Let me begin with the latter model, which I shall term the “pure history” model. According to this historiographical method, evaluations of philosophical arguments and projects, while crucial to philosophy, are irrelevant to the history of philosophy. Scholars who use this model, like the nineteenth-century historian of ancient philosophy Eduard Zeller, see the history of philosophy as a dispassionate chronicling of every move in the dialectic of philosophy. Of course, for all their attempts at writing the “pure history” of philosophy, even the followers of Zeller omitted the women, who were seen as significant contributors to the field in their own time. This suggests that the particular interests and blind spots of the historian, and of the era in which the historian lives, will come into play—come what may. But, of course, the real issue is not what the history of philosophy is like, come what may, but which methodology we ought to take as our ideal—even if this ideal is never achieved. Still, it is not entirely clear what the point would be of chronicling every position in the endless dialectic (per impossible), in accordance with this first method. For this model might be characterized, as Walter Benjamin noted, as one “which despairs of grasping and holding the genuine historical image as it flares up briefly. Among medieval theologians it was regarded as the root cause of sadness.” Eileen O'Neill (1997) Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History, pp. 39-40
It is uninformative to say that David Lewis was an excellent philosopher. After all he dominates our thinking. It is less often noticed that he was excellent at philosophical politics (in addition to his theoretical reflections on it, see the evidence that Graham Priests bequeathed to us). Within institutional life such politics are as inevitable as the Spinozistic necessity that governed Cavaillès' life and death. As the previous sentence suggests, perhaps too obliquely for some and too crassly for others, the connection between the philosophical politics within a profession and politics in the more ordinary sense can, while often obscured by inattention, be intense.
To be able to write simultaneously with assurance about the history of philosophy, its philosophical politics, and their connection to politics is the sure sign of being in the presence of a philosophical magister or magistra. Magister/magistra is the latin for teacher, but its etymological origins is from 'more' or 'great.'' (To be a magister/magistra, then, is to overflow with philosophy.) There are different styles of doing so. For example, Lewis often disguised his learning and his chess-playing on multiple boards at once.
The late Eileen O'Neill (recall here and here) is such a magistra. Her (1997) "Disappearing Ink" succeeds at all three tasks of rewriting the history of philosophy, its philosophical politics, and their connection to politics (even if the contents of the history of philosophy are served up as tempting morsels to be chewed over) without disguising her enormous learning. It is something of a scandal that the work's significance has been confined to those of us dedicated to rewriting the narrative of early modern women philosophers (recall also this post; and, especially, this one). For, at the heart of her argument is the politically explosive thought that rebirth of democracy in the fulcrum we call the French Revolution was a disaster for women philosophers. As she shows, in its long aftermath philosophy was re-institutionalized in universities and literally gendered male.*
It is explosive because the very period and political organization that prides itself on progress and emancipation, was de facto simultaneously an enormous silencing operation. To question progress is to invite hatred. O'Neill's point is not mere historical reconstruction; it was fully anticipated by Olympe de Gouges (recall), who lost her head by (recall) bravely warning against the unfolding disaster, and then was forgotten for several centuries. To put one of her points in familiar jargon, and so perhaps to domesticate it, there was a huge Kuhn loss for philosophy, when due to the ideal of philosophical progress, it became unable to see much of the richness of the preceding centuries as philosophy at all (and for democratic feminists to miss their less egalitarian, but platonic feminism, etc.).** It is most dispiriting to have to mark the conformist lack of curiosity about such matters by our own teachers and, for those with a semblance of democratic faith, to confront democracies' lack of generosity.
It is no argument against the primarily aristocratic and mystical women (or both) that their philosophizing was made possible by an unjust political order and so -- sotte voce -- had their obliteration coming. One injustice does not get canceled out by the next one.
In re-reading Disappearing Ink ahead of a memorial, my train of thought was interrupted by the presence of the quote from Walter Benjamin. His presence should not surprise because (recall) Benjamin has, not unlike O'Neill, a keen sense that official history tends to be history as told by the victor, that the narrative of progress creates the recurring astonishment that the things we are experiencing are “still” possible; and that the historian's task is, in part, to make alternative futures possible.
