The paper discusses the characteristics of the methodological identity of the history of philosophy through comparison with the self-consciousness of historical science. The author identifies three crises of philosophical historiography, which mark the impasse of interpretive schemes, the inability to use old methods, and at the same time insufficient development of new ones. Methodological crises stimulate the science’s turn to itself. The history of philosophy goes through three historical crises: the crisis of the object (17^th–18^th centuries), the crisis of the method (late 19^th – early 20^th centuries), and the crisis of the actor (second half of 20^th century). The history of philosophy is born in an attempt to isolate itself from the history of thought and philosophy, defining its object as the history of philosophical thought, progressive attempts to come closer to the truth. In the wake of methodological discussions in the Humanities, the differentiation within humanistic knowledge, as well as the formation of history as an independent science, the history of philosophy poses the question of the existence of a specific historical and philosophical method. The Postmodern situation in historical knowledge deepens the crisis of interpretative schemes: not only the criteria for the reliability of interpretation and the possibility of its objectivity are problematized, but also the identity of the researcher which again turns him to his sub-ject and method. Thus, the circle of self-consciousness closes, giving the history of philosophy an impe-tus to problematize its methodology and source of development.