Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie

Edited by: Karin de Boer , Anja Jauernig , Mogens Lærke and Katja Vogt
Editorial Board: Amber D. Carpenter , Peter Scott Adamson , James V. Allen , John Carriero , Edwin M Curley , Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson , Juliet Floyd , Eckart Förster , Michael Friedman , Qu Hsueh Ming , Don Garrett , Gerd Grasshoff , Paul Guyer , Terence Irwin , Olli Koistinen , Michelle Kosch , Richard Kraut , Béatrice Longuenesse , Mary McCabe , Robert Pasnau , Dominik Perler , Elizabeth S. Radcliffe , Bernard Reginster , Susan Sauvé Meyer , Alison Simmons , Jens Timmermann , Cecilia Trifogli , Ricardo Salles and Kenneth Paul Winkler

Languages: English, German

First published: January 1, 1888

Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year

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About this journal

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie is one of the leading history of philosophy journals. It publishes outstanding articles in all areas of philosophy from antiquity up to the twentieth century. The journal fosters original research on a wide range of topics without prioritizing particular methods, approaches, or traditions. The Archiv seeks to expand its scope by including more research on non-Western histories of philosophy and non-canonical figures.

The journal welcomes submissions in the areas mentioned above.

History

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie was founded by Ludwig Stein in 1888 and is the oldest journal devoted to the history of philosophy. Stein served as its editor-in-chief for more than forty years, assisted by Eduard Zeller, Wilhelm Dilthey, Ernst Cassirer, Alexandre Koyré, and Heinrich Rickert. Early contributors included Paul Natorp, Charles Adam, Paul Tannery, and Alessandro Chiapelli.

After changing publishers in 1926, the journal was renamed Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie und Soziologie and began to publish work on the history of sociology as well. When Arthur Stein, Ludwig Stein's son, took over the editorship in 1930, however, he returned the journal to its original name and mission.

In 1933, when the journal became subject to restrictions under the National Socialist government, Arthur Stein decided to suspend publication rather than taint the journal's history and reputation. The journal resumed its activities upon its refounding by Paul Wilpert in 1960. Committed to fostering international scholarly exchange, the new Archiv has been edited by scholars from both Europe and the United States since then. In 2023, the journal merged its European and US editorial offices.

Former Editorial Board Members: Jaakko Hintikka (1969–1993), Ludwig Landgrebe (1969–1989), G.E.L. Owen (1969–1983), Josef Schmucker (1969–1993), Wolfgang Stegmüller (1969–1991), Jules Vuillemin (1969–1993), Richard Walzer (1969–1975), Julius Weinberg (1969–1972), Wolfgang Wieland (1969–2011), Albert Zimmermann (1969–1993), Margaret D. Wilson (1973–1998), Richard Wollheim (1976–1993), Claudio Cesa (1984–2002), Rudolf Haller (1984–1993), Klaus Hartmann (1984–1991), Richard Sorabji (1984–1993), Jürgen Sprute (1986–2002), Karl Schumann (1990–2002), Wolfgang Carl (1994–2011), John M. Cooper (1994–2015), Hans Friedrich Fulda (1994–2011), Ruedi Imbach (1994–2006), Pierre-François Moreau (1994–2011), Ulises C. Moulines (1994–2002), Rainer Specht (1994–2011), Dorothea Frede (2003–2020), Jürgen Stolzenberg (2003–2011), Wolfgang R. Mann (2006–2013), Hermann Weidemann (2006–2023), Wolfgang Bartuschat (2011–2022), Günter Zöller (2012–2023)

Open Access
Rethinking Perfection: Crusius’ Critique of the Idea of the Best of All Possible Worlds

