Otherness, Race, and Hybridisation: the Naturalised History of Philosophy

Catherine König-Pralong

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Chapter 3 Otherness, Race, and Hybridisation: the Naturalised History of Philosophy

In: The Philosophical Colony: Writing the History of Philosophy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Author:

Catherine König-Pralong

Catherine König-Pralong
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Adrian Morfee

Adrian Morfee
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 70–100

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004721432_005

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Abstract

From 1780 onwards, most historians of philosophy defined their subject matter as specific to European cultures and civilisation: Europe’s ideas, modernity, and philosophical rationality were taken to form a system. So around 1800, historians of philosophy began naturalising philosophy, in two ways. First, philosophy was naturalised as European. For the first time, it was explicitly thought of and defined as an indigenous property. Second, the history of philosophy as an academic practice also underwent a process of naturalisation, borrowing theoretical tools, nomenclature, and a way of thinking from natural philosophy. This chapter looks at the ways in which the history of philosophy and the natural sciences combined in the period around 1800, at a time when approaches in both fields were configured by similar structures, and exchanged conceptual tools. It addresses a case that is particularly symptomatic of these overlapping methods: the treatment of Arabic thought in pragmatic or rationalist historiography in around 1800.

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The Philosophical Colony: Writing the History of Philosophy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Series: Brill's Series in Philosophical Historiographies, Volume: 4

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004721432

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 26 Mar 2026

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- Philosophy
  - Social & Political Philosophy
  - Anthropology

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Chapter 3 Otherness, Race, and Hybridisation: the Naturalised History of Philosophy

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The Philosophical Colony: Writing the History of Philosophy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

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