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Tweets by CambridgePhilos. Search site. International students Continuing education Executive and professional education Courses in education. Research at Cambridge. John Marenbon Average rating: 4. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Quotes by John Marenbon. First, it proposes a somewhat aesthetic approach to philosophy, in which a work of philosophy is valued not because of the number of conclusions it proposes that we are likely to find well- established and wish to accept, but because of how well, how deeply and broadly, it goes about the task of thinking philosophically.
Secondly, this view addresses itself, apparently, to philosophers, or would-be philoso- phers, but it does not promise them direct answers to their questions or contributions to their discussions from the philosophers of the past. Rather, it says that people need to read the great philosophers who are few, and most of them antiquated in order to see how philosophy is done at its best.
Studying philosophy from the past makes a contribution to doing philoso- phy now, but an indirect, second-order one. It might be argued that the same is true of good phi- losophy from the past. It is no more subject to becoming antiquated than the Iliad, Aeneid or King Lear. In one way, this approach has much to recommend it. The Republic or the Meditations, we might want to say, are books everyone should read, just as they should read the Iliad and King Lear, or they will remain ignorant of what human culture has achieved.
But this parallel is not quite exact. If their value is to be considered aesthetic, it will be more like that of the aesthetic value of a mathematical proof, evident only to the eyes of highly-trained practitioners of a specialized discipline. It is just to this extent that it can indeed be useful, because it is just to this extent that it can help us to deploy ideas of the past in order to understand our own.
It is a very attrac- tive view but one that has yet to be developed in more detail. Merely exposing contemporary philosophers to a discussion of a kind that fails to engage with their interests is not likely to have much direct effect. The 4 See Williams , , It was to indicate voices of yore which could not be heard as participating in con- temporary debates, and which thereby called into question whatever assumptions made contemporary debates possible.
Moreover, maybe it is limiting to present the value of the history of philosophy just in terms of how it can help contemporary philosophers, even if that is one of its important functions. My own justification for studying antiquated philosophy, drawing on many of the ideas just sketched, is this: Studying the history of philosophy most of which is antiquated is a way — a very good way, and probably an indispensable one — of coming to understand what philosophy is.
In their ordinary work, philosophers are engaged in posing and trying to resolve philosophical problems; one of these problems, which should be central for any genuinely committed phi- losopher, is the question of what philosophy is: what sort of questions phi- losophical questions are, and how and to what end they can be answered. It is an open-ended problem, and knowing about the history of philosophy helps — arguably, is intrinsic to — exploring it.
For philosophy is not a natural kind, but a human practice, or rather, a family-resemblance of human practices, and understanding what it is rests on understanding how it has been practised in history, what has been com- mon to it, and what diverse, in different social and cultural circumstances.
If it is to meet this justification, history of philosophy must be pursued in a way which always violates the distinction of spheres between histori- ans of philosophy and intellectual historians by advocates of the Division of Labour Approach.
It must be a study of arguments, by those who under- stand the arguments as philosophers and so consider what objections can be raised to them, how they could be extended or adapted , but of argu- ments as developed in a real historical context, where external factors played a part, too, in shaping how this or that individual reasoned on a given subject.
Such an approach can profitably used with any philosophy of the past, antiquated or not. So, for instance, Frege might both be studied for his direct contribution to the living tradition of philosophy and in a more historical way, for the second-order illumination which studying his thought in this manner can provide. This justification incorporates some aspects of the five discussed above, whilst rejecting others.
Indeed, it goes fur- ther and sets aside the view that antiquated philosophy helps philosophers to answer first-order philosophical questions; rather, it is of the greatest value in answering a central second-order question. Philosophy is, indeed, included within the field discussed by intellectual historians, but, writing for a general audience, and usually themselves without specialized philosophical training, they can only treat philosophy from the outside; just as they might treat music, but can do so only externally, and not in the manner of an historian of music, writing for a technically qualified audience.
There is, then, a division of labour, but not the one envisaged in the Division of Labour view. The intel- lectual historians do just that — intellectual history, even when they are writ- ing about philosophy.
But, because they are not entering into specialized philosophical questions, they have the great advantage of being able to write for the wide audience of those with a general interest in history and intellec- tual matters. The historian of philosophy is, no less than them, a genuine historian, of philosophy. But his or her audience will be much smaller.
The Great Philosophers approach can also fit with this conception of the history of philosophy, since one of the reasons for philosophers to read the classics is to understand the nature of their subject.
But, more impor- tantly, it and the Philosophy as Literature approach can provide a valuable alternative way of justifying antiquated philosophy to a different and wider audience.
The aesthetic justification for reading antiquated philoso- phy is a way of claiming a role for some outstanding texts of philosophy from the past within the broad run of cultural life, whereas my justifica- tion is for history of philosophy conceived as a specialized discipline within philosophy.
There are, then, three different, justifiable ways of studying antiquated philosophy: i As a specialized historical discipline within philosophy, designed to help philosophers understand their subject better and answer second- order questions about it. My special concern is with i , which alone grounds the history of philoso- phy as an individual academic discipline. But i , ii and iii are inter- connected.
Research and writing in i fructifies work in ii and iii. Even if studying antiquated philosophy can be justified in the way suggested above, they might argue, the justification does not apply to medieval philosophy, be- cause it is not philosophy at all, but a sort of theology.
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