How is the History of Philosophy possible?

This paper challenges the implied binary division between the specialist historian and the non-historical philosopher by showing how a sub-discipline of philosophy can also be historical. It explores how our actual practices of studying, discussing, teaching and sharing the history of our discipline are theoretically possible, in the restricted sense of being possible while also maintaining our academic, professional and intellectual integrity. Section 1 introduces the problem that actual practice in history of philosophy does not divide valuable contributions neatly into contextualist and presentist; Section 2 analysis the concept of anachronism; Section 3 applies this to ask when an interpretive claim is sufficiently plausible to be asserted; Section 4 shows the possibility of history of philosophy as a valuable intellectual project distinct from pure history and pure philosophy, and with its own standards for the making of interpretive claims.