Philosophical Historiography in Modern French Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract This chapter addresses major tendencies in the history of academic French historiographies of philosophy, from the establishment of history of philosophy as a university discipline in the early nineteenth century to feminist critiques of the philosophical canon in the twentieth century. Focusing on the ways in which the philosophical character of the history of philosophy has been conceptualized, it argues that the history of the historiography of philosophy in France is marked in two ways by the intellectual legacy of Victor Cousin. At the level of canon-formation, this history has involved continuity and reproduction of those authors and texts which Cousin regarded as central to the history of philosophy. With feminist historiographies of philosophy, the theory-constitutive function of the canon itself comes into question, thus opening a new field of inquiry as to what should be counted as properly ‘philosophical’.