The Anaximander Fragment
Anaximander fragment. Furthermore, Hegel too shares the predominant conviction concerning the classic character of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He provides the basis for the classification of the early thinkers as Preplatonic and Presocratic precisely by grasping them as Pre-Aristotelians.
In his lectures on the history of Greek philosophy, at the point where he indicates the sources for our knowledge of this primeval epoch of philosophy, Hegel says the following:
Aristotle is the richest source. He studied the older philosophers expressly and with attention to fundamentals. Especially at the beginning of the Metaphysics (though in many other places besides) he spoke as a historian about the entire group of them. He is as philosophical as he is learned; we can depend on him. For Greek philosophy we can do nothing better than take up the first book of his Metaphysics. (Works, XIII, 189)What Hegel recommends here to his listeners in the first decades of the nineteenth century had already been followed by Theophrastus, Aristotle's contemporary, his student, and the first successor to the leadership of the Peripatetics. Theophrastus died about 286 B.C. He composed a text with the title φυσικων δόξαι, "the opinions of those who speak of φύσει ὄντα." Aristotle also calls them the φυσιλόγοι, meaning the early thinkers who ponder the things of nature. Φύσις means sky and earth, plants and animals, and also in a certain way men. The word designates a special region of beings which, in both Aristotle and the Platonic school, are separated from ἠθος and λόγος. For them φύσις no longer has the broad sense of the totality of being. At the outset of Aristotle's thematic observations on Physics, that is, on the ontology of the φύσει ὄντα, the land of being called φύσει ὄντα is contrasted with that of τέχνη ὄντα. Φύσει ὄντα is that which produces itself by arising out of itself; τέχνη ὄντα is produced by human planning and production.
When Hegel says of Aristotle that he is "as philosophical as he is learned," this actually means that Aristotle regards the early thinkers in the historical perspective, and according to the standard, of his own Physics. For us that means: Hegel understands the Preplatonic and Presocratic philosophers as Pre-Aristotelians. After Hegel a twofold opinion concerning philosophy before Plato and Aristotle ensconces
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