In philosophy, you quite immediately notice a striking difference between content taught and philosophical research, for example, when looking at how philosophy departments are structured in European universities. There are courses and research projects that deal with current topics usually associated with the chairs of theoretical philosophy (philosophy of nature, metaphysics) and practical philosophy (ethics, feminist philosophy, political philosophy), respectively. And there are those that deal with philosophical theories of philosophers who lived long ago, that is, content that belongs to the field of the history of philosophy, often associated with chairs of history of philosophy.
While the former research and teaching content addresses current issues and topics, such as climate change or polyamory, the latter deals with questions and problems that may seem somewhat outdated at first glance. These include, for example, Descartes’s mechanistic view of nature, which includes (outdated) mechanistic descriptions of the human body, and Kant’s philosophical argument for why space is necessarily Euclidean (which has been proven false). Of course, there are still contemporary philosophical concepts of nature that can be described as mechanistic (in a broader sense, adapted to a contemporary understanding of mechanism) or questions about the nature of space, but the specific characteristics that Descartes or Kant attributed to them are no longer relevant. In this sense, these more specific questions and problems are peculiar to their time and may no longer be relevant for us.
In addition, works in the history of philosophy differ considerably not only in their language but also in their writing style (sometimes extremely) from what we are used to today. The writing may even seem strange, which can lead to frustration as a reader.
Moreover, you will very often find racist or sexist assumptions in these texts. Regarding these assumptions, it is often unclear whether you can simply accept some of the claims made in these philosophical theories without also being forced, for the sake of the argument, to accept those claims that are racist or sexist, and, as a matter of principle, we cannot accept any claim that would cause us to adopt racist or sexist views.
You will also notice that these texts were mostly written by white men (to counteract this tradition, see Eileen O’Neill on the absence of female philosophers in the histories and anthologies of early modern thought). Note also the increasing number of research projects dedicated to make women visible and anthologies dealing with female philosophers in the history of philosophy: for example, the project led by Ruth Hagengruber (Universität Paderborn) and the anthologies by Dalia Nasser and Kristin Gjesdal on women philosophers in the nineteenth-century German tradition (2021 and 2024) and by Corey W. Dyck on women philosophers in the eighteenth-century Germany). These texts usually originate from very specific periods, such as ancient philosophy (mainly focused on ancient Greece) and the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries (e.g., on the exclusion of the Middle Ages; see, for example, John Marenbon).
The philosophical works that are considered to be classics or canonical are thus not only difficult to read but also deeply problematic, because they include mostly only white men and exclude specific epochs. So, one might ask why these works should be studied at all. Why not just stick to philosophical discussions that focus on current problems and issues?
As someone who researches and teaches in the field of the history of philosophy, this question, as a metaphilosophical question about my own work, became increasingly urgent for me. So, I chose to analyze the prevailing answers. While I cannot offer an exhaustive list, some of the most important reasons that are offered in the corresponding metaphilosophical literature for the significance of the history of philosophy are the following:
- We learn how to do philosophy by engaging with past philosophical works.
- In the history of philosophy, we find support for our own contemporary views.
- The philosophical tradition conveys concepts and norms that still influence us today.
- Entirely different philosophical frameworks are instructive in seeing the situatedness of contemporary philosophical views.
The first reason speaks in favor of studying historical philosophical arguments and analyzing their persuasiveness and weaknesses: we learn from others’ past mistakes. In this sense, Genevieve Lloyd, for example, claims that works on the history of philosophy are regarded in English-speaking universities as “suitable stimuli for the development of genuine philosophical skills.” This is also a widely held opinion at German-speaking universities.
There is a fairly obvious objection to this point. While it may be true that analyzing arguments sharpens our own philosophical thinking, it is difficult to see why this should be a compelling reason for studying the history of philosophy. We could just as easily turn to contemporary papers or books and develop our argumentative philosophical skills through discussion of them. Since we are usually unfamiliar with the language and writing style of figures in the history of philosophy, turning to contemporary works facilitates the development of our argumentative philosophical skills and their application to current debates. The former point depends, of course, on what we mean by “argumentative philosophical skills.” If translating texts and understanding different or older philosophical vocabulary are, for instance, part of these skills, then studying texts from the history of philosophy is indispensable.
Even so, viewed from this perspective, the history of philosophy has only instrumental value. It is primarily a means for doing contemporary philosophy since engaging with the history of philosophy serves to develop philosophical skills but not to genuinely understand and discuss the philosophical problems in these texts. For me, therefore, this is not a particularly convincing point if it proves to be the only reason for studying the history of philosophy. If we only need to engage with these works insofar as they help us develop our skills and not because we take what is discussed in them seriously, it seems as if the works of the history of philosophy have little or nothing to say to us.
