Thought
Nonetheless his merits as an original thinker are far outshone by his splendid services to the history of philosophy. Zeller's conception of the history of Greek thought was influenced by the dialectical philosophy of Hegel. Some critics maintain that Zeller was not alive enough to the so-called intimate relation which thought holds to national life and to the idiosyncrasy of the thinker. It is held in some circles that he lays too much stress upon the "concept," and explains too much by the Hegelian antithesis of subjective and objective despite the fact that his history of Greek philosophy is a noble monument of solid learning informed with natural sagacity. He received the highest recognition, not only from philosophers and learned societies all over the world, but also from the emperor and the German people. In 1894 the Emperor Wilhelm II made him a "Wirklicher Geheimrat" with the title of "Excellenz," and his bust, with that of Helmholtz, was set up at the Brandenburg Gate near the statues erected to the Emperor and Empress Frederick.
The Philosophie der Griechen has been translated into English by S. F. Alleyne (2 vols, 1881) in sections: S. F. Alleyne, History of Greek Philosophy to the time of Socrates (1881); O. J. Reichel, Socrates and the Socratic Schools (1868; 2nd ed. 1877); S. F. Alleyne and A. Goodwin, Plato and the Older Academy (1876); Benjamin Francis Conn Costelloe and J. H. Muirhead, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics (1897); O. J. Reichel, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (1870 and 1880); S. F. Alleyne, History of Eclecticism in Greek Philosophy (1883).
Zeller was also, in Philosophie der Griechen, one of the first to use the term "übermensch", later reified by Nietzsche, in adjectival form: "...so kann die Glückseligkeit, welche in ihr besteht, auch als eine übermenschliche, die Glückseligkeit der ethischen Tugend dagegen als das eigenthümlich menschliche Gut bezeichnet werden."
Read more about this topic: Eduard Zeller
Famous quotes containing the word thought:
“It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man’s busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)