comprehensive science of
nature). Within this overall project, he worked on a number of problems, including characterizing the
essence of matter, establishing the
relation between mind and matter, and analysing the functioning
of the senses. Similarly, Kant had as one main project assessing
the possibility of metaphysics. Within this project, he identified
a number of problems, including discovering the characteristic structure of metaphysical knowledge (it
is synthetic a priori), analysing the possibility and
limits of such knowledge, and explaining
the persistent antinomies in the ontology of nature.

A historian might on one
occasion focus on projects, and on another
might use knowledge of the overarching project as a context in exploring a past philosopher’s
response to a specific problem. In
either case, recognition of the past philosopher’s overall aims and
projects will aid interpretation.

More generally, contextual
history of philosophy can look at a wider or
narrower context. The minimum aim for a contextual approach
must be to consider both the major and minor works of a chosen
philosopher, the major and minor predecessors against whom the
philosopher reacted, and the contemporaries who formed
his or her audience. At least this much is needed in order to read early modern philosophical works
with genuine comprehension. The
relevant context spreads beyond works that we now consider
‘philosophical’, to early modern science, mathematics, medicine,
law, theology, and letters more generally, and it can extend
even further to include social structure, cultural movements, and political events.

The breadth of the relevant
context cannot be fixed ahead of time,
and the type of context may vary, depending on the aims of the
interpreter. History of philosophy focuses on the philosophical aspects of past texts: it examines the
coherence of authors’ positions and
seeks to understand how authors sought to establish the cognitive force of their positions or theses. It
focuses on the intellectual and the
cognitive. Even for that purpose, wider aspects of the historical context may need to be taken into
account. Some portions of Descartes’s
published works (and more of his correspondence) cannot
be interpreted without knowledge of seventeenth-century Roman
Catholic doctrines and their relation to Aristotelian thought;
examples include his discussion of the properties of surfaces of bodies (with implicit or explicit
connection to the Eucharist) and his discussion of the
‘real union’ of mind and body. His characterization of planetary motion
in the Principles of Philosophy (Part III) may be illuminated
by knowledge of the Church’s proscription of the
Copernican hypothesis and its condemnation of
Galileo. If we turn to moral and political philosophy, then
cultural, social, and political contexts are even more deeply involved. Beyond these types of appeal
to a wider context, interpreters sometimes
invoke ‘external factors’ to explain how a

philosopher could hold to a position on the basis of
weak or nonexistent cognitive grounds. As I have
suggested, this is not the only situation
in which the wider context is relevant. Indeed, I suspect that
cases in which cognitive factors play no role are rare. More frequently, aspects of the social and
cultural context may set part of the
philosophical problem space, in which case the philosopher’s response is subject to evaluation as
philosophy, in terms of coherence and
cognitive force.

In any event, each instance
of contextual work need not address the
wider context. It may instead focus on a single text or part of a text, simply to establish a historically
and philosophically viable reading,
drawing on contextual background knowledge, as required.
There is need for work at a variety of scales, directed at a
variety of audiences. Some work will be written for other specialists
in the history of philosophy. But that should not be the exclusive
or ultimate audience for historians of philosophy. They should
usually strive to make their work accessible and interesting to the larger group of philosophers, and
often to readers more generally.

Source : Sorell, Tom and
G. A. J. Rogers.(2005), Analytic Philosophy
and History of Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon
Press).