On actions and intentions of the historian of philosophy in past and present

Abstract

History of philosophy cannot be immune to change. The author of the present paper attempts to outline its immediate future. Whereas formerly only a potential continuity could be attributed to its subject matter, now it has become an in actu one. The present-day information and communications milieu involves the “death of the history of philosophy” in its traditional meaning. This statement must be understood, however, only as a symbolic representation of the changing paradigm. There remains a demand for the history of philosophy, only the way it is practiced gets changed in accordance with the new mode and structure of the subject matter: everyone now becomes one's own helmsman in the ocean of content and determines for oneself the course of motion, both toward the past and toward the future.