Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy

Brief for an Inclusive Anti‐Canon

“…My purpose is to argue for an inclusive anti‐canonical pedagogy for the history of philosophy. Much of my argument builds on or responds to the work of others who have already thought very carefully about philosophical historiography and the place of the history of philosophy in philosophical pedagogy: Jonathan Bennett (), Martha Bolton (), Daniel Garber ( and ), Jessica Gordon‐Roth and Nancy Kendrick (), Sarah Hutton ( and ), Eileen O'Neill ( and ), Jonathan Rée (), Donald Rutherford (), Lisa Shapiro (), Mary Ellen Waithe (), Bernard Williams (), and Charlotte Witt (), among many others. But I believe that the particular pedagogical vision I present, though perhaps latent in the practice of many working historians of philosophy, has not yet been adequately articulated or defended.…”

International legal structuralism: a primer

“…What is offered in that name is in fact a species of textual exegesis or critical commentary, with no more connection to history than the fact that the authors are dead." 102 But even if a theorist tries to escape presentism with the excuse of doing nothing more than ahistorical critical commentary, the excuse won't appease for long, since "the reading of philosophy of the past cannot ignore the historical circumstances of their production without risk of serious distortion." 103 The demand that we avoid presentism through the placing of history in its proper contextthat it be properly historicized-is the baseline from which a historiographical critique of legal structuralism begins.…”

“…Just as From Apology to Utopia was stereotyped as a nihilistic deconstruction of law, was it also ‘dogged by debilitating anachronism and presentism’? (Hunter 2012, 1). If we take these terms to mean what Hunter means by them, Hunter must be right in his condemnation of Anghie (and by implication, international legal structuralism).…”

“…On the other hand, again for historians like Hunter, is the wrong kind of history: that which a priori assumes a philosophically determined way of understanding ideas in time. Hunter (2010, 2012) has suggested that Tony Anghie’s history of international legal thought is of this latter, presentist kind. I mention this here since Hunter’s criticisms of Anghie could easily be deployed at more recognizably structuralist works like From Apology to Utopia .…”

“…Historiographical problems arise, as Hunter sees it, when the author looks back to the arguments of early modern natural law and Enlightenment writers in order to condemn contemporary writers on the basis of their intellectual ancestors’ errors. While busily accusing these early writers of a false universalism, Hunter (2012, 2–3) suggests, Anghie and others smuggle in their own contemporary forms of universalism, erecting a vision of history intended to stand outside of history. To be sure, this is precisely what is going on when, in the 1980s, structuralists like Kennedy and Koskenniemi offered their lengthy discussions of Vitoria, Grotius, Wolf, Vattell, and so many others.…”