Philosophy › Section D · Classical philosophy › Topic D.1
Writing the history of philosophy
Whenever you read Plato, Confucius or Ibn Sina, you are interpreting words written for a different world. The historiography of philosophy asks how to read such texts well, and each of its three main approaches gains something and risks something.
In this topic
- Why study philosophy's past?
- The presentist approach
- The cost: anachronism
- The contextualist approach
- The hermeneutic approach
- Worked example: three readings of one passage
- Worked example: catching an anachronism
- Whose history? The canon
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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