Kenntnis und Erkenntnis: Der innere Zusammenhang von Philosophiegeschichte und Geschichtsphilosophie

A specifically rational understanding of the philosophical tradition (“Erkenntnis”), which addresses the question of truth, is opposed to a purely historical understanding of philosophy (“Kenntnis”). Nevertheless this rational understanding of philosophy remains critically related to history: It frees the philosophy of the past from solidification into an antiquity, while it integrates earlier thought into an autonomous re-thinking, and it frees the thinking of the present from its prejudices, while it confronts its comfortable ways of understanding with the unsatisfied truth of the tradition.