ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the significance of Greek philosophy, especially in light of Aristotelian ethics. It deals with Nicolai Hartmann, who at that time found in Aristotle a kind of phenomenological help-mate in his break with Neokantianism. Phenomenological Interpretations thus means a description of the phenomena themselves, which seeks on this basis the conceptual expression that the phenomena have found in Platonic