Although problems of interpretation and meaning have taken a central place in both Anglo-Saxon and continental philosophy in recent years, little attempt has been made to apply these considerations to the interpretation of philosophy's own past. In this chapter I intend to give the outlines of such an account. I do not mean, however, to claim that without it the practice of writing history of philosophy is impossible; to the contrary I want to claim that the interpretation of philosophy is a craft, in the sense that it has been practised very well in the absence of an explicit theory of its operation. Conversely, one might add, the possession of such an explicit account is no guarantee of skilful or sensitive interpretative practice. However, philosophical account and interpretative practice are not entirely divorced from one another. Misconceptions about the interpretative process can lead one to draw misleading consequences from the following presumed alternative.

The dilemma for interpretation is usually seen as whether one should interpret ‘intentionally’ or ‘anachronistically’. Although this opposition is not always clearly analysed by those who operate with it, it often appears to be based on the intuition that there is a ‘text itself’ whose basic meaning is independent of the intentions of the author.