Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
4. Joh. Gottlieb Buhle: _Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie und
einer kritischen Literatur derselben_, Göttingen, 1796 to 1804, eight
parts, 8. Ancient philosophy is treated with disproportionate brevity;
the further Buhle went on, the more particular he became. He has many
good summaries of rare works, as for instance those of Giordano Bruno,
which were in the Göttingen Library.
5. Wilh. Gottl. Tennemann’s _Geschichte der Philosophie_, Leipzig,
1798—1819, eleven parts, 8. The eighth part, the Scholastic
Philosophy, occupies two volumes. The philosophies are fully described,
and the more modern times are better done than the ancient. The
philosophies of recent times are easier to describe, since it is only
necessary to make an abstract or to interpret straight on, for the
thoughts contained in them lie nearer to ours. It is otherwise with
the ancient philosophers, because they stand in another stage of
the Notion, and on this account they are likewise more difficult to
grasp. That is to say, what is old is easily overthrown by something
else more familiar to us, and where Tennemann comes across such he is
almost useless. In Aristotle, for instance, the misinterpretation is so
great, that Tennemann foists upon him what is directly opposite to his
beliefs, and thus from the adoption of the opposite to what Tennemann
asserts to be Aristotle’s opinion, a correct idea of Aristotelian
philosophy is arrived at. Tennemann is then candid enough to place the
reference to Aristotle underneath the text, so that the original and
the interpretation often contradict one another. Tennemann thinks that
it is really the case that the historian should have no philosophy, and
he glories in that; yet he really has a system and he is a critical
philosopher. He praises philosophers, their work and their genius,
and yet the end of the lay is that all of them will be pronounced to
be wanting in that they have one defect, which is not to be Kantian
philosophers and not yet to have sought the source of knowledge. From
this the result is that the Truth could not be known.