Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.