This article was downloaded by: [Fondren Library, Rice University ]On: 14 November 2014, At: 20:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

British Journal for the History ofPhilosophyPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbjh20

The History of the Historyof Philosophy, and the LostBiographical TraditionLeo Catana aa University of CopenhagenPublished online: 29 May 2012.

To cite this article: Leo Catana (2012) The History of the History of Philosophy, and theLost Biographical Tradition, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20:3, 619-625,DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2012.686986

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2012.686986

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

REVIEW ARTICLE

THE HISTORY OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY,AND THE LOST BIOGRAPHICAL TRADITION

Leo Catana

Gregorio Piaia and Giovanni Santinello (eds): Models of the History ofPhilosophy. Volume II: From the Cartesian Age to Brucker, translated byHilary Siddons and Gwyneth Weston. Springer: Dordrecht, Heidelberg,London and New York, 2011 (International Archives of the History of Ideas,vol. 204). pp. xþ 610. £224.50 (hb.). ISBN 978-90-481-9506-0.

The first two volumes of the Italian Storia delle storie generali (1979–2004)were introduced to the English-speaking world by Charles B. Schmitt in hisessay ‘The totality of thoughts’ (TLS, 6 May 1983). He offered a sweepingoverview of the early formation of the history of philosophy in theRenaissance period and its establishment as a philosophical discipline in theeighteenth century, where two Lutheran theologians and philologists,Christoph August Heumann (1681–1764) and Johann Jakob Brucker(1696–1770), played a major role. These two figures are central in thislong-awaited English translation of the second volume of the Models. Thetranslation of this second volume includes updated bibliographicalinformation compared with the 1979 Italian version, although the body ofthe text has not been substantially revised.

The second volume of theModels is divided into two parts. The first treatsthe general histories of philosophy published in France between 1653 and1737, and in Italy between 1681 and 1737 (3–297); the second part examinesthe general histories of philosophy appearing in Germany between 1688 and1748 (301–577). Each part is subdivided into chapters comprisingchronologically ordered accounts of the various historians of philosophyand their contribution to the genre. Geography (especially nationality) andchronology are thus two basic principles structuring the volume. In general,this structure works well, although it occasionally causes difficulties. Forinstance, national boundaries are crossed when French or Italian historiansof philosophy from the 1730s draw on methodologies developed inGermany in the 1710s and 1720s, and written in an internationallyaccessible language, Latin. One example of this is the Frenchman Jean

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20(3) 2012: 619–625

British Journal for the History of PhilosophyISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online ª 2012 BSHP

http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2012.686986

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

Levesque de Burigny (1692–1785), whose Theologie payenne of 1754 wasinfluenced by Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae written between 1742and 1744. The structure of presentation according to national categoriesmeans that the reader has to wait until the last part of the book beforeBrucker is introduced.

The structure of the volume is to a large extent based on the view ofGregorio Piaia, the author of the first part, that: ‘without the contributionof Cartesian rationalism the evolution towards a ‘‘critical’’ history ofphilosophy would not have taken place. From this point of view, Bayle,Heumann, Deslandes, and Brucker are all, in their various ways,descendents of the method and the spirit of Descartes’s (5–6). Thisinterpretation is not always mirrored in the second part, where MarioLongo relates that Brucker’s sources were not only the Cartesian spirit, asfiltered through Wolff’s ‘rigorously deductive philosophical system’, but also‘the tradition of scholastic rationalism’. Moreover, as Longo continues, ‘thedefinition of the contents and practical finality of philosophy, such as theprecise distinction between philosophy and theology, can be tracked back to[Johann Franz] Buddeus [1667–1729] and [Christian] Thomasius [1655–1728]’ (486–7). Both favoured Lutheran theology. The distance between theCartesian spirit and Brucker’s method becomes even more pronouncedwhen Longo cites Brucker’s judgement regarding Descartes’s rules ofmethod: ‘[they] are not adequate . . . and for that reason are not so universalas not to be lacking in many points, and furthermore the applicationremains dubious and uncertain’ (534, citing Brucker, Historia criticaphilosophiae, vol. V, 289). If this was how Brucker looked upon Descartesand his method, why is Cartesian rationalism assigned such a constitutiverole in the development of a ‘critical’ history of philosophy in this volume ofthe Models? To Brucker, Descartes was first of all a natural philosopher andnot the first modern philosopher – that is, he was not the first ‘eclectic’philosopher in modern times, a role which he reserved for Giordano Bruno(1548–1600) (Historia critica philosophiae, vol. V, 38). The idea thatDescartes was the father of early modern philosophy did not emerge beforethe nineteenth century, as has been explained by several scholars.1

