School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Australian cultural studies: theory, story, history

FROW, JOHN ( 2005)

In a forthcoming paper on the History of Theory Ian Hunter calls for a space for historical reflection on the so-called ‘moment of theory’, and goes on to describe his argument as being indicative of ‘a particular way of undertaking intellectual history’. Let me posit, perhaps against the grain of Ian’s intentions, that ‘historical reflection’ and ‘intellectual history’ constitute distinct sub-sets of the history of philosophy. Historical reflection, which is central to the Hegelian critique of the self-becoming of philosophy, is excluded from contemporary analytic philosophy by its rigorous refusal of historical time as the condition or context of thought. Intellectual history is what is then left over when the history of philosophy is disconnected from the space in which philosophy actually happens, and in that sense is quite different from the historical reflection in which a past is connected, with whatever discontinuities and complexities, to the present that reflects on it. Intellectual history is histoire; historical reflection is discours.