Faruk asked:

Why do we need history of philosophy?

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We need to unpack "we." Some people need to know the history of philosophy for general reference
purposes. Philosophers need to know it in order to avoid wasting time when they decide to answer a
question. Why assume that one is the first philosopher to raise it? Why risk wasting time reinventing
the wheel? Of course, one can use the "need to do more research" as an excuse to evade the
responsibility to do one's own thinking, but one has no basis for claiming that it has not been thought
before — let alone scrutinized and challenged — if one has not read what others have done in that
area of inquiry.

Is knowledge of the history of philosophy strictly necessary? No. It is theoretically possible for one to
answer all questions that other would recognize as philosophical without one's being aware that
anyone else had ever attempted to answer them. Without referring to the diachronic conversation that
is philosophy's history, however, one cannot know that one's set of answers contributes to
philosophy.Such an isolated thinker would be cut off from the life of that conversation, and both he
and others would be the poorer. Practically speaking, such isolation is impossible. Also, as in other
areas, knowledge of the history of philosophy is a matter of more or less. Unless one is interested in
the history of philosophy for its own sake (whatever that means), one fills in the gaps of one's
knowledge as the need arises, always grateful for interlocutors who make "old" texts live prospects
for reading rather than the dead inventory of a reading list.

Tony Flood

As the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana put it: "Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it." (Perhaps tellingly, Santayana himself has been omitted from most
of the standard one-volume histories of philosophy available today.)

T. P. Uschanov

Research Assistant

Department of Philosophy

University of Helsinki

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