Glenn Alexander Magee (ed). Hegel and Ancient Philosophy: A Re-Examination. New York: Routledge, 2018. ISBN 978-1-138-09497-0. £120.00 (hbk). ISBN 978-1-315-10586-4. £40.99 (ebk). Pp. x + 207.

Abstract

This collection of essays, resulting from the 2016 conference of the Hegel Society of America, is an attempt to address the scholarly 'neglect [of] Hegel's relation to ancient philosophy' (2). To this end, it presents us with thirteen articles, covering the period from the Pre-Socratics to Stoicism, by both established and junior scholars in this field. Seven of the essays deal with Hegel's relation to Aristotle. While the importance of Aristotle's thought for Hegel's philosophy is widely recognized, the essays aim to offer novel interpretations of the connections between the two. But the book also attempts to show what is lost if we solely focus on Aristotle. Hence, we find two articles on Plato, two on Pre-Socratic philosophers, an essay on Socrates, and an essay on Stoicism. Speaking generally, some authors see Hegel's interpretations as anachronistic or self-projecting, while still arguing that a lot can be learned about Hegel's philosophy from his interpretations of Hellenic figures. Others try to show that Hegel's readings still express the 'truth' of a philosophical system in question. We start with two essays on the Pre-Socratics. Robert Metcalf provides a general criticism of Hegel's reading of the Pre-Socratics through focusing on Xenophanes, who, according to Metcalf, 'disrupts the developmentalist schema that has been imposed on Presocratic thought' (10). For Metcalf, Hegel's treatment of Xenophanes as merely a precursor to Parmenides reveals his over-reliance on non-authoritative ancient texts. It also reveals something deeper about the limits and constraints on Hegel's method of reading the history of philosophy and the interpretation of what counts as 'thought' within that history. Andrew A. Davis focuses on Anaxagoras. As with Metcalf, Davis also sees Hegel as relying too heavily on the Platonic-Aristotelian 'progressivist' reception of the Pre-Socratics. Hence, Hegel downplays the interesting aspects of Anaxagoras's philosophy. On the other hand, Davis argues that understanding Hegel's downplaying of Anaxagoras in favour of Aristotle helps us to better understand Hegel's conception of history which is said to be 'not progressive but developmental' (36). It further motivates his curious claim that there is (in Alfredo Ferrarin's words) 'parallelism' between the history of philosophy and the Science of Logic (34).