2017 Volume 2017 Issue 68 Pages 9-27
In this paper, the author offers an overview of some methods that have thus far been used in research on the history of philosophy. From the perspective of philosophical importance, the paper further discusses which kinds of methods are relevant or irrelevant. The examples which are specifically examined in this paper are those of Harry Wolfson, an expert in Medieval Philosophy who treated the history of philosophy exclusively from the view point of diachronic influences; Martial Gueroult, the renowned historian of twentieth century France who studied the internal structure or ‘order of reasons’ of several great philosophical systems of the past; and Jonathan Bennett who examined the history of modern philosophy in the manner of analytic philosophy. After indicating the problem with Wolfson’s method, as well as the difficulty with the idea of Dianoématique which Gueroult developed while producing his monumental works on great philosophers, the author concludes that another possible philosophically significant approach is a method which consists of analyzing the internal structure of some of the past’s philosophical doctrines (like Gueroult and others) and daring (unlike Gueroult) to criticize weaknesses, e. g. an inconsistency, in them. The author calls this method “non-idolizing or de-idolizing structuralism.”
