The Historiography of Philosophy

This book presents the Nellie Wallace lectures which Michael Frede gave in Oxford in 1989–90. These lectures discuss how the history of philosophy has been studied and how it should be studied. There are three systematical approaches to the history of philosophy which run under the same heading ‘history of philosophy’ and deal with the same material, but they are distinct enterprises: philosophical doxography, philosophical history of philosophy, and historical history of philosophy. All three enterprises are perfectly legitimate, but the lectures give priority to the historical history of philosophy, since the other two ultimately have to rely on its findings. Thus, the lectures start by showing how the historical history of philosophy differs from the two philosophical studies of the history of philosophy. They then examine the historical discipline in more detail, and finally look into the consequences of its practice.