Abstract

Trained by some of the most notable philosophers and scholars in Germany before World War II, Paul Oskar Kristeller was one of the great scholars of the twentieth century. He spent his whole career in America in the Philosophy Department of Columbia University, where he became the internationally recognized authority on Renaissance thought. Yet he failed to establish Renaissance philosophy as an ordinary subject of study in American philosophy departments. His publications in philosophy were wide-ranging and influential, but it was his writings in many other fields that confirmed his pre-eminent scholarly status. This essay explores his relationship with the American philosophical establishment and discusses his various works in the history of philosophy and on the relationship between history and philosophy.