The starting point of this essay will be the questioning of the thesis that historical knowledge is unable to complement scientific knowledge and to foster the awareness scientists have of their work. The article will discuss the position adopted, especially in the past, by analytical philosophers according to which the history of philosophy is not philosophy. The focus will be on the possible meta-philosophical, that is on the historical, cultural, and ideological, reasons which motivate this exclusion. Symmetrically, the essay will discuss whether and how the history of philosophy can properly be understood as “history”. Finally, the article will outline the particular relationship between the history of ideas on the one hand and philosophy and history on the other.