Nevertheless, the organization of the material generally helps to fulfil thefirst of the two aims of the volume: to be, as Giovanni Santinello states inthe preface, ‘a tool of consultation and a systematic contribution to theintellectual history of the modern age’ (v–vi). What makes it even more user-friendly as a tool is the standardized account of each historian coveringbiographical and bibliographical information, an account of the concept ofthe history of philosophy proposed, and, finally, updated bibliographicalinformation concerning the form of historiography developed. Further-more, within this standardized structure each general history of philosophy

1See, for example, Knud Haakonssen (ed.) Cambridge History of 18th-Century Philosophy

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), vol. 1, 1–25.

620 LEO CATANA

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

is examined according to its structuring and periodization of the historyof philosophy, its fundamental historiographical theories and itsmethodological choices. This organization makes the volume not only anindispensable tool for everyone working on the historiography ofphilosophy, but also – and indeed the project as a whole – a pioneeringwork that is far more detailed and elaborate than its forerunner, LucienBraun’s Histoire de l’histoire de la philosophie (1973).

The other aim of the project – to offer a ‘systematic contribution to theintellectual history of the modern age’ – is certainly a worthy aim, but also acontroversial one. How do we narrate the intellectual history of the modernage in the field of general histories of philosophy? How do we select ourrelevant material? How do we analyse and present it? Santinello is aware ofthe ‘extreme complexity’ of the historiography of philosophy, and heunderstands the need for limitation. As he explains: ‘. . . we believe that thegenre we are dealing with is not the simple product of classificatoryabstraction. In the modern age, from the Renaissance to the end of thenineteenth century, the problem of the unity (variously understood) ofphilosophy and its systematization had given rise, as a consequence, to thetask of tracing its history in a relatively unitary and complete fashion, withthe aim of deriving some total significance from it.’ (viii). Consequently, thevolume includes material produced within the genre of general histories ofphilosophy and presents it according to geographical and chronologicalcategories. One exception is Piaia’s illuminating account of Pierre Bayle(100–39): Bayle did not produce a general history of philosophy, but isnevertheless included.

It is true, as Santinello states, that some of these general histories conceivephilosophy as unitary and relate its history in an internalistic manner.However, when accounting for the history of the history of philosophy andthe analytic tools and evaluations employed in it, we are faced with aproblem: the history of the history of philosophy, including its analytic toolsand evaluations, cannot always be explained on the basis of general historiesof philosophy, since such works may not articulate these issues at all, andsince statements about these issues may not reflect actual practice. In orderto overcome this problem, it is necessary to consider circumstances that areexternal to such works. It is necessary to look beyond general history ofphilosophy towards developments within competing genres, such as churchhistory, biography or general biographies. It may be necessary to looktowards other disciplines such as theology; or even towards political andinstitutional structures that influenced some of the tools and evaluations ofthe general histories of philosophy. (W. Glawe, Die Hellenisierung desChristentums in der Geschichte der Theologie von Luther bis auf dieGegenwart, 1912, for instance, describes Brucker’s historiography on thebackground of eighteenth-century theological discussions among Protes-tants. Glawe’s work is not included in the bibliography of the Models.)Admittedly, the second volume of the Models does point out such contexts

THE HISTORY OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 621

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

from time to time, but it appears primarily as an internal account ofthe genre. Still, the volume does provide us with a very solid startingpoint for such external contextualization, and that is an enormousachievement in itself.

