Philosophy is unique among liberal arts disciplines in that it understands its own history as part of its practice. The history of philosophy continues to inform philosophical thinking today.

The Emory Institute for the History of Philosophy was founded in 2006 to support the study of the history of philosophy at all levels: undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and professional. It welcomes all methods and approaches. As a place of interaction among the disciplines, the IHP hosts visiting scholars from institutions across the country and around the world.

Throughout the academic year, the IHP invites Emory faculty and distinguished experts in different fields in the history of philosophy to give public lectures and conduct seminars and workshops for Emory students and faculty. This year it began offering a summer seminar for faculty and advanced graduate students from other universities. Future plans include publishing collected papers arising out of the lectures and seminars and establishing a number of post-doctoral fellowships.

The IHP follows in a long tradition of the history of philosophy at Emory, whose philosophy department grew to prominence under the leadership of Leroy E. Loemker (1904–85), the noted Leibniz scholar and educator, who helped found Emory’s graduate philosophy program fifty years ago. Today, almost all of our faculty specialize in some area of the history of philosophy and together we cover all of its canonical fields: ancient, medieval, Renaissance, early modern, modern, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This makes the Emory Philosophy Department a natural home for the IHP, the only institute of its kind in the United States. Besides strengthening Emory’s graduate and undergraduate programs, the IHP also seeks to encourage and revitalize the study of the history of philosophy within the broader academic community.

Image: John Frederick Peto, Take Your Choice, detail, 1885. John Wilmerding Collection, image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington.