Herodotean Inquiries

by Seth Benardete

Herodotus' Inquiries should be regarded as our best and most complete document for pre-Socratic philosophy. Without being a work of philosophy, its plan and intention cannot be understood apart from philosophy. Here an attempt is made to uncover Herodotus' plan and intention and to link them with their philosophic roots.

Genres: History, Philosophy

224 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 1970

About the author

Seth Benardete was an American classicist and philosopher, long a member of the faculties of New York University and The New School. In addition to teaching positions at Harvard, Brandeis, St. John's College, Annapolis and NYU, Benardete was a fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benardete begins with the assumption that Herodotus wrote with a purpose in mind and that there are no extraneous details in his "Inquiries." This might sound obvious, but it is extremely difficult at times to see how this is true, and many scholars and critics treat the ethnographic and geographic parts of the work as if they were not fundamentally integral to the work as a whole. Benardete's holistic approach invests the whole of the Histories with a philosophical gravity that transcends the "history" category. It is fascinating and illuminating, but at times very difficult to follow. Benardete writes as if he were demonstrating a proof from Euclid, except he tends to skip preliminary steps as ground already covered. His train of thought is gnomic and confusing at times, but the result is rich and provocative.

As a side note, I realize that the audience for this brilliant and esoteric commentary is extremely limited, but St. Augustine's Press really needs to correct the typos for the next printing. There are misprints on almost every page, which adds an unnecessary challenge to an already difficult text.

[Ormond College Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gerard Williams: Herodotus' Inquiries should be regarded as our best and most complete document for pre-Socratic philosophy. Without being a work of philosophy, its plan and intention cannot be understood apart from philosophy. Here an attempt is made to uncover Herodotus' plan and intention and to link them with their philosophic roots. This attempt requires that Herodotus' way of telling a story be examined, for Herodotus primarily reveals himself in the stories themselves and not in the moral he sometimes draws from them. Once one sees the importance Herodotus himself places in his own Inquiries, his account of Egypt, which has long been a stumbling block on any interpretation, can be appreciated; and Egypt in turn supplies the basis for understanding Book II on Persia and IV on Scythia and Libya. These three books prove to be the core of the Inquiries, for they establish the necessary conditions for both Greekness and the understanding of Greekness, and hence for the following five books on the Persian Wars.