Today's Faculty 08 History/Philosophy was created in 1995 - initially still with the number 07 - by merging the former Faculties of Philosophy and History and parts of the former Faculty of Ancient and Non-European Languages and Cultures. These, together with five other faculties, had emerged from the Philosophical Faculty in 1970, when the academic self-administration was also restructured during a reform of the university constitution.

The Philosophical Faculty was one of the founding faculties of the University of Münster in 1780 and continued to exist when the university was initially abolished again in 1818 and continued to operate as a "higher teaching institution", later as an "academic teaching institution" and since 1843 as the "Royal Theological and Philosophical Academy". At that time, the Philosophical Faculty increasingly included natural science subjects, so that shortly after the University of Münster was re-founded in 1902, it was consequently renamed the Philosophical and Natural Science Faculty. After the Second World War, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences split off and the Philosophical Faculty continued to exist until the reorganisation of the university in 1970.

Even after the structural reform, the faculties that succeeded the Philosophical Faculty cooperated closely with each other in research and teaching, and in some cases also in certain matters of academic self-administration - a circumstance that is still reflected today in some of the faculty's regulations.