The term history of philosophy is often used in two different senses. In one, it refers to past events (res gestae) and, in another, to accounts of those events (historiae rerum gestarum). "The history of ancient Greek philosophy" can be taken to indicate views entertained by Greek philosophers, but also the accounts that later historians give of those views. The positions Aristotle takes in his Metaphysics are part of the first but not of the second, whereas those adopted by Joseph Owens in The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics (1951) are part of the second but not the first.

The term historiography of philosophy can also be taken in two senses. According to one, it refers to accounts of past events, and so it is interchangeable with history when this term is used in the second sense mentioned above...