Theism and the history of philosophy

Appiano Buonafede

Ilario Tolomio

pp. 359-379

in: Gregorio Piaia, Giovanni Santinello (eds), Models of the history of philosophy III, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

When Appiano Buonafede was ready to publish the first volume of his Istoria e indole di ogni filosofia (Lucca, 1766), just over 20 years had elapsed since the publication of Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae (1742–1744). Yet in this brief period of time, the historiography of philosophy had reached full maturity, not only attracting the universal attention of men of learning but also gaining the same recognition enjoyed by other historical disciplines. Indeed, it was in the field of the historiography of philosophy that the different concepts of history, and even religion, were to clash in their defence of one or other ideological standpoint. Thus, for example, to find in the history of philosophy a series of authors who rejected not only divine providence but even the very existence of a superior being, seemed to be a confirmation of the attitudes of atheists and unbelievers of the most radical Enlightenment, going back to the historiographical interest that had characterized the libertine literature of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (cf. Models, II, pp. 10–11). To succeed in proving that some notion of the divine (the so-called universal consensus) could be found in all, or nearly all, thinkers and nations, on the other hand, sounded like a denial of the misbelief professed by the most insouciant philosophes. In short, from unbiased, erudite, and antiquarian research the history of philosophy had gradually become a field favoured for critical or apologetic activity.