ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the period beginning in modernity through the 1960s, in order to understand the role that the term plays in “Continental” philosophy, and especially in Gilles Deleuze. The analysis focuses on the strategies employed by different agents to define “philosophical” problems, or “philosophical” ways of posing problems. The term “problem,” originally used in Antiquity by knowledge-producers located in an autonomous position, implied an idea of cognition oscillating between production and reproduction. As the product of Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic historicism, idealism made extensive use of the concept of “problem,” adding a temporal and genetic aspect. The language of Problemgeschichte can even be tracked in the more mature works of the Austrian Edmund Husserl. Degerando’s Comparative History, influenced by German idealism, was punctuated by the term “problem” along with terms such as “system,” “school,” “sect” and “doctrine.” Between the meticulously classified topics, one that grew in importance consisted in developing a given “problem” (probleme).
