"Schelling's argument here rests upon an understandable but flawed interpretation of Kant...This is a plausible interpretation if one approaches Kant's distinction from the perspective of the third Kritik, as Schelling would have been inclined to do, assiduous student of the third Kritik that he was. Yet this is an inaccurate and anachronistic interpretation. The point behind Kant's distinction [between philosophy and mathematics--ES] becomes clear only when we approach it from a more historical perspective and interpret it according to the earlier Prize Essay." (F. Beiser, "Mathematucal Method in Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, " in Domski & Dickson, eds, Discourse on a New Method, 249-250)
In what follows I am only interested in the charge of "anachronism." (Let's grant for the sake of argument that Schelling's strategy leads him to inaccuracy--even if I doubt it.) First, philosophers don't just write texts, but also oeuvres. It is not unreasonable to think that a good philosopher writing at T0 (say 1781) has an inkling of how he is going to develop a position at T1 (1790). Some authors (say Kant) even invite their readers to do so--they wish to be read systematically. (The Prize Essay was published in 1764, by the way. Schelling is writing in 1803, I think.) In those cases, anachronism is not even on the table. But even in self-consciously eclectic authors such systematizing readings may be illuminating.
Now, Beiser (a former colleague, who had sent me the volume,) is one of the greatest historians of philosophy, ever. But here he commits a cardinal sin for a historian: he privileges his perspective. (That is, in fact, he is being anachronistic, but leave that aside.) Now that is not a sin. (If that were so, I would be dwelling in hell.) The charge of anachronism comes very cheaply to the historian. But that is to pretend as if anachronism can be avoided. (There is a lot of pseudo-history of philosophy--you know the folk that use Greek words to capture the crucial concepts in Plato and Aristotle.)
What must be avoided, of course, is vicious anachronism. The historian must be aware of (and reasonably transparent about) the costs in adopting a particular perspective. Above Beiser closes himself off from learning from his philosophic interlocutors. He treats the philosophic past as a set of available facts with himself as arbiter, and -- in doing so -- buries the history of philosophy.
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