October 7, 2025

Jon Bornholdt

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This paper explores Christian August Crusius’ critique of the ‘Best of All Possible Worlds’ (BPW) theory, primarily associated with Leibniz and Wolff, as presented in his Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten . The analysis begins by summarizing the BPW theory and its distinctive treatments by Leibniz, Wolff, and Crusius. The core of the paper examines three strands of Crusius’ critique. First (C1), Crusius challenges the BPW’s coherence, arguing that worlds cannot exhibit absolute perfection due to the inexhaustible possibilities of greater perfection. Second (C2), Crusius contends that even if a ‘best world’ exists, its identification is inherently unprovable, given the indifference of means to divine ends. Finally (C3), Crusius reconceptualizes possible worlds as flexible, dynamic systems shaped by free agents, thereby rendering the static BPW model untenable. This paper evaluates Crusius’ arguments against both Leibnizian and Wolffian systems, highlighting Crusius’ innovations in modal metaphysics and his commitment to divine and creaturely freedom.
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Neutral Monism and the Attributes of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics

September 27, 2025

Ariel Melamedoff

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Spinoza’s definition of attributes as “what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence” ( Ethics 1D4) has led many scholars to endorse an attribute-neutral reading of his metaphysics. According to this reading, attributes like thought and extension pertain to the way substance is perceived, rather than how it is in itself. Yet Spinoza defines God as “a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes” ( Ethics 1D6). No attribute-neutral interpreter has yet explained how an attribute-neutral substance could be defined by its quantity of attributes. To resolve this problem, I propose a new reading of Spinoza’s definition of attribute, arguing that we should understand Spinoza’s attributes as model-dependent , on analogy with the model-dependent dimensions of Cartesian geometry. I use the idea of model-dependence to explain how Spinoza can maintain that having infinitely many attributes is a feature of an attribute-neutral substance.
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The Roots of Hypertime

September 27, 2025

Matyáš Moravec

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Hypertime is a theory that postulates that time has two or more dimensions. Much of the groundwork underlying current theories of hypertime in analytic philosophy is generally attributed to discussions about time travel in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper demonstrates that the historical roots of hypertime extend much further back. Drawing on recently uncovered archival documents, I demonstrate that sophisticated theories of multi-dimensional time were developed by philosophers decades before the interest in time travel took off. These pioneers of hypertime were working on psychical research: the study of psychical phenomena such as telepathy or ghosts, widely popular at the turn of the twentieth century. They developed multi-dimensional time as a tool to resolve various problems with precognition, the purported ability to see the future. I will conclude by indicating the pitfalls of neglecting this important chapter in the history of the philosophy of time.
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Deceptive Pleasure in Plato’s Republic

September 24, 2025

Derek van Zoonen

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In Republic book 9, Plato offers a puzzling argument suggesting that subjects can err even in their immediate self-ascriptions of pleasure. In this paper, I offer a detailed analysis and original interpretation of this argument, which I call the Deceptive Pleasure Argument. On the reading I defend here, Plato’s Socrates argues that pleasure is more than a feeling. The raw feel of the hedonic experience – the felt sense or feeling tone of our pleasure (that which enters awareness) – just partially constitutes a pleasure; in addition, it takes an underlying restorative process in which one of our physical or psychological needs is being met. In the absence of such an underlying restorative process, we are dealing with a case of deceptive pleasure or hedonic illusion akin to perceptual illusion. My reading does not just show that Plato’s views are more subtle and cogent than often appreciated, it also elucidates how the Deceptive Pleasure Argument mounts a powerful strike against the challenge posed by Socrates’s interlocutors.
Open Access
Kant on the Obstacles of Reflection: Affects, Passions and Maxims

September 17, 2025

Martina Favaretto

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In the Anthropology , Kant writes that both passions and affects impede reflection. However, he also holds that passions can be paired with reflection, while affects cannot. Stating that passions can both impede reflection and be paired with it seems to imply a contradiction. I seek to solve the problem by arguing that Kant is drawing on two notions of ‘reflection.’ The one kind of reflection consists in the ability to properly assess whether one should act from one’s affect or one’s passion in light of some normative standards. The other kind of reflection consists in the ability to explicitly endorse at least some of the more general maxims that underlie one’s maxim. In view of this distinction, I argue that the former kind is impeded by both passions and affects, while the latter kind is impeded by affects alone.
Open Access
From Hegel to Kant: Steinthal’s Evolving Reading of Humboldt

