If my own experience is any sort of guide, there is an unfortunate irony – perhaps more accurately, there is an unseemly audacity – in my leading off today’s events by talking about historiographical method. My impression is that historians of medieval philosophy are, by and large, the most prone to be completely unreflective about issues of method. The scholars of ancient and early modern philosophy that I know, present company most definitely included, are all well aware of the different ways in which, and purposes for which, scholarship in the history of philosophy can be carried on. They have their assessments of what makes for good scholarship and what makes for the other kind, and they can both articulate and defend those assessments at some length. Pose such questions to a medievalist, however, and you’re likely to get a bit of stammering and then a quick change of subject. Worse yet, among these sinners I am perhaps the chief. I have long practiced the history of philosophy in the same way in which I have played the organ. I’m a decent enough organist, but I don’t have the slightest clue how an organ’s internal workings go. That’s probably fine for service-playing purposes, since I can get the sounds I want without knowing how they’re produced. Plus, those sounds are helpfully predetermined for me by Mr Bach. In my scholarly life, of course, there’s no score from which I can decipher my desired results. It helps to have a target at which to aim, as Aristotle said in a kindred context, and some notion of what the history of philosophy is all about would surely provide such a target, along with guidance about how best to ensure that one hits it. So I present myself this morning not as an expert with wisdom to impart, but as a 1 neophyte reflecting on his own practice with a view toward getting clearer on the vision of philosophical historiography that underlies it and thereby, perhaps, improving that practice. The paper will fall into two tenuously connected parts...