Before the History of Philosophy: Forms of Organizing the Philosophical Past Toward a History-of-Philosophy Canon
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47850/RL.2026.7.3.7-24Keywords:
history of philosophy, history-of-philosophy canon, philosophical past, prisca theologia, philosophia perennis, historia philosophica, Leibniz, BruckerAbstract
The article examines the formation of the history-of-philosophy canon and the forms of organizing the philosophical past that preceded the disciplinary establishment of the history of philosophy. It aims to identify the principles governing the selection and ordering of philosophical doctrines in prisca theologia, philosophia perennis, and historia philosophica. A comparative analysis establishes the criteria that connect individual doctrines into a unified whole and determine their place within it. These forms are shown not to constitute successive stages of a single discipline: the first constructs a genealogy of primordial wisdom, the second reconstructs a common truth present in different doctrines, and the third organizes material through historical succession and development. The article concludes that the history of philosophy formed its own canon by incorporating elements of the preceding forms without eliminating the differences between their aims and procedures.
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