Let me provide an example of one such external element. Heumann andBrucker are the key figures in the methodological foundation of history ofphilosophy, and they are both given ample space (399–432, 477–577). Theyreacted against the prevalent model of history of philosophy, namelyDiogenes Laertius’s general biography, and histories of philosophyemulating it in the seventeenth century, e.g. those composed by ThomasStanley and Georg Horn. Heumann presented his positive programme forthe history of philosophy in his ‘Einleitung zur historia philosophica’,published in the Acta philosophorum 1715–1716. It is noteworthy thatHeumann also published critical articles on ancient biographies in the sameissues of this periodical; articles on, for example, Diogenes Laertius’s Livesand Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus. In these articles Heumann dethroned thegeneral biography as a legitimate medium for the history of philosophy,sometimes for historical or philological reasons, sometimes for religiousreasons that derive from his Lutheran stance. An instance of the latter wefind in Heumann’s rejection of Platonic enthusiasm, set forth in his census ofPorphyry’s Life of Plotinus (23): this rejection is perhaps best explainedagainst the background of contemporary Lutherans fighting Pietists usingPlatonism in their theological agenda (e.g. F. C: Bucher, Plato mysticus inpietista redivivus, 1699). Also, Heumann’s use of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinusas a ‘test’ of the general biography is worth a critical re-examination: wasthis biography as representative of the tradition of general biographies asHeumann claimed? Or did it belong to a rather special kind of Neoplatonicbiography focusing on the virtues of the philosopher in question? It is true,as Longo explains, that Heumann wanted to avoid the biography and its‘gallery of portraits and personalities whose virtues and vices arecommended’ (550), a gallery that we do find in some ancient Neoplatonicbiographies, in Porphyry’s biography of Plotinus and especially inMarinus’s biography of Proclus. In Laertius’s general biography, however,we also find something else, namely an account of the past philosopher’sideas, as in the case of Plato (Laertius, Lives III. 67–80). This is not to saythat Laertius’s account of these ideas was always correct, only that it wasthere, whereas such an account was lacking in the biographies of Porphyryand Proclus. Hence Laertius’s accounts were not necessarily discredited bythe moral eulogies found in some Neoplatonic biographies. So, what wasHeumann up to? Which philosophical, theological and institutional effectswas he aiming at when he used Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus to discredit thegeneral biography as a medium of writing the history of philosophy?

Longo offers a good introduction to the positive programme of Heumannand Brucker, and he frequently points out one central analytic tool, theirconcept of ‘system’: the task of the historian of philosophy is to identify the

622 LEO CATANA

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

principles (that is, the general premises) in the system and to explain how thesystem’s doctrines derive deductively from them (477–94). In this context itwould also have been of interest to compare the interpretative consequencesof Heumann’s and Brucker’s new reading technique with the interpretationsproduced within the tradition of general biographies. Brucker’s adoption ofHeumann’s precepts resulted in some quite distorting interpretations of the‘principles’ (in Greek archai; in Latin, principia) in the so-called systems ofancient philosophy. Brucker tended to read these ‘principles’ in the logicalsense of premises, whereas Laertius had typically understood them in theontological sense. Compare, for instance, Plato’s theory of the two‘principles’ of the world, matter and god, as expressed in the Timaeus32C–33A: Laertius correctly renders these two archai as the two ontologicalorigins of the universe (III.69), whereas Brucker regards them, together withPlato’s doctrine of ideas, as if they were premises from which all thedoctrines of Plato’s system were deduced (Brucker, Historia criticaphilosophiae, I, 682, 695, 705, 811). Again, what were the external reasonsthat forced Brucker to such a distorted and distorting reading? And whatwas the outcome – philosophically, theologically, and institutionally – of hisreading? The present volume provides a first and solid starting point forsuch explorations, and in this respect it is a pioneering work that deservesserious attention.

