Teaching New Histories of Philosophy

Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor of Distinguished

Undergraduate Teaching in the Princeton University Center for

Human Values. As part of my responsibilities in that position I

organized a conference called Teaching New Histories of Philosophy. The conference papers and comments, as well as a record of

some of the discussion, are published here.

In the past few decades a large amount of work has been done to

set the major works of modern philosophy in their varied contexts.

Historical classics have been reinterpreted in the light of their

relations to the works of authors we have generally considered minor,

to nonphilosophical writings, and to religious, social, political, and

scientific changes and events. No definitive synthesis of new

interpretations has emerged, and perhaps none is to be expected.

But the new material should affect the ways in which we teach the

history of philosophy from Montaigne and Descartes to today. 

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