The debates, continuities, and ruptures between past and present, medievals and moderns, constitute a perennial feature within the history of philosophy. How, framed most generally, should modern thinkers receive the answers to philosophical problems put forth by their predecessors? Do earlier answers become the termini post quem for further reflection? Or, does one regard older thinkers as doing bad philosophy and engaging a set of concerns that are radically different from those of modernity? Although they may well have provided novel syntheses or models, earlier thinkers, according to this line of reasoning, worked with outmoded philosophical or scientific systems.

Another model is one that subverts such historicism. Now the goal is not so much to understand texts of the past solely within their historical and intellectual contexts, but to reread or even misread such texts through present concerns. Earlier philosophical thinkers now become part of a perceived or constructed tradition that – whether consciously or unconsciously, implicitly or explicitly – engaged with themes relevant to us. Earlier thinkers now become important partners in a living dialogue with the present. Yet, as part of this dialogue, they are often framed by the fantasy of the present, providing a set of idealized answers to make up for the perceived lacunae within contemporaneous paradigms.