What is the good of philosophical history?
pp. 294-325
in: Erich Reck (ed), The historical turn in analytic philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 2013Abstract
At many universities, one can find scholars who style themselves historians of some sort, who are nevertheless not employed in history departments — the historians of philosophy that no self-respecting philosophy department can be without. Such creatures are especially remarkable when they reside in primarily "analytic' philosophy departments — analytic philosophy, after all, is the most ahistorical of philosophical schools. Most curious of all, perhaps, is a still-young breed — we historians of analytic philosophy. Why do beings like us exist? What purpose do we serve? Such questions form the theme which I would like to address, in at least a preliminary way, in this chapter.