Vermächtnis der Antike. Gesammelte Essays zur Philosophie und Geschichtsschreibung. Herausgegeben von C. Becker. - REINHARDT, K.,

Göttingen, 1989. Reprint 2nd ed.1966. 479p. Original blue gilt titled cloth with dust wrps. Dust wrps slightly edge worn. Nice copy.Antiquarian Titel: Vermächtnis der Antike. Gesammelte Essays zur Philosophie und Geschichtsschreibung. Herausgegeben von C. Becker. Auteur: REINHARDT, K.,
The book ?comprises some eighteen pieces, of which three were reprinted in a in an earlier collection (?), and two are now published for the first time. In addition there are two indexes and a Nachwort by the editor. This last gives not only a general appreciation but a very fair attempt to describe certain principles underlying all Reinhardt?s writings. (?) The collection contains great riches. It opens with a remarkable unpublished article on ?Personifikation und Allegorie?. This involves the rejection of the view associated with the name of Usener, according to which the gods of the Greeks were the product of personifications of natural forces of various kinds. Rather the reverse. (?) It was the gods who were original, and personification which was derivative. This process gave way to that of Allegory after the fifth century. Allegory, defined as a statement with a second meaning different from its surface meaning, is the opposite of personification, and was absent in Homeric and archaic literature. (?) there follow three articles on Heraclitus (?). The longest item in the present book is the treatment of ?Platons Mythen?. (?) It is argued that the traditional Greek capacity for myth died in Plato?s youth, its death being promoted by the rationalism of Socrates and the Sophists which represented an Entgötterung - a stripping away of the divine from men?s picture of the universe. Plato aimed to restore the mythical, but upon a new plane, that of the soul, and he related it closely to his Dialectic and to the World of the Ideas, so that it came to play an integral part in all his thinking. This represents the most adventurous of all Rheinhardt?s attempts at a ?Sprung ins Andere?. (?) The remainder of the essays consist of two dealing with Herodotus, one with Thucydides and Machiavelli, two with Nietzsche, an article on ?Classical Philology and the Classical?, articles on four other scholars, and a final article, ?Akademisches aus zwei Epochen?, which gives a moving account of Rheinhardt?s experiences under the Hitler régime.? (G.B. KERFERD in The Classical Review (New Series), 1961, pp.248-250.