Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Reichl, Pavel

Titel

Making history philosophical: Kant, Maimon, and the evolution of the historiography of philosophy in the critical period

Ist Teil von

• British journal for the history of philosophy, 2020-05, Vol.28 (3), p.463-482

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Taylor & Francis

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this article I explore Maimon's role in the evolution of Kant's understanding of the function of the history of philosophy in philosophical enquiry. Kant is often viewed as holding an ambivalent relation to the history of philosophy. On the one hand, he dismisses past philosophers as victims of transcendental illusion and downplays the value of the historiography of philosophy. On the other hand, by framing his project as a synthesis of several philosophical traditions, Kant embeds the critical philosophy into a sweeping historical narrative in a manner that highlights the importance of the past for present philosophical aims. In this article, I argue that for most of his career Kant held a position reflective of the former view, but that the publication of Maimon's response to a prize question announced by the Royal Academy led Kant to develop an understanding of the history of philosophy more in line with the latter view. The result is a distinctively post-Kantian model for a 'philosophical history of philosophy' that is both methodologically nuanced and potentially relevant to contemporary debates.