Introduction

Through their writing, their teaching, their mentoring, and their broader scholarly output, Gail Fine and Terry Irwin have reshaped the character of ancient philosophy as an academic discipline. Their contributions to the discipline do not, however, end there. On the contrary, their wide-ranging achievements extend into all periods of the history of philosophy and indeed into several areas more systematic than historical. Or perhaps one should say, rather, that their work defies any ready classification as being either historical or systematic, because whatever its primary focus on a given occasion, what they write cannot be pigeonholed as either exclusively scholarly or thematic; for they practice an unremittingly philosophical form of history of philosophy, or, judged from another angle, a historically enriched form of systematic philosophy. That is, as they pursue it, philosophy engages the discipline’s history in a manner animated by its current and perennial concerns, but it does so while remaining fully sensitive to the original context of its production. Their work combines the highest level of scholarly rigor and rich philosophical insight. Animated by a purely philosophical spirit, it is never narrowly antiquarian in orientation. Although alert to matters of text and transmission reflecting painstaking philological care and exceptionally broad scholarly erudition, their work never loses sight of a simple question: should we too believe this?...