Contained in this small book are translations of five of Hans-Georg Gadamer's essays on Hegel. Four of these, Hegel und die antike Dia- lektik," "Hegel-Die verkehrte Welt," "Die Idee der Hegelschen Logik/' and '1Hegel und Heidegger," appeared in a collection of Gadamer's writings entitled Hegels Dialektik: funf hermeneutt'scfte Studien, which was published by J. C. B. Mohr, Ttibingen, 1971. Of these four, two had been published previously. "Hegel und die antike Dialektik" appeared in Hegel-Studien 1., Bouvier, Bonn, 1961, and "Hegel-Die verkehrte Welt," in Hegel-Studien, supplement 3, 1964. The fifth essay, "Hegels Dt'alektz'k des Selbstbewussts~ins" (cf. chap- ter 3 below), which continues the explication begun in "Hegel-Die verkehrte Welt," appeared together with a republication of the latter in Materialien zu Hegels "Phtinomenologie des Geistes, " ed. Hans
Friedrich Fulda and Dieter Henrich, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1973. The first of the essays which follow in translation here, ..Hegel and the Dialectic of the Ancient Philosophers," is of particular interest because it shows how Gadamer was able to make use of his
vast knowledge .of aucient philosophy in reaching a critical under- standing of Hegel. Gadamer is guided by two questions: first, why it
is that Hegel, however productive his analyses might be, consistently misinterprets Plato..and Aristotle, and second, why it is that he nev- ertheless is able to open dimensions of their philosophy which had remained inaccessible to previous research.