ABSTRACT
Anyone embarking on the study of philosophy can expect frequent encounters with ancient thinkers. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle will become almost constant companions. Epicurus, the Stoics, and Plotinus, too, will be met repeatedly, albeit at more distant intervals. This, in itself, is a curious and crucial fact. Unlike philosophy students, budding geographers and medical students, for instance, are not expected to gain familiarity with the beginnings of their subject. In fact, amongst traditional academic disciplines, philosophy appears to be the only one to be centrally interested in its own past. As the example of respected practitioners in all domains of philosophical research shows, philosophy includes, as an integral part of itself, a reflection on its history. So much is this the case that the logician and metaphysician A.N. Whitehead was not taken to be more than mildly paradoxical when he famously described philosophy as ‘a set of footnotes to Plato’. 1
