[...]... author of Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (1989), Malebranche and Ideas (1992), Spinoza: A Life (1999), and Spinoza’s Heresy (2002) G A J Rogers is Professor Emeritus of the History of Philosophy at Keele University He is the founder-editor of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy and the author and editor of many books and papers, mostly relating to seventeenth-century philosophy. .. with the ways in which history of philosophy benefits analytic philosophy After giving a brief survey of the status of history and historians of philosophy in analytic philosophy since the 1970s, she distinguishes between convincing and unconvincing grounds for valuing history and historians more highly She agrees that historical texts have their pedagogical uses, and that history of philosophy can call... English-speaking world Philosophy written in English is overwhelmingly analytic philosophy, and the techniques and predilections of analytic philosophy are not only unhistorical but anti-historical, and hostile to textual commentary Analytic philosophy is not uniform, but it usually aspires to a very high degree of clarity and precision of formulation and argument, and it often seeks to be informed by, and consistent... little danger of thinking that a historian of philosophy is somebody who makes history rather than someone who writes history Our main concern here is the historiography of philosophy; but I must spend some time in discussing the history, since the nature of the historiography depends on the nature of the history In its turn, the nature of the history of philosophy depends on the nature of philosophy. .. author of more than thirty books on philosophy and its history, and his most recent publications include A Brief History of Western Philosophy (1998) and Aquinas on Being (2003) He is engaged in writing four volumes to be published by Oxford University Press over the years 2004–7 under the title ‘A New History of Western Philosophy Steven Nadler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison... with analytic philosophy is less clear More obscure still is the connection between analytic philosophy and a kind of history of philosophy that is unapologetically antiquarian This is the kind of history of philosophy that emphasizes the status of a philosophical text as one document among others from a far-away intellectual world, and that tries to acquaint 3 B Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge and. .. philosopher and a historian The history of philosophy is unlike the history of any other pursuit A historian of painting does not have to be a painter; a historian of medicine does not, qua historian, practise medicine But a historian of philosophy cannot help doing philosophy in the very writing of history It is not just that someone who knows no philosophy will be a bad historian of philosophy; it... visible in analytic philosophy today Although it is supposed to do away with arguments from authority and professions of discipleship, in practice analytic philosophy is rife with deference to a few living philosophers and a few recently dead ones So even if history of philosophy were full of deference to philosophers of the past (which it isn’t), that would not set it apart from analytic philosophy. .. narrow historical scope of most of the essays that follow This page intentionally left blank The Philosopher’s History and the History of Philosophy ANTHONY KENNY It is important to distinguish the history of philosophy (what philosophers have done) from the historiography of philosophy (what historians of philosophy do) In this paper I will try to use ‘historiography’, not history , when that is... critical edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan (2003), and he is currently editing volumes for the Clarendon edition of the Works of John Locke Tom Sorell is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex His books include Hobbes (1986) and Descartes Reinvented: Innocent Cartesianism and Recent Philosophy (forthcoming) He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (1996) and, with Luc Foisneau, of Leviathan . number of articles on both the history of philosophy and current issues in general philosophy, including ‘Analytical Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in Jonathan Ree et al., Philosophy and. Sorell Is the History of Philosophy Good for Philosophy? 61 Catherine Wilson The History of Philosophy as Philosophy 83 Gary Hatfield What’s Philosophical about the History of Philosophy? 129 Daniel. Sorell The Philosopher’s History and the History of Philosophy 13 Anthony Kenny Why Should Analytic Philosophers Do History of Philosophy? 25 John Cottingham On Saying No to History of Philo sophy 43 Tom