This book presents no monolithic doctrine, but it does have a subversive tone. It will promote a few iconoclastic attitudes, broaden some horizons, and try to make philosophers more aware of the present ferment in approaches to writing history. My own ideas are outlandish enough to get me included in the book, but in such company I should first confess some respect for more hidebound and anachronistic readings of the canon of great philosophers. The pen-friend approach to the history of philosophy can irritate me as much as anyone. A few heroes are singled out as pen-pals across the seas of time, whose words are to be read like the work of brilliant but underprivileged children in a refugee camp, deeply instructive but in need of firm correction. I loathe that, but my first parable, called ‘The Green Family’, expresses just such an anti-historical message. Descartes (for example) lives, or so I say. My second parable is an instant antidote. It is called ‘Brecht's paradox’ and is constructed around the fact that Brecht, on reading Descartes, could not help exclaiming that Descartes lived in a world completely different from ours (or at any rate Brecht's).

My third parable, called ‘Too many words’, is self-flagellating. It is about a fairly radical conception about how the history of knowledge determines the nature of philosophical problems. It was once mine. I repeat it now to repudiate the idealist and verbalistic vision of philosophy from which it arose.