Society for History of Philosophy

Society for History of Philosophy

The Society for History of Philosophy is a learned society devoted to the study and promotion of the history of philosophy, connecting scholars who research figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Avicenna, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Marsilio Ficino, Niccolò Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Alfred North Whitehead, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, Saul Kripke, Richard Rorty, J. L. Austin, Wilfrid Sellars, Quine, W. V. O. Quine, Elizabeth Anscombe, G. E. Moore, Iris Murdoch, Derek Parfit, Thomas Nagel, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Bernard Williams, Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Cornel West, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Charles Taylor, Paul Ricoeur, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Emmanuel Levinas, Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin, H. L. A. Hart, John Austin, Jeremy Bentham and institutions such as Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, Brown University, University of Pittsburgh, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, London School of Economics, Sorbonne, Heidelberg University, University of Paris, University of Bologna, University of Salamanca, Università di Padova, University of Leiden, University of Vienna, University of Göttingen, University of Edinburgh, King's College London, Queen Mary University of London, University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Toronto Scarborough, Australian National University, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, Peking University, Tsinghua University, University of Tokyo.

History

The society was founded in the mid-1980s by historians and philosophers influenced by scholars such as Arthur O. Lovejoy, Richard Rorty, John Wild, Heinrich Rickert, Karl Jaspers, Ernst Cassirer, J. G. A. Pocock, Peter Strawson, G. E. M. Anscombe, Michael Dummett, Anthony Kenny, A. C. Grayling and revitalized work on figures including Pierre Abélard, Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury, Duns Scotus, John Duns Scotus, Francisco Suárez, Gottfried Leibniz, Pierre Bayle, Giambattista Vico, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza. Early meetings featured papers on manuscripts housed at Bodleian Library, Vatican Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, British Library and archives like Huntington Library and Bodleian Libraries; these gatherings paralleled initiatives by American Philosophical Association, British Philosophical Association and the History of Ideas community.

Purpose and Activities

The society promotes research in historical philosophy by organizing symposia, fostering editorial projects, supporting archival work on texts by Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Plotinus, Proclus, Ibn Sina, Averroes, Ibn Rushd, Moses Maimonides, Ramon Llull, Nicholas of Cusa, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus, Thomas More, Giordano Bruno, Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, John Selden, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Søren Kierkegaard, Augustine of Hippo, Alvin Plantinga, C. S. Peirce and collaboration with publishers and libraries such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Brill, Springer, University of Chicago Press, Princeton University Press and Harvard University Press.

Membership and Organization

Membership includes faculty, independent scholars, and graduate students from departments and centers at Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Chicago, King's College London, University of Toronto, ANU, University of Melbourne, Peking University and research institutes like Institute for Advanced Study, Warburg Institute, Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Center for the History of Ideas. Governance typically follows models used by American Philosophical Association, with elected officers, an executive committee, and editorial boards drawing on experience from Modern Language Association, Association for Symbolic Logic and American Historical Association.

Conferences and Publications

The society convenes annual conferences often held at venues such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Sorbonne, University of Toronto, University of Chicago and King's College London. Proceedings and monographs have been published in series associated with Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Brill, Routledge, Springer and journals including The Journal of the History of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Mind, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of the History of Ideas and Isis. Special issues have focused on topics like medieval metaphysics, early modern natural philosophy, Enlightenment thought, Kantian scholarship, phenomenology, analytic history, and postcolonial critique referencing scholars such as Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Awards and Grants

The society awards research grants, dissertation prizes, and book awards modeled after prizes like the Buchholz Prize, Moncado Prize, John Locke Prize, and fellowships similar to Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship, NEH Fellowships and funding from foundations such as Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation and British Academy. Recipients have included scholars working on figures such as Sextus Empiricus, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Russell and contemporary historians of philosophy at institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton.

Category:Philosophical societies