By Oliver Leech

Surrounded by the vast collection of philosophy texts in Blackwell’s book shop in Oxford, I asked the assistant where I could find some material on the philosophy of history. ‘Do you mean the history of philosophy?’ he replied. An understandable response since the history of philosophy is a premier league topic with shelves of books to choose from whereas the philosophy of history is at best half way down the next division. Indeed, since it overlaps with historiography, books about it tend to be stocked in the history section.