Philosophy,Early Modern Intellectual History,and the History of Philosophy

Historians of philosophy are increasingly likely to emphasize the extent to which their work offers a pay‐off for philosophers of un‐historical or anti‐historical inclinations; but this defence is less familiar, and often seems less than self‐evident, to intellectual historians. This article examines this tendency, arguing that such arguments for the instrumental value of historical scholarship in philosophy are often more problematic than they at first appear. Using the relatively familiar case study of René Descartes' reading of his scholastic and Aristotelian contemporaries, the article attempts to problematize this notion of pay‐off from an historian's perspective.     

History and Persons

The non‐identity problem is usually considered in the forward‐looking direction but a version of it also applies to the past, due to the fact that even minor historical changes would have affected the whole subsequent sequence of births, dramatically changing who comes to exist next. This simple point is routinely overlooked by familiar attitudes and evaluative judgments about the past, even those of sophisticated historians. I shall argue, however, that it means that when we feel sadness about some historical tragedy, or think of one possible course of history as better than another, these judgments and attitudes can be understood in terms of two opposing perspectives on the past: an impersonal standpoint concerned only with how much value each course of history contains, and a person‐centred standpoint concerned with harms and benefits to the people who had actually existed. In this paper, I will set out these radically different visions of what matters in history and point out some of their surprising implications.     

理想与癫狂——王莽改制的思想史意义与政治史意义

王莽改制作为儒家理想主义运动的产物,其历史意义是双重的。从思想史的角度看,改制事件彰显了儒家政治思想中的癫狂性格;从政治史的角度看,事件向人们提供了观察中国古代政治生活之本性的契机。     

历史向世界历史转化的哲学回应——马克思世界历史理论的中国个案

马克思世界历史理论深刻揭示了历史向世界历史转化的实际进程、总体背景和基本规律,为我们提供了考察和研究世界历史时代的哲学变革所应当依据的一个基本的解释框架。用马克思世界历史理论作为深入解读、研究中国近代哲学的哲学范式和解释框架,把中国近代哲学的演进过程作为历史向世界历史转化之哲学回应的一个典型案例,不仅有助于马克思世界历史理论研究的深化,而且也是深入考察中国近代哲学的一个独特而有益的视角。