In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ethnologists, linguists, historians, and especially historians of philosophy identified other “cultures,” which they distinguished from the West in order to subject them to empirical study. Consequently, Europe was conceived as the unique territory of philosophy, analytical rationality, and reflexive thinking. This book offers an interdisciplinary history of the history of philosophy and investigates how the scientific imagination was constructed in the West. It contributes to debates on the ideological assumptions and political aims of the European social sciences and humanities.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ethnologists, linguists, historians, and especially historians of philosophy identified other “cultures,” which they distinguished from the West in order to subject them to empirical study. Consequently, Europe was conceived as the unique territory of philosophy, analytical rationality, and reflexive thinking. This book offers an interdisciplinary history of the history of philosophy and investigates how the scientific imagination was constructed in the West. It contributes to debates on the ideological assumptions and political aims of the European social sciences and humanities.