implicit assumptions on which they, as well as our experience as a whole, happen to rely. Even when it concentrates on some specific area, as in the philosophy of art or indeed in political philosophy, the concern is with the very makeup of this domain, its fundamental features and purposes.
This definition is, of course, extremely broad. It tells us little about the direction in which such reflection should go, and different philosophers will proceed differently, in accord with their particular views and interests. However, I want to mention one way the practice of philosophy cannot help but take on concrete form, since it forms an essential part of the justification I shall present of the proper task of political philosophy. It is a dimension whose significance philosophers themselves often overlook, so here I am clearly turning toward the philosophically controversial.
In striving to comprehend how things hang together, either overall or in some specific domain, philosophical reflection has to find some footing. It needs to draw upon existing knowledge and past experience, if it is to have any grasp of the problems it must handle and of the avenues it should pursue. The same point holds when the philosopher turns to challenge some widespread assumption, arguing that it is actually unfounded or less fruitful than commonly presumed. The resources for criticism have to come from what can count as settled about the matter under review. Philosophy is therefore always situated, shaped by its historical context, even as it aspires to make sense of some subject in as comprehensive, as all-encompassing, a way as possible. This historicity is easily discerned in the philosophical works of the past, and it inheres no less in the endeavors of the present, whether or not philosophers choose to acknowledge the fact. How could it be otherwise, given that reflection, however broad its scope, needs somewhere to stand if it is to see anything at all?
In this respect, then, philosophy is not so different from other kinds of inquiry. They too bear the mark of their time and place, both in the problems they tackle and in the solutions they devise. The modem natural sciences are no exception. Though they develop through the testing of hypotheses against evidence, hypotheses and evidence alike reflect the theories of the day, the experimental procedures available, and the course ofprevious inquiry.
Nowjust as a rootedness in history does not entail that the sciences fail to give us knowledge of nature as it really is, so it does not stand in the way of philosophy attaining the vantage point from which a comprehensive understanding ofmind and world becomes possible. Some philosophers, it is true, have drawn such conclusions about both the sciences and philosophy itself. Some too have supposed that in order to be as reflective as