ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an outsider’s view of some of the issues raised in this book, from the point of view of an intellectual historian and historiographer rather than a philosopher. In addition to addressing, towards the end, the question of canons (especially their relative importance to philosophy as opposed to history), the essay also posits several reasons for the philosopher’s fundamentally different approach to historical sources and evidence as compared with that of historians, though conceding intellectual history as sharing some of the concerns and methods of both. The differences between the disciplines are construed as falling under three broad categories: differences of purpose and motivation; differences with respect to the relative priority of ‘theory’ versus ‘fact’; and differences of method. While substantive differences remain between the approach of the intellectual historian to the history of ideas and that of the philosopher to the history of philosophy, the essay argues that these are discipline-appropriate and also bridgeable in ways that may not have been true in previous decades.
