Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3) — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
We shall take Leucippus and Democritus with Empedocles; in them
there is manifested the ideality of the sensuous and also universal
determinateness or a transition to the universal. Empedocles was
a Pythagorean Italian, whose tendencies were Ionic; Leucippus and
Democritus, who incline to the Italians, in that they carried on the
Eleatic school, are more interesting. Both these philosophers belong
to the same philosophic system; they must be taken together as regards
their philosophic thought and considered thus.[68] Leucippus is the
older, and Democritus perfected what the former began, but it is
difficult to say what properly speaking belongs to him historically.
It is certainly recorded that he developed Leucippus’ thought, and
there is, too, some of his work preserved, but it is not worthy of
quotation. In Empedocles we see the commencement of the determination
and separation of principles. The becoming conscious of difference is
an essential moment, but the principles here have in part the character
of physical Being, and though partaking also of ideal Being, this form
is not yet thought-form. On the other hand we find in Leucippus and
Democritus the more ideal principles, the atom and the Nothing, and we
also find thought-determination more immersed in the objective—that
is, the beginning of a metaphysics of body; or pure Notions possess the
significance of the material, and thus pass over thought into objective
form. But the teaching is, on the whole, immature, and is incapable of
giving satisfaction.
1. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.
Nothing is accurately known of the circumstances of Leucippus’ life,
not even where he was born. Some, like Diogenes Laertius (IX. 30), make
him out to be an Eleatic; others to have belonged to Abdera (because he
was with Democritus), or to Melos—Melos is an island not far from the
Peloponnesian coast—or else, as is asserted by Simplicius in writing
on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7), to Miletus. It is definitely stated
that he was a disciple and a friend of Zeno; yet he seems to have been
almost contemporaneous with him as well as with Heraclitus.