Phenomenological Interpretations of Ancient Philosophy 2 Wer nicht von dreitausend Jahren sich weiss Rechenschaft zu geben, bleib im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tag zu Tage leben. – Goethe 3 Table of Contents Introduction Pål Rykkja Gilber & Kristian Larsen Chapter 1 Claudio Majolino – Back to the Meanings Themselves: Husserl, Phenomenology, and the Stoic Doctrine of the Lekton Chapter 2 Thomas Schwarz Wentzer – Speaking Being: Heidegger's Aristotle and the Problem of Anthropology Chapter 3 Pål Rykkja Glibert – Virtue and Authenticity: Heidegger's Interpretation of Aristotle's Ethical Concepts Chapter 4 Charlotta Weigelt – An "Obscure" Phenomenology? Heidegger, Plato, and the Philosopher's Struggle for the Truth of Appearance Chapter 5 Hans Ruin – A Strange Fate: Heidegger and the Greek Inheritance Chapter 6 Morten Sørensen Thaning – Dialectic as a Way of Life: Hans-Georg Gadamer's Interpretation of Plato Chapter 7 Kristian Larsen – Counting (on) Being: On Jacob Klein's Return to Platonic Dialectic Chapter 8 Burt Hopkins – Phenomenology and Ancient Greek Philosophy: Methodological Protocols and One Specimen of Interpretation Chapter 9 Jussi Backman – The (Meta)politics of Thinking: On Arendt and the Greeks Chapter 10 Vigdis Songe Møller – Heraclitus's Cosmology: Eugen Fink's Interpretation in Dialogue with Martin Heidegger Chapter 11 Filip Karfik – Jan Patočka on Plato's Conception of the Soul as SelfMotion Chapter 12 Tanja Staehler & Alexander Kozin – Elemental Embodiment: From the Presocratics to Levinas via Plato Chapter 13 Arnaud Macé – Outside the Walls with Phaedrus: Derrida and the Art of Reading Plato 4 Abbreviations 5 Introduction Phenomenology and ancient Greek philosophy. The title of this book, indicating these topics as its two main subjects, could give the impression that the subjects are held together by a circumstantial "and." The title would then indicate a connection between phenomenology and a topic, ancient Greek philosophy, the way titles such as Art and Phenomenology, Phenomenology and Psychological Research, Phenomenology and Virtue Ethics do. This impression would be wrong. First, ancient Greek philosophers take pride of place in the dialogues initiated by many phenomenologists with various figures from the history of philosophy. Second, this is not just because phenomenological philosophers have tended to regard ancient Greek philosophy as the revered beginning of Western thought, reflection upon which may help illuminate any topic modern human beings wish to inquire into or give it a kind of historical dignity. It is first and foremost because ancient Greek philosophy, understood as the scientific attempt to understand the world, ourselves, and our place in the world, in the phenomenological tradition is regarded as one important origin of contemporary Western philosophy and science, even if contemporary philosophy and science is also determined by a new ideal of philosophy that emerges in early modernity. Indeed, for most phenomenologists, Greek philosophy can be regarded as the roots supporting this new ideal-even if these roots are sometimes hidden from sight or forgotten. The main rationale for confronting ancient Greek philosophy phenomenologically is accordingly the attempt to bring to light in its full radicality the phenomenon "philosophy." Unearthing philosophy as it was originally understood by Greek thinkers may, according to many phenomenologists at least, help us understand what philosophy in the full sense of the word was, has been, and may be again, but also what it has become or even degenerated into in modern times, for instance positivism. It is this way of approaching ancient Greek philosophy that we wish to concentrate on in this book, in the hope that the volume will prove instructive both to people who have an interest in ancient Greek philosophy and wish to know more about the phenomenological approach to it and to people who work within phenomenology and wish to know more about the various approaches to ancient Greek philosophy characterizing the phenomenological movement. We have therefore sought to make the introduction and the individual chapters accessible to non-experts, for instance by transliterating all Greek text, and confining quotes in other languages than English to footnotes and glosses. The aim of the introduction is to give a brief overview of the way in which the phenomenological movement has attempted to bring the Greek roots of Western philosophy to light and to establish some basic themes of phenomenological approaches to ancient Greek philosophy, in order to ease the reading of the chapters following the introduction. For that purpose, we have found it necessary to give priority to Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Husserl's main questions-how we should understand the correlation between our experience of the world and the world itself, and how we may overcome problems in modern philosophy resulting from naturalism, scientism, and positivism-remain central to the approach to ancient philosophy characteristic of most of the later thinkers who have called themselves phenomenologists. At the same time, all of these thinkers have been influenced, in one way or another, by Heidegger's lifelong engagement with ancient Greek philosophy, an engagement that remained indebted to Husserl even after Heidegger had stopped describing his own thinking as phenomenological. In short, the interpretations of ancient Greek 6 philosophy characteristic of thinkers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Derrida, to mention just a few, would not have been possible without Husserl and Heidegger. While the impact phenomenological approaches to various aspects of ancient thought has had on contemporary philosophy and culture would be difficult to overestimate, very few explorations of the connection between phenomenology and ancient thought exist that target the phenomenological tradition more generally. Numerous studies focus on a single author's relation to Plato, Aristotle, or the Greeks,1 or on the relation between Heidegger and one of his heirs in their various appraisals of ancient thought,2 but a more comprehensive account of the phenomenological movement that pursues the question what connects the various phenomenological approaches to ancient philosophy has been lacking;3 this book seeks to address this scholarly lacuna. The individual chapters of the book will offer detailed discussions of the various phenomenological approaches to ancient philosophy as well as elaborate on the themes set out in the introduction. The book's first chapter investigates Husserl's interpretation of the Stoic concept lekton. Then follows four chapters on Heidegger's engagement with ancient thought that concentrate on important stages in the development of this engagement, from his earliest lectures on Aristotle to his late engagement with Presocratic philosophy and his entanglement with the Nazi regime. The remaining eight chapters then widens the perspective by tracing the interpretations of ancient Greek philosophy developed by both famous and less well-known phenomenologists, namely Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), Leo Strauss (1899–1973), Jakob Klein (1899–1978), Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Eugen Fink (1905–1975), Jan Patočka (1907–1977), Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). 1 See, e.g., Partenie and Rockmore (2005), Hyland and Manoussakis (2006); Gonzalez (2009); Staehler (2010). 2 See, e.g., Fuyarchuk (2010); Velkley (2011). 3 A partial exception is Zuckert (1996), who discusses the different interpretations of Plato developed by Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, and Derrida.