The passage she quotes (in my quote above) is from Benjamin's diagnosis that many historicist historians suffer (without acknowledgment) from empathy with the victor; a future historicizing, philosophical historian of sympathy may well wish to trace the connections and Abkunft between Manne's himpathy and Benjamin's analysis.
In the passage quoted by O'Neill, Benjamin contrasts the reformed historical materialism he favors with those historians who through great acts of sympathy and attention to detail wish "to relive an era" without the pretense of knowing what follows. O'Neill's contrast is with a heroic, almost Borgesian, historian who chronicles every position, This kind of chronicle is, in fact, coming within greedy, technological reach thanks to cheap computer power and data mining.+
There is another explicit reference to Benjamin at the end of an important passage:
Influential historians, like Tiedemann and Tennemann, each rewrote the history of philosophy, raising up certain figures and quickly passing over others. And typically they constructed their histories so that they conveniently “led up to” their pet philosophical projects, be it “Lockean sensualism,” “Kantian idealism,” or some other view. Indeed, most of the great philosophers themselves included elements of Geistesgeschichte in their own philosophical works, as a method of tying their arguments to the philosophical past. Consider Descartes’s treatment of the Scholastics or Kant’s depiction of himself as the synthesis of what is true in Leibniz’s “noologism” (or, to transform the Greek into Latin, “rationalism”) and in Locke’s “empiricism.” Philosophers sometimes called for a new Geistesgeschichte to be written, as a justification for a newly emerging philosophical canon. The historian Victor Cousin, in his 1828 Paris lectures to a crowd of two thousand gentlemen, said:
Let us hope that France, . . . which has already produced Descartes, will enter in her turn upon . . . the history of philosophy. . . . Every great speculative movement contains in itself, and sooner or later produces necessarily, its history of philosophy, and even a history of philosophy which is conformed to it; for it is only under the point of view of our ideas that we represent to ourselves the ideas of others.
This passage is interesting in what it suggests about the role that gender, class, ethnicity, and nationalism may have played in the actual constructions of modern histories of philosophy. But it may also lead us to wonder why we should not just abandon sweeping narratives that lead up to a particular set of contemporary interests. Critics have argued that it is misguided to turn to the philosophy of the past as a way of justifying one’s present philosophical concerns, since past philosophers cannot do a better job than we at solving our current problems. And they argue that it is a mistake to construct history with an eye to the present, since this simply distorts the history of philosophy. To borrow the beautiful image from Walter Benjamin, the Angel of History is propelled backward into the future, ever keeping its gaze on the past.
It is tempting, in the face of the self-serving grand narratives or even the more modest (albeit shameless) legitimation projects of our own time,++ to rewrite the history of philosophy in the service of a new, unknown victor. I plead guilty to having giving in to temptation at times. The much harder task -- one that O'Neill invites us to -- is to write and rewrite with a roving eye on philosophical politics (she calls it "internal dialectics") and politics, in such a way that philosophical possibilities are constantly revived and re-opened. In part this is strategy against being enlisted in, and facilitate, new forms of subordination; in part, this is doing justice to truth that is abundant, and overflowing.
*I would add to her argument that it was also nationalized by political empires.
**To note this is not to ignore that the early moderns allowed themselves to be incapable of reading and learning ffrom scholastic philosophy.
+It is worth quoting O'Neill's reasons for the futility of such a project (note the reliance of Benjamin in the passage):
Perhaps a philosopher might think that, with this detailed “pure history” of philosophy before her, she would be in the best position to evaluate philosophical arguments and projects, for she then would be able to judge which were the most innovative, strategically useful, and elegant moves in the game called “philosophy.” But, of course, this historical narrative itself never attains closure; it must be revised as philosophy itself changes its rules and even, perhaps, the very goals of the game. The evaluation of moves in the game, thus, cannot be made after the detailed history is completed; the evaluations must be made as we go along rewriting the history of the discipline—as we “brush history against the grain.” So, what might look like a philosophical interest in having a “pure history” of philosophy turns out to be a nonstarter.
++Cf. Williamson on method and recent history.
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