This article deals with metaphilosophical issues. In it we will discuss the reasons that lead philosophy, unlike science, to evaluate itself in terms of its capacity to attain cognitive aims. In particular, we will seek to identify how and why philosophy becomes an issue for itself. With the exception of the social sciences in which one can find critical studies of the type sociology of sociology, science in general does not put itself into question. Rare are the cases where science comes to the extreme of questioning its own cognitivity. Philosophy in some of its most lucid and useful exercises does not avoid assessing its own cognitive powers. In the context of such metaphilosophical concerns, our article intends to question the pretensions of the great philosophies to making revolutions. We will defend the thesis that the revolutions claimed by philosophers do not occur. Aside from this, we will stress that the incommensurability subsisting among philosophies is not caused by conceptual or explanatory ruptures, but by the adoption of different absolute presuppositions, as defined by Collingwood.
Essentialism; Epistemic justification; Incommensurability; Cumulative progress; Revolution