Thomas Kuhn opens The Structure 0f Scientific Revolutions with the following statement: 'History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.' I hope that it isn't too pretentious to end my polemic with a paraphrase of that statement: History of philosophy, if viewed as a repository for more than assorted arguments and errors, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of philosophy by which we are now possessed.--Daniel Garber (2005) "What's Philosophical about the History of Philosophy?" (146) in Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy.
The quoted passage is the final one of Garber's essay, which proudly defends so-called 'antiquarian' history of philosophy. It does not ask to what degree Kuhn's Structure produced a decisive transformation in the image of science. Nor does Garber explore to what degree a changed image of science leads to a change in the practice, evaluation or funding of science(s). But leaving aside Kuhn's self-presentation, there is no doubt that Kuhn's image of science -- hegemonic paradigms/consensus, revolutions, puzzle-solving, etc. -- changed the philosophers's image of philosophy often by way of contrast or emulation of an image of science--recall, for example, here and here on Williamson). Garber does not note the irony that to this day, Kuhn's status as a philosopher is controversial even long after his ideas have become conventional wisdom.
Garber's essay, thus, presupposes that there is an image of philosophy and that this image matters in some sense to the practice of philosophy. Even Timothy Williamson agrees with this much: "This book [The Philosophy of Philosophy--ES] grew out of a sense that contemporary philosophy lacks a self-image that does it justice." (ix) Williamson constructs an image that can do justice to what he claims is an existing practice and one that he favors; his image, we may add, is especially suited to his skills and interests--justice is convenient, that way. Garber proposes that history of philosophy can prepare, either indirectly by those that practice a disinterested history of philosophy, or more directly by those with a plan, the future of philosophy. He claims that,
[A]ntiquarian history of philosophy can help us to look at philosophy itself and its relations with other disciplines and with the larger world in a fresh new way. It is often taken for granted that the discipline of philosophy that we practise today is substantially the same as it was in past times. It is this assumption that underlies the way in which philosophers have generally used the history of philosophy as a source of arguments and problems for their current work. But a careful and genuinely historical study of early modern philosophy gives us a rather different conception of the subject, something from which we as philosophers in the twenty-first century can learn." (138)
One might think that the main message here is the denial that philosophy is essentially a stable kind with an eternal essence (recall Bolton). But while non-trivial, the key point is that this entails that there is always a possible alternative to the status-quo image of philosophy, or that the ruling self-image can be adapted to the new ends. Garber is explicit about this:
[The Historian of Philosophy] can show the philosopher alternative ways of conceiving what philosophy is. Realizing how philosophical problems, as well as the very concept of philosophy, have changed over the years can help us free ourselves from the tyranny of the present, essentialism with respect to the notion of philosophy itself. (145)
Garber's stance is self-defeating (qua advocacy of the history of philosophy within the intellectual division of labor within professional philosophy) if taken seriously. For, why keep philosophers around if you think that the status quo is just or true (cf. Williamson)? This is not just a theoretical observation; disciplines that take Kuhn's image of science really seriously quickly eliminate the history of their own field to be repaced with mythic textbook history. So, in so far as Garber offer his "analytic colleagues and their students" an argument to take the history of philosophy seriously, they would take away the wrong lesson. It is a bit surprising that Garber does not see this implication. For he writes that "the epistemological lesson is important: argument, even philosophical argument, is not always the disinterested seeking after truth. In the real world, arguments are offered, debates take place, in a larger social context, even in philosophy. This affects the arguments given, how they are read and interpreted, and how their strength is evaluated." (143)
So, it follows from Garber's own stance (and the historical examples of what we might call the 'politics of philosophy' he provides) that the folk that benefit from the status quo do not tend to await "decisive transformation" with Spinozistic equanimity. As Garber notes in commenting on an earlier period "In an age in which intellectual innovation had led to such disastrous consequences, intellectual conservatism must have looked enormously attractive." (137) So, if historians of philosophy are to be welcomed in philosophy that adopts a Kuhnian self-image, it will be ones that do not pose a threat at all; that is, they must be disciplined into the existing status quo and in their practices and -- predictable -- narratives reinforce+ what Michael Della Rocca has called the 'taming of philosophy.'
Garber sees the problem; and to his credit, he has a response, "in times like these, where the analytic paradigm is in what many consider a crisis, we need to think larger thoughts; we need a larger vision of what we are doing. It is this that the antiquarian can provide." (145) Last week I criticized Rutherford's version of the embrace of the image of the historian with the "larger vision" (as opposed to the narrow puzzle solver). Indeed, if one adopts a Kuhnian perspective, then it is tempting to diagnose a crisis in one's time that -- as Kuhn teaches -- makes space for a broader conversation, including the very possibility of a decisive transformation; but such a transformation also generates an accompanying rejigging of the historically conditioned self-image. But this strategy is through its very nature a temporary one; once the new self-image is imposed and even understood as just (and true), the antiquarian historian is in permanent retreat to be eliminated from the curriculum, etc. Now one might convince others that crisis is permanent (Cf. Walter Benjamin on the Ausnahmezustand). But it is more likely that the Kuhnian image of philosophy is a permanent danger not just to the historian of philosophy, but also to any philosophy that wishes to avoid in -- Garber's felicitous phrase -- the "tyranny of the present." (145)*
In describing himself Garber writes that "I like history, exploring old and archaic views of the world, views of the world that we can now say with some certainty are false, and I enjoy exploring them in the very particular social, political, and intellectual contexts in which they arose and lived." (129) This is odd because in a broadly Kuhnian (even proudly antiquarian) framework -- and I use the Carnapian terminology deliberately -- there is otherwise little room to evaluate the truth-functional status of various paradigms from without (we might say, that's an external question). It is also a self-defeating stance for the philosophical historian of philosopher, who should, by contrast, be receptive to the truths, and attuned to the insights, that are consequent to her studies.
In fact, at one point Garber notes that "[Kant] created historical categories that still haunt the modern historian of philosophy, categories that we are still trying to escape." (132) If one is really trying to escape Kantian historical categories, then one should not embrace a Kuhnian image of anything because (as, say, Michael Friedman's work exemplifies) Kuhn is suffused with Kantianism. With every paradigm one reinforces unwittingly the categories one wishes to escape. More important, in fact, is that Garber here acknowledges that (some) historical categories can be created. One role for the historian, then, is the study of such acts of 'category creation'** and to teach others not the contingency of history nor the justice of one's status quo; if she adopts any images of philosophy at all, these ought to "make us aware of what the possibilities for the future might be," (145) and, in so doing, allow us to become agents in the destiny and trajectory of philosophical ideas.
+ Garber notes the existence of such a subservient role for the history of philosophy, which is intended to reinforce some existing philosopher or set of issues: "In recent years there has emerged another kind of analytic philosopher, one who uses the history of philosophy to situate his own views. I have in mind here John McDowell in particular, who uses Cartesianism as a kind of foil against which to present his own philosophical views, and draws from earlier philosophers such as Kant and Hegel for his own positive views." (131; see also my treatment of the Bolt On.)
*One way to do so is to deny the Kuhnian story not just about philosophy but science: in recent times Garber denies that Kuhn got early modern science right.
**One might claim, of course, that this (Deleuzian) focus on philosophical prophecy does not escape Kantianism.
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