Analytic History of Philosophy: How Philosophy’s Past Becomes Its Future

The paper examines the historical context of the formation of a new mode of the history of philosophy – the analytic history of philosophy – as well as a number of cases and discussions that determined the idiosyncrasy of this approach, namely, the general account of the contribution of Wilfrid Sellars to the revival of the studies in history of philosophy from within the analytic tradition, as well as Maurice Mandelbaum’s reflections on the specifics of the method of history of philosophy that make it different from the methods of the other humanities, which in fact were a response to the challenges of analytic philosophy made from within an opposing tradition. In addition, an overview of the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche is offered, who, long before the crisis of historicism in analytic philosophy, raised some objections to historical knowledge in a manner similar to that of analytic philosophers. The search for a new mode of the history of philosophy in the face of challenges of the analytical tradition, which put into question autonomy of the history of philosophy, ended with the organic inclusion of analytic and scientific tools into the methods of history of philosophy as follows: critical reading of texts and concepts, careful attention to argumentation and logical links in philosophical doctrines, rejection of historicism and antiquarianism, orientation towards appropriationism. It is concluded that analytic philosophy was not the cause of the crisis in the history of philosophy, but served as a catalyst for the search for a new mode of its existence.