Philosophy in History: Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy

The ideal audience for this book is any reader in any discipline who cares about the past and wonders how it relates to philosophy or contemporary concerns in general. Although primarily directed towards philosophers, historians of all stripes should find at least some of the articles useful and illuminating. Two of the articles, however, make the book worth owning: those by Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. MacIntyre's article, in my view, literally solves the problem posed my acutely in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Assuming one grants the reality of incommensurability (as Kuhn and MacIntyre do, but people like Donald Davidson do not), how can one argue accross incommensurable paradigms or suggest rational progress in moving from one to another? MacIntyre answers this question, and it is difficult to see how anyone could outdo his answer. Taylor's article provides a concise statement of his view of the nature of philosophy and why it is necessarily historical (in large part because of the relationship between practices and ideas), which will be of interest to anyone keen on Taylor or who wants a concise statement of the Hegelian view of philosophy as inseparable from its history. 4 stars because the book is expensive and not all the articles are of even quality; nevertheless, most of them are of a very high quality and the book is worth having on hand if you are a historian or philosopher.