With regard to Brucker’s reading technique, Longo writes that Brucker‘constructed’ the past philosophies ‘by ‘‘philosophemes’’ which are arrangedaccording to the deductive method’ (536). Admittedly, Brucker does claimthat his reading technique functions by means of logical deductions frompremises, or principles (e.g. Historia critica philosophiae, vol. I, 15);however, he rarely deduces anything logically in his accounts of pastsystems of philosophy. Instead, he accredits the expounded philosopher’ssystem with various ‘principles’ (principia), or placita, which are typically ofa metaphysical nature, and which sometimes misrepresent the source(s) inorder to fit Brucker’s reading technique. Brucker then adds corollaries thatare only loosely related to these placita – corollaries that cover thephilosopher’s positions within so-called theoretical philosophy (e.g. naturalphilosophy and mathematics), to which he adds still other corollaries aboutthe philosopher’s so-called practical philosophy (e.g. moral philosophy andpolitical philosophy). Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies, for instance, areexpounded in this manner, although Plato himself did not present histeaching by means of these two headings (ibid., vol. I, 670–727, 805–39). Ifthe rules of logical deduction are not the driving force in Brucker’s accountof systems, then what is? It would have been interesting to compareBrucker’s precepts with his own practice.

Brucker’s rhetorical statements about his method (e.g. ibid., vol. 1, 15) inhis ‘Dissertatio praeliminaris’ can easily be taken to express a rational andpragmatic endeavour leading to an account of the past philosopher’s system,its principles and its internal coherence. However, in this ‘Dissertatio

THE HISTORY OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 623

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

praeliminaris’ he also explains that the purpose of his history of philosophyis religious and apologetic, namely to battle against atheists and heretics,especially ancient and recent Platonists, and to support Christianity and itschurch. His history of philosophy can be used as an ‘index of errors’ in thisbattle (Historia critica philosophiae, vol. I, 21–3). To Brucker, the correctiveis Christian revelation: given the narrow limitations of human reason, itmust accept divine revelation as an authoritative corrective (ibid., vol. I, 7).This apologetic view fits well with Brucker’s professional occupation – heserved as a minister in the Lutheran church for most of his adult life – and itfits with his practice as a historian of philosophy.

Brucker’s actual reading technique thus provides an adequate mechanismfor his corrective apologetic. The identification of one or a few principles ineach philosopher’s system makes it easy for him to judge their conformitywith Christian doctrine. And this is precisely what he does in his accounts ofthe various systems. He typically ends his account of past philosophers byan assessment of their religious orthodoxy. The exposition of Aristotle’ssystem, for instance, is completed with a section discussing whether Aristotlewas an atheist or not (ibid., vol. I, 832–5): Aristotle’s god, eternallyabsorbed in contemplating himself, cares for nothing outside himself; hedoes not care for his ‘products’, for which reason it is meaningless forhuman beings to worship him (ibid., vol. I, 833). This is a normativejudgement of Aristotle’s system, not a logical one. In general, the ‘tribunal’set up by Brucker is not only of a logical and pragmatic nature, it isapologetic as well. As Longo says, ‘Brucker’s historiography is whollypermeated with theological concerns, following the tradition of the school ofBuddeus’ (571). Brucker’s judgements of past philosophers did not mark ahigh point of toleration in the history of history of philosophy – on thecontrary, it was a low point. Like other thinkers from his period, his notionof toleration was at best inter-confessional; his toleration did not go beyondthis, and he judged past philosophers that fell outside the sphere ofChristianity severely.

All in all, this second volume of the Models is to be highly recommended.It is a pioneering work that focuses on a crucial phase in which the history ofphilosophy was transformed from a branch of history into a branch ofphilosophy through figures like Heumann and Brucker. From it we canlearn to appreciate the character of the history of philosophy in its earlydays, and we can use this knowledge about the discipline’s intellectual rootsas a starting point for reflecting about its future. Clearly, this is a volume ofgreat value to historians of philosophy, but it is also of interest to theircolleagues in philosophy departments or in historical disciplines. Con-temporary philosophers have inherited assumptions about the history ofphilosophy that have determinate historical origins: the idea, as we haveseen, that Descartes is the founder of modern philosophy is a view thatemerged only in nineteenth-century histories of philosophy. The history ofthe history of philosophy allows philosophers in general to take a critical

624 LEO CATANA

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

and sceptical approach to inherited historiographies. In this way,philosophers may even gain insight into other assumptions aboutphilosophy’s nature, assumptions first transmitted through general historiesof philosophy, later regarded as truisms.

University of Copenhagen

THE HISTORY OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 625

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Fond

ren

Lib

rary

, Ric

e U

nive

rsity

] a

t 20:

18 1

4 N

ovem

ber

2014