Introduction

Philosophy began with the Greeks, first the Pre-Socratics and then Socrates, Plato and Aristode, who collectively laid the foundations of future philosophy and established the fundamental divisions of the discipline: ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and logic. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Hobbes’ Leviathan and Rousseau’s Social Contract all to some extent do the work of historians and it goes without saying that historians in the production of their work often do the work of philosophers. This is evident in Foucault’s own work as he developed, explained and categorised his attitude to philosophy with his historical excursions, and his attitude to history with his philosophical excursions. Our discussion of Foucault’s interaction with the history of ideas will commence with a redefinition of the history of ideas beyond its more usual limits by the inclusion of the work of today’s ‘intellectual historians’ and ‘historians of philosophy’.