Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature, translated by Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), XIV + 399 pp.

摘要

In this remarkably erudite work, Pierre Hadot surveys a vast terrain. Begin-nning with Heraclitus’ wonderfully sonic fragment, “nature loves to hide”n(fu/sij kru/ptesqai filei), he examines twenty-five centuries of literary, picto-nrial, and philosophical reflections upon “the idea of nature.” In Chapter One,nHadot begins with a philological exegesis of each of the three Greek wordsnthat comprise Heraclitus’ aphorism. By Chapter Twenty-Three he is writingnabout Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein. Confronting a work ofnsuch scope, the reader must be prepared for short, sometimes clipped, sec-ntions of commentary on a prodigious number of texts. No individual work isnprobed in any depth, but the sum of the many parts adds up to a considerablenachievement. The Veil of Isis is an impressive work of scholarship that will benuseful to scholars in a variety of disciplines.