The second reason for studying the history of philosophy, mentioned in the list above, is based on the idea that positions in current debates can be strengthened not only by finding proponents of these positions in the history of philosophy, who may have interesting and convincing reasons for holding them, but also by enriching these positions with new perspectives taken from the history of philosophy on the subject. This is indeed a common strategy. Philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, for example, have been revisited in the context of current debates on (non-)conceptualism (the question of whether all our mental faculties are conceptual or not) or (neo-)teleology in the philosophy of biology (the question of whether purposefulness is an indispensable feature of living nature).
This approach is quite selective in its treatment of the history of philosophy. However, this does not seem to be a concern. One could argue that every approach to the history of philosophy is selective in some way, as it is guided by a specific question for which the investigating philosopher must narrow down the field. What is more striking, however, is that this approach carries not only the risk of anachronism but also the risk of overlooking important philosophical discrepancies to find philosophical parallels. For example, regarding the debate on neo-teleology, it is by no means clear whether Kant’s or Hegel’s account of teleology is sufficiently in line with the prevailing contemporary metaphysical framework, naturalism, or whether a different metaphysical framework poses philosophical problems for aligning these accounts. Furthermore, according to this point, research into the history of philosophy should seek in the works of that history support for what we already believe anyway.
However, contrary to the point just mentioned and in favor of the third point in the above list, it is worthwhile to study and engage with works of the history of philosophy not to confirm our contemporary philosophical beliefs and the theories that correspond to them but to question or challenge them. As the literature also argues, the philosophical engagement with these works broadens our philosophical horizon and can lead to intellectual independence precisely because it challenges our current philosophical theories (see also Katia Saporiti on this point of the importance of history of philosophy). Works of the history of philosophy often differ from our philosophical theories or even seem alien to them because they express different metaphysical worldviews and employ different vocabulary. Their metaphysical worldviews are often not only in tension with contemporary mainstream views (such as naturalism or atheism) but also support a highly contrasting philosophical view by advocating, for example, a form of dualism, idealism, or theological worldviews. This goes along with a vocabulary that conveys meanings and normative ideas rather alien to us, sometimes in surprising ways. By offering such different views that often challenge our current ones, they help us see our own philosophical position in a more nuanced way. Given this point, being attentive to such views from the history of philosophy is then of real philosophical value: The views are taken not only as a means but also as philosophical interlocutors.
And, even if we reject earlier metaphysical worldviews, we still benefit from them philosophically because (i) finding reasons to reject other philosophical possibilities relevant to our own philosophical position strengthens our own philosophical position and, most importantly in my view, (ii) knowledge of completely different philosophical worldviews is instructive in helping us to become aware of our own philosophical situatedness, the historical and intellectual-philosophical context in which we live. These worldviews make us aware of the peculiarity of our approaches, which, in turn, allows us to reflect upon this context and question it.
I believe that engaging with historical (and contemporary) philosophical works from other geographical regions and by philosophers who do not belong to the narrow philosophical canon is not only politically but also philosophically indispensable if we take this third point seriously. The lived experience of female philosophers, for example, could not only allow us to see philosophical problems with different eyes (on this point, see Von Manuel Fasko) but also open our eyes to problematic philosophical concepts and/or constructions in contemporary works, as well as in works from the history of philosophy.
This finally picks up the fourth point from the list above: Works on the history of philosophy provide us with resources for understanding our own philosophical situation, not only in terms of how their conceptual frameworks and vocabularies convey meanings and norms that may be completely different from our own, but also in terms of how influential texts (the texts of the philosophical canon) convey meanings and normative ideas that continue to influence our own thinking to this day. In this respect, they make us aware of our philosophical heritage, for better or worse. Correspondingly, engaging with these works on the history of philosophy can make us aware of the normative connotations of our current philosophical vocabulary. To give one example, Hegel’s ideas about love, family, and marriage are deeply patriarchal and full of normative ideas that continue to influence us today. Analyzing these ideas and uncovering their hidden connections to patriarchy is, in this sense, also a way of becoming aware of our own philosophical situation.
The value of engaging with works from the history of philosophy then lies not only in the way we deal with the past but also, as Lloyd has put it, in the “way of engaging with the present.”
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Elisabeth Paquette or the Associate Editor Shadi “Soph” Heidarifar.
Karen Koch
Karen Koch is Assistant Professor (Assistentin/PostDoc) in History of Philosophy at the University of Basel. She has a monograph entitled Denken in Zwecken. Bedeutung und Status der Teleologie in der theoretischen Philosophie Kants und Hegels (2023 by Meiner Verlag). Her research interests lie in classical German philosophy—especially Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, phenomenology (in particular Edith Stein), and philosophy of biology and feminism. She is author of articles on Kant’s and Hegel’s dialectics and their conceptions of the organism and mechanism, and she has coedited a couple of collected volumes: Das Selbstverständnis der Philosophie und ihr Verhältnis zu den anderen Wissenschaften (proceedings of the Hegel Congress 2023 of the Hegel-Vereinigung co-edited with Dina Emundts and Dirk Quadflieg, published with Klostermann) and Hegel and Feminism (co-edited with Giulia Bernard and Bojana Joviecevich, forthcoming with Bloomsbury).
