Journal of the History of Philosophy

abstract:

This paper examines the current state of early modern scholarship. After tracing the contours of the contextualist revolution that gained momentum in the 1980s, I argue that rational reconstructionism is a thing of the past and that early modernists are now devoted to employ all available skills, both philosophical and scholarly, to maximize our understanding of an increasingly broad range of texts and topics. I propose that our current differences concern the kinds of projects we select and the skills we use to maximize our understanding.