'The history of philosophy as practiced by professional philosophers [hereafter HOPPP] is a service to the rest of the profession; HOPPP's scholarly output is primarily geared to facilitate (undergraduate) teaching.' This suspicion [hereafter HOPPPS2P] had lodged in my mind when a few years ago I started to reflect on (a) the extremely low citation rates for journal articles in HOPPP, which suggests that there are no genuine controversies nor classic papers that ground future research; (b) the lack of concern about the proliferation of Handbooks and Companions that are effectively slowing down research in HOPPP; (c) the extreme difficulty of getting a position in HOPPP if one is not working on a canonical figure. (There are, of course, extreme regional differences on (c); in some places there are no positions for HOPPPers; in other places so-called 'systematic' and 'practical' philosophers do not even regard HOPPP as philosophy, but let it exist out of institutional inertia, benign neglect, etc.) But I wondered if I could ground ground HOPPPS2P in hard data.
Luckily, Michael Beaney, the thoughtful editor of British Journal for the History of Philosophy (BJHP), wrote a review of the last 20 years of the BJHP, with some recommendations for the future. Now BJHP is a young journal, but it has become one of the top venues in the sub-field. (In Europe it certainly also helps that it is listed in Thompson's Web of Knowledge/Science index so that publication can count in the right metrics.) Beaney and his team compiled data on the contents of the first twenty years.
"What this shows is that almost half the journal has been devoted to the work of just seven philosophers – the ‘big seven’ of early modern philosophy – and that around two-thirds of the journal has been devoted to the work of just sixteen philosophers, with three more early modern philosophers included as well as Plato and Aristotle from the ancient period and four [Hegel, Mill, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche--ES] nineteenth-century philosophers.
I am concerned that as we move further away from the twentieth century, the canon will become more and more fixed (Frege, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein are already seen as its main founders). It is essential that we do not forget the role played by others, whether ‘analytic’ or not (such as Peirce, Cook Wilson, Meinong, Poincare, Peano, Husserl, Twardowski, Stebbing and Collingwood, to mention just a few).
While I share Beaney's sentiment (although I would also include that we should not forget the overlap between economics and philosophy: Ramsey, Johnson, Sidgwick, Keynes, Jevons, Marshall, Neurath, etc.), contrary to Beaney, I do not see forgetting as such as a philosophical problem. But if HOPPPers tacitly take the undergraduate curriculum as a given in framing their philosophical research, it means that we are imprisoned in narratives constructed by others often for their now long-forgotten philosophical purposes. It means that we do not really see HOPPP as an autonomous intellectual enterprise in the two senses that matter: (i) as a field with its own research agenda, questions, and methods; or (ii) for doing philosophy and shaping its future. (Pre-order this volume now!) The situation has gotten particularly dire with the demise of HPS as a project of shared intellectual inquiry between philosophers and historians (about which another time more).
Of course, (a) there is no dishonor in the noble practice of undergraduate teaching. Moreover, (b) HOPPP also provides a refuge or professional cover for interesting philosophers who do not quite fit existing fashions in core areas. Furthermore, (c) HOPPP also provides a good trading-zone for analytic and continental philosophers to meet and discuss shared interests. Finally, (d) HOPPP can be a good incubator of philosophical projects that need some historical reflection before they can develop. All of these may be good enough justification for the ongoing existence of HOPPP.
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