Table Of ContentThe Historiography of Philosophy
The Historiography
of Philosophy
MICHAEL FREDE
Edited by
KATERINA IERODIAKONOU
With a Postface by
JONATHAN BARNES
1
1
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Preface
Katerina Ierodiakonou*
1. The Nellie Wallace Lectures: The Manuscript
and Its History
In the autumn term of the academic year 1989–1990 in Oxford, Michael
Frede delivered the Nellie Wallace Lectures under the general title The
Historiography of Philosophy. After returning to Princeton, NJ, he
entrusted his manuscript to the secretary of the Philosophy Department,
either Ann Getson or Bunny Romano; one or other of them usually
typed his work for publication, since he himself never used a computer.
It is this typed version of Frede’s lectures that we still have, for when he
moved to Oxford in 1991, Frede threw away the manuscript, but at least
kept safe, in a folder with a hard black cover, the only copy of the typed
version of his lectures. In 2005, he brought this folder to Athens, along
with the rest of his papers and books; unfortunately, he never found the
time to read through this typescript and make the necessary corrections
before his death in 2007.
Although in general the secretary in Princeton did a careful job, there
is no doubt that it would have been better to have Frede’s own manu-
script. For the secretary left gaps at some places in the text and added a
number of question marks, where she could not decipher his handwrit-
ing or could not understand the German terms he used. Moreover, she
seems to have skipped parts of Frede’s sentences, which often are delib-
erately repetitive. Indeed, while copying the typed version of the lectures
onto my computer in Word format, I was at times reminded of just how
tricky the copyist’s job is. For I had to be particularly vigilant not to leave
* I would like to thank Charles Brittain, Benjamin Morison, and Wolfgang Mann for their
helpful comments on an earlier version of this preface.
viii PrefaCe
out whole sections of Frede’s text, in which the same words and phrases
occur again and again. On the other hand, his repetitive style proved of
great help to me in deciding how to fill in some of the gaps the secretary
had left.
Although I sometimes needed to modify the typed version of the
Nellie Wallace Lectures, such changes were kept to a bare minimum, in
order to preserve Frede’s rather idiosyncratic style. For he famously
wrote the way he talked, so that anyone who reads these lectures and
who had the chance to meet him in person will easily be able to hear his
voice. Thus, I decided to retain the long sentences and distinctive syn-
tax, but to introduce changes in the punctuation and separation of para-
graphs in order to make the text more readable. To facilitate such
decisions, I also sought the advice of Frede’s students and colleagues. In
a two- day workshop at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi in June
2017, James Allen, Chloe Balla, Charles Brittain, Damian Caluori, John
Cooper, Paul Kalligas, Vaso Kindi, Richard McKirahan, Benjamin
Morison, Spyros Rangos, and Voula Tsouna met to discuss the difficul-
ties in editing The Historiography of Philosophy. I would like to thank
them all from my heart for their constructive suggestions. I would like
also to thank Wolfgang Mann and Stephen Menn, who kindly sent me
constructive comments on Frede’s text. Finally, thanks are due to
François Nolle, who compiled the notes with a view to providing biblio-
graphical references for those readers who may be interested in explor-
ing more thoroughly the issues that Frede raises.
The notes refer, in addition, to a set of lectures Frede had given at the
University of California, Riverside in January 1986, which differ on sev-
eral points from the Nellie Wallace Lectures, but mostly overlap with
them. On account of this overlap, I decided not to publish the earlier
lectures. On the other hand, Frede’s three published articles on the his-
tori og raphy of philosophy are included in this volume for the sake of
those who want to study and understand the development of Frede’s
views: ‘The Study of Ancient Philosophy’ dates from 1987 and its scope,
as the title indicates, is restricted, whereas the scope of the Nellie Wallace
Lectures is broader. ‘The History of Philosophy as a Discipline’, from
1988, can be read as a summary or epitome of the salient claims of the
Nellie Wallace Lectures. ‘Doxographical, Philosophical, and Historical
PrefaCe ix
Forms of the History of Philosophy’, from 1992, is a postlude, which, in
certain parts, supplements the Nellie Wallace Lectures. (For complete-
ness, I should also note Frede’s short review of J. J. E. Gracia’s book,
Philosophy and Its History: Issues in Philosophical Historiography in
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994), 233–6; it touches
upon similar issues, but not in sufficient detail to justify its inclusion in
this volume.)
Given that we have Frede’s published articles on the historiography of
philosophy, one could argue that I should have let the Nellie Wallace
Lectures fall into oblivion. In addition, there can be absolutely no doubt
that he himself would not have published them in their present form. In
fact, he would have rewritten them again and again from beginning to
end, as he always did with his work, also taking into consideration the
discussions that followed his lectures. But the Nellie Wallace Lectures
contain Frede’s most detailed and most systematic thoughts on the topic
of the historiography of philosophy, a topic that was dear to him and
occupied him for a long time. It would, therefore, have been a pity not to
make them available to anyone interested in them. It is, of course, true
that many relevant articles and books have been published since the
time of the lectures and perhaps some of Frede’s central notions and
assumptions have, by now, been superseded. To my mind, however, the
Nellie Wallace Lectures have not lost their explanatory power and
Frede’s proposal for a historical history of philosophy retains its value; it
should thus be easily accessible, carefully studied, and critically assessed.
2. The Historical History of Philosophy
Right from the beginning, Frede distinguishes the history of philosophy
(i.e. the account of what philosophers have done) from the his tori og-
raphy of philosophy (i.e. the account of what historians of philosophy
do); and he makes clear that what he is interested in is to study how his-
tor ians of philosophy ‘proceed the way they do’ and to make sense ‘of
the actual practice of historiography in terms of the principles, presup-
positions, assumptions which would justify it’ (p. 4). The aim of his lec-
tures, he asserts, is normative: ‘what I am interested in here is not the
x PrefaCe
factual question why historians of philosophy do what they do, but the
theoretical question, the question how we ought to conceive of and
explain what they are doing’ (p. 4). For he believes that:
(i) ‘reflections on the history of philosophy and its study may throw
considerable light on history in general and its study’;
(ii) ‘It may also benefit one’s understanding of what philosophy is, of
how one should think about philosophical problems, whether
and in what sense they are real problems’; and
(iii) ‘this kind of reflection might help one to get clearer about the
relation between philosophical activity, for instance, what phil-
oso phers do nowadays, on the one hand, and the history of phil-
oso phy and its study, on the other’ (p. 5).
According to Frede, there are three systematic approaches to the history of
philosophy, of which the first two are philosophical and the third his tor-
ic al. They all fall under the same heading, ‘history of philosophy’, and deal
with the same material, but they are distinct enterprises. In presenting
these three approaches, Frede also outlines their historical development:
I. Philosophical doxography: ‘a very old philosophical enterprise of
looking towards the history of philosophy for views and positions
of continued philosophical interest’ (p. 14). The doxographer dis-
regards the fact that the philosophical views of the past are of the
past and treats them ‘as if they were contemporary, perhaps even as
views which might be defended nowadays’ (p. 26). Hence, the dox-
ographer does not attempt to trace the development of phil oso phy
from its beginnings and does not follow a chronological order. The
prime example of a doxographer in antiquity is Diogenes Laertius,
but among other ancient writers who share the same approach
with him are Ps. Plutarch, Nicolaus of Damascus, and Arius
Didymus; next, around the middle of the fourteenth century until
the end of the eighteenth century, we have a renewed tradition of
philosophical doxography in the works of Walter Burleigh, Thomas
Stanley, Georg Horn, and Jacob Brucker; and finally, in the first
