When a philosopher is reading another philosopher, either it is having a critical stance or agrees with, in the end the aim will be to promote his or her own philosophical concepts and theories. This is especially when you have to deal with big names of the history of philosophy, in this case Hegel´s reading on Plato. A reading which is incomplete, fragmentary, subjective and in the end, serves exclusively the main philosophical narrative of the author. It does not reveal anything new and the observations and conclusion shall be regarded with a very critical eye.
Reading Hegel again, although in a translation of the French translation from the original German - experience taught me to be vigilent to any philosophical French translation from German as it embelishes the vocabulary but does not always have the right liguistic tools to convene the original German meanings - was a novel intellectual experience for me.
There, in the secret chamber of the lost books, Plato and his dialogues were as fresh as I left them more than a decade ago. Hegel and his acrobatic Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis - a triptic that I use often in various intellectual constructions by default - were also there. Only that my critical thinking evolved meanwhile which meant that I can read in many ways the use and often misuse various philosophical sources in order to build a different system of thought. It is an intellectual reflex of the modern age, overwhelmed with so much information and texts from the Antiquities onwards. Our age is left therefore only with the critical part. We rarely want to build anything and creating systems is a feareful approach which announces intellectual theologies - with low regard, if any, to individual freedoms.
Philosophical exercises are useful mind-games but I don´t believe in the philosopher-king. I never did.
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