The specificity of historical-philosophical research in the Humanities

Abstract

In interdisciplinary contemporary science, knowledge is obtained from a close collaboration of specialists with various competences. Philosophy appears to be effective in clarifying the meaning of concepts, discerning the normative and the empirical, determining whether the differences in the positions of the participants depend on how they use words or the essence of the argument. Philosophers actively help to develop various fields of the humanities and social sciences and they are in demand in the sciences. They admit themselves that the history of philosophy is the unifying factor for all the areas, although the areas of their research are diverse. The article considers the question of whether it is possible to talk about a specific influence exerted by professional historians of philosophy on other disciplines. Restricted to the humanities, it traces the streams that exist in the dialogue between the humanities and historical-philosophical studies, and also considers what contribution the historians of philosophy make in the field of historical sciences, in various areas of political research, in gender studies, anthropology, theology and religious philosophy, as well as the articulation of practical philosophy as a way of life. Despite the fact that the history of philosophy is thought of as an auxiliary discipline, the contribution of the historians of philosophy to the development of related and indirectly related fields of scholarship is significant: they reconstruct the genealogy of meaning and as a result, the concepts or ideas are clarified within their native cultural environment.