ABSTRACT
Our access to the earliest Greek philosophers is compromised, first, by the oft-lamented paucity of texts that remain from this period and, second, by the fact that in most cases, these meager textual remains are extant only because they were used to confirm a given interpretation of the Presocratic thinker in question. This chapter critically examines Hegel's interpretation of Greek thought, and with it the multiple layers of ancient interpretation on which it is based, by focusing on a Presocratic thinker who disrupts the developmentalist schema that has been imposed on Presocratic thought: Xenophanes of Colophon. What we find missing from Hegel's account is Xenophanes as a theorist of mortality who seeks not only to articulate the limits of human knowledge, but also to clarify the possibility of ongoing discovery and human advancement in light of our mortal nature.
