This volume collects contributions from leading scholars of early modern philosophy from a wide variety of philosophical and geographic backgrounds. The distinguished contributors offer very different, competing approaches to the history of philosophy.Many chapters articulate new, detailed methods of doing history of philosophy. These present conflicting visions of the history of philosophy as an autonomous sub-discipline of professional philosophy. Several other chapters offer new approaches to integrating history into one's philosophy by re-telling the history of recent philosophy. A number of chapters explore the relationship between history of philosophy and history of science.Among the topics discussed and debated in the volume are: the status of the principle of charity; the nature of reading texts; the role of historiography within the history of philosophy; the nature of establishing proper context.

IntroductionMogens Laerke, Justin E.H. Smith, and Eric SchliesserChapter 1: The Anthropological Analogy and the Constitution of Historical PerspectivismMogens LaerkeChapter 2: The History of Philosophy as Past and as ProcessJustin E. H. SmithChapter 3 : Philosophy and Genealogy. Ways of writing history of philosophy.Koen VermeirChapter 4 : Understanding the Argument Through Then-Current Public Debates or My Detective Method of History of PhilosophyUrsula GoldenbaumChapter 5: The Contingency of Philosophical ProblemsJoanne Waugh and Roger AriewChapter 6 : Philosophical Problems in the History of Philosophy: What are They?Leo CatanaChapter 7: Philosophizing Historically/Historicizing Philosophy: Some Spinozistic ReflectionsJulie R. KleinChapter 8 : Is the History of Philosophy a Family Affair? The Examples of Malebranche and Locke in the Cousinian SchoolDelphine Kolesnik-AntoineChapter 9 : The Taming of PhilosophyMichael Della RoccaChapter 10 : Philosophic ProphecyEric SchliesserChapter 11 : Philosophical Systems and their HistoryAlan NelsonChapter 12 : Charitable Interpretations and the Political Domestication of Spinozaor, Benedict in the Land of the Secular ImaginationYitzhak MelamedChapter 13 : Mediating between Past and Present:Descartes, Newton, and Contemporary Structural RealismMary DomskiChapter 14 : What Has History of Science to Do with History of Philosophy?Tad M. SchmaltzBibliography