The professional philosopher differs by knowing thought’s entire history

Evidence

Thus it would not be exact to call by the name of “philosophy” every tendency of thought, every general orientation, etc., nor even every “conception of the world and of life”. The philosopher can be called a “specialised worker” by comparison with the unskilled labourer, but this isn’t exact either, since in industry, in addition to the labourer and the specialised worker there also exists the engineer, who not only knows the trade from the practical angle, but knows it theoretically and historically. The professional or technical philosopher does not only “think” with greater logical rigour, with greater coherence, with more systematic sense than do other men, but he knows the entire history of thought. In other words, he is capable of accounting for the development of thought up to his own day and he is in a position where he can take up a problem from the point which it has reached after having undergone every previous attempt at a solution. He has the same function in the field of thought that specialists have in their various scientific fields. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1245

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies exactly what the technical philosopher’s added quantum consists of: historical command of thought, like an engineer versus a laborer.