September 16, 2025

Chiara Russo Krauss

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The paper aims to shed light on Heymann Steinthal’s ambiguous relationship to Humboldt. Examining the development of Steinthal’s interpretations and judgments of Humboldt’s work, the paper distinguishes three phases of this relationship. In the first, from the 1840s, Steinthal read Humboldt through the lens of Hegel’s philosophy and criticised the residual Kantianism in his work. In the second phase, from the 1850s to the 1870s, Steinthal’s growing interest in psychology gradually led him to develop a more positive evaluation of Kant’s work and to distance himself from Humboldt and Hegel, accusing them of dualism and the creation of hypostases. In the final phase, in the 1880s, work on the edition of Humboldt’s writings and a personal crisis led him to shift the focus of his inquiries to ethical themes and Kant’s practical philosophy. As a result, Steinthal reconsidered the significance of Humboldt’s philosophy, now highlighting its Kantian basis.
Open Access
Human-Relative Values as Epistemic Challenge in Heraclitus

September 10, 2025

Sarah Elizabeth Feldman

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Heraclitus’ human-animal juxtapositions, which oppose the needs and preferences of humans against those of nonhuman animals, are typically read in one of two ways. The ‘unity reading’ affirms that each preference or need yields a degree of insight into a given object; brought together in the unity of opposites, these convey some truth about that object. The ‘values reading,’ on the other hand, presents both preferences or needs as manifesting an absence of insight. This article argues for a version of the values reading structured and mediated by the unity reading. By examining the interplay between the two readings, it shows how the challenge to human-relative needs and preferences generates an even more fundamental challenge to basic categories or distinctions. These distinctions are pervaded by human-relative needs and preferences in ways that seem to prevent us from grasping the true natures of things.
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Lukács, Edit Anna and Michalowska, Monika (eds.). Calculating Ethics in the Fourteenth Century. Leiden: Brill 2024, x + 341 pp.

September 9, 2025

Thomas Michael Osborne

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Open Access
Jorati, Julia. Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press 2023, x + 338 pp.

September 9, 2025

Aminah Hasan-Birdwell

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Open Access
Wills, Vanessa Christina. Marx’s Ethical Vision. New York: Oxford University Press 2024, xv + 303 pp.

September 7, 2025

Paula Keller

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Open Access
Zeno of Elea’s Arguments Against the One

September 5, 2025

Ian J. Campbell

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According to the orthodox interpretation of Zeno’s plurality paradoxes defended by Platonists, these arguments indirectly defend Parmenidean monism by showing that things are not many. But Simplicius, and the various other orthodox interpreters whom he discusses, were aware of and attempted to undermine competing ‘heterodox’ interpretations, which were prominent in the Peripatetic tradition, according to which some of Zeno’s arguments pose a threat to, or even specifically target, Parmenides. I argue that our surviving Peripatetic reports according to which Zeno challenged the idea that any being qualifies as a 'one' are credible and that attempts by ancient orthodox interpreters to accommodate these heterodox reports are not successful.
Open Access
It’s not that Simple: An Objectivist Account of Spinoza on God’s Essence

September 2, 2025

Antonio S. Borge

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A central objection to objectivist interpretations of Spinoza’s theory of attributes is their alleged inconsistency with his commitment to the simplicity of God’s essence. This paper offers a novel response to this objection. I begin by outlining two main arguments for the claim that, for Spinoza, God’s essence must be simple: his alignment with a longstanding tradition that treats simplicity as a necessary divine property, and his endorsement of the principle that parts are by nature prior to their wholes. I then introduce a distinction, available within Spinoza’s framework, between integral and metaphysical parts. I argue that while Spinoza is committed to the view that God’s essence cannot have integral parts, he is not committed to denying it metaphysical parts. This reading not only addresses the simplicity objection but also clarifies Spinoza’s definition of ‘attribute’ and strengthens the case for both structural and constitutive forms of objectivism.
Open Access
Miracles, Metaphysics, and Method in Wolff and Kant

August 28, 2025

Joe Stratmann

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Kant’s critical procedure aims to determine the conditions and boundaries of reason’s use in synthetic a priori cognition through an antecedent critique of reason. The prevailing view maintains that his arch-dogmatic predecessor, Christian Wolff, fell short of the critical procedure because he overlooked the possibility of synthetic truth altogether. I first argue that Wolff in fact accepts synthetic truths. On his miracle account of synthetic truth, miracles would provide grounds of synthetic truths. His rejection of synthetic a priori cognition instead depends on this account of synthetic truth and his analysis of the conditions on a priori cognition. Wolff therefore comes closer to the critical procedure than commonly supposed. But I then argue that Wolff’s miracle account of synthetic truth precludes an antecedent critique of reason. By extension, Kant’s critical procedure is made possible not merely by his introduction of synthetic truths, but by his naturalization of them.
Open Access
Monads and Points, Contiguity and Transcreation: On the Development of Leibniz’s Metaphysics of the Continuum

August 26, 2025

Richard T. W. Arthur

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In this essay I explore Leibniz’s changing views on the relation of substance to the continuum, with special attention to his calling the fundamental units of reality “metaphysical points”. I trace the development of his thought on this question, and on his notions of “physical” and “mathematical” points, from the early 1670s through to the end. I note certain enigmas on the way; namely, his notions of “transcreation” and “indistant” points, his peculiar characterization of contiguity, and the apparent violation of the Law of Continuity in texts of 1676 and 1705. I then argue that considerable light is thrown on these enigmas, and on both his earlier and later views, by manuscripts dating from the 1690s and later that have only recently been published.
Open Access
Kant on Given Empirical Concepts, Judgments of Perception, and the Genesis of Experience

August 20, 2025

Maximilian Edwards

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Kant scholars have tended to treat his theory of empirical concepts as monolithic. Against this tendency, I show that Kant systematically distinguishes between two kinds of empirical concepts: ‘concepts of experience,’ on the one hand, and ‘given empirical concepts,’ on the other. I develop an interpretation of this distinction on which given empirical concepts, unlike their experiential counterparts, represent intrinsic features of subjective sensations, in this respect resembling the ‘phenomenal concepts’ invoked in the contemporary philosophy of mind. I go on to show that appreciating this distinction yields a novel account of Kant’s infamous distinction between judgments of perception and experience.
Open Access
Kant’s Engagement with Hume’s Enquiry: 1762–1765

July 15, 2025

Richard Fincham

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There is still no consensus on the meaning of Kant’s admission within the Prolegomena’ s Preface that Hume was responsible for interrupting his “dogmatic slumber.” This article attempts to shed new light on this issue by arguing that this admission refers to a point in Kant’s career when he turned away from the dogmatic metaphysics of the Leibnizian-Wolffian school and appropriated Hume’s skepticism. It argues that this ‘turn’ occurred in 1763 and is evidenced by the content of his essay on Negative Magnitudes . It also argues that the content of Sulzer’s German-language edition of Hume’s first Enquiry was all that was needed to inspire such a turn.
Open Access
Herder’s Impact on Du Bois’ Conception of Bildung

July 3, 2025

Kwesi Thomas

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While a small collection of scholars has speculated about the possibility of Herder’s influence on Du Bois, the historical sources and significance of this influence have yet to be extensively examined. This article provides this missing historical account and a study of its philosophical implications. It argues that Du Bois applied Herder’s concept of Bildung as a normative ideal to both individuals and cultures. It argues, moreover, that this Bildung conception contains two conflicting normative senses – one universalist, the other pluralist – and that the tension between these shapes Du Bois’ notorious attempt to address the turn-of-the-century ‘Negro Problem.’
Open Access
Images or Being? A Non-representationalist reading of true logoi in Plato’s Sophist

July 3, 2025

Lorenzo Giovannetti

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In this paper I address a very precise question emerging from Plato’s Sophist : what is the relation between the nature of images and the way declarative statements function? The scholarship has either moved from the assumption that both true and false statements are images of different types or asserted that this assumption is not convincing. I will give a twofold argument. Firstly, I will provide a novel account of the pros and cons of associating images and statements, concluding that for Plato if statements are false, they are images, whereas if true, they are not images. Secondly, I will discuss whether true statements are non-imagistic representations and argue that there is room for thinking that Plato has a very peculiar theory of truth such that true statements do not just represent reality or being, but rather they make being manifest to the thinking soul.
Open Access
Getting at the Root of Evil: Kant and Fichte on the Murderer at the Door

July 3, 2025

Karin Nisenbaum

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In his famous essay, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy,” Kant argues that one is not allowed to lie, not even if a murderer comes to one’s door asking the whereabouts of their innocent victim who has taken refuge in one’s home. Many of Kant’s readers worry that his rigorism concerning the duty of truthfulness leaves us powerless in the face of evil. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct and offer a qualified defense of a Fichtean approach to the duty of truthfulness. I argue that, instead of leaving us powerless in the face of evil, the Fichtean approach gets at the root of evil. This is because Fichte’s prohibition against lying in his System of Ethics goes together with a perfectionist commitment to promote the greatest possible development of rational nature both in ourselves and in all other individuals.
Open Access
Nietzsche on Amor Fati

June 27, 2025

Andrew Huddleston

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Amor fati – love of fate – is one of the formulations most often associated with Nietzsche. How, I ask in this paper, should we understand the relevant kind of love this amor fati involves, as against more familiar ideas of interpersonal love and love as historically understood in the philosophical tradition? The love we see with amor fati is not, as prominent readings would have it, about the supposed free bestowal of agape , nor the pursuit of the beautiful characteristic of eros . It instead centrally involves embracing something and coming to be at home with it – in this case, with fate. I explore this philosophically interesting idea of love and explain how it helps us better understand what Nietzsche has in mind by amor fati .
Open Access
Doubt, Despair, and Doxastic Agency: Kierkegaard on Responsibility for Belief

April 9, 2025

Z Quanbeck

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Although doubt ( Tvivl ) and despair ( Fortvivlelse ) are widely recognized as two central and closely associated concepts in Kierkegaard’s authorship, their precise relationship remains opaque in the extant interpretive literature. To shed light on their relationship, this paper develops a novel interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the connection between despair and our agency over our beliefs, and its significance for Kierkegaard’s ethics of belief. First, I show that an important yet largely overlooked form of Kierkegaardian despair involves either failing to take ethico-religious responsibility for one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs, or misusing one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs by refusing to recognize or comply with externally given ethico-religious norms governing belief. Second, I argue that Kierkegaard takes properly exercising one’s agency over one’s beliefs to matter because beliefs are partly constitutive of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) that Kierkegaard regards as the cure for despair.
Open Access
Aristotle on Perceptual Self-Consciousness

April 9, 2025

Joshua Trubowitz

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Aristotle’s account of perceptual self-consciousness (“perceiving that we perceive”) is typically approached as an attempt to explain how we know our own mental states. In particular, Aristotle is taken to understand perceptual self-consciousness as a function of the mind or soul’s quasi-perceptual relation to itself. I argue instead that Aristotle understands perceptual self-consciousness as the (veridical) perception that we are confronted with an external object. This is not a matter of knowing our own mental states, but of knowing that we know: in particular, of knowing that an external object is apparent to us through our sense-organs. I conclude with a discussion of Aristotle’s broader interest in perceptual self-consciousness.
Open Access
Concocting Teleology in Aristotle’s Meteorology 4 and Generation of Animals

October 1, 2024

Emily Nancy Kress

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Aristotle claims that in making an animal, nature acts like a “good housekeeper” who “is accustomed to throw out nothing from which it is possible to make something useful” (744b16–17). How does nature act when it “make[s] something useful” in these cases – and does it differ from other ways it acts? I defend two main claims. The first is that Meteor. 4.2’s distinction between two sorts of ‘concoction’ processes offers an underappreciated source of evidence for answering this question. My second claim concerns the nature of those processes and the ends they realize. While they are both the ends of their respective types of concoction, they differ in that some essential (process-defining) features of the second end – but not the first – are supplied by what the capacities of the “underlying” patient (on which the agent acts) are for. The result is a distinction between two kinds of end-directed efficient causation.

Journal Impact Factor	0.7	2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025)
5-year Journal Impact Factor	0.5	2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025)
Journal Citation Indicator	0.63	2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025)
CiteScore	1.5	2024, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2025)
SCImago Journal Rank	0.486	2024, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2025; Data Source: Scopus)
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	2.093	2024, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2025; Data Source: Scopus)

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie

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