Are questions regarding the personal history of philosophers allowed?

Question

Often times, to better understand a philosopher's position, it helps to understand their circumstances. To what extent is it acceptable to ask about the history of philosphers?

For example, I know the Socrates taught Plato, who in turn taught Aristotle. I was curious what direct influence Socrates might have had on Aristotle, or if their age difference was too much to have ever really interacted directly. I was going to ask the question on main, but I decided to ask this on meta first because it wasn't a question about philosophy, but rather about philosophers.

I tried to think about how this might go over on a site like Programmers.se. Would asking about the personal history of Bjarne Stroustrup and who his mentors were (to better understand why he did what he did) be appropriate there? And I couldn't come up with a clear cut answer. So I figured I'd ask here.

Answer 1

I take quite the opposite stance to Joseph. I think that there is nothing wrong with talking about the history of philosophers, so long as it is in some way relevant to either the evolution of their own or others' ideas. Many philosophers were largely shaped by the context in which they were raised. For example, if someone were to ask about Machiavelli's history, I think it is incredibly relevant: the Pope was waging war on Italian city-states while Rome, France, and the Swiss were deeply battling for regional hegemony. It was tumultuous, full of danger and mistrust. Reading about the Prince largely feels like a description of the time, for example.

In this sense, I fully support the asking of such questions.

Answer 2

Questions should ideally concern arguments and ideas, though wider ranging discussions are always welcome on chat. Note that there is a History proposal on Area 51, so if you are interested in asking/answering history questions I would encourage you to follow and commit.

So I would say off-topic as generally speaking history questions aren't philosophy-oriented, at least without a specific theoretical context. My line would be whether the question concerns ideas or is only concerned with biographical trivia.

UPDATE: I'm sorry for the tone of the above. I didn't mean to imply questions about the personal lives of philosophers would be not be welcome. To attempt to clarify, my feelings are this are pretty straightforward -- this is Philosophy, and so the history of philosophy is always on topic.

Within the bounds of "history of philosophy" we should understand something which generally speaking includes the lives and deaths of philosophers, their vital biographical details, and so on.

Questions should attempt to address philosophy and its history through the medium of specific ideas and arguments. Because these do have important connections to the time, place and atmosphere in which they were created or debated, and indeed the details of the lives of those who created them, these details are at least potentially on-topic as well.

I certainly don't intend to direct people over to the History proposal with all of their interesting and useful questions about the way the lives of thinkers are shaped by the their biographies. All I was really trying to convey was that references to a specific thinker and theory will definitely make such questions more focused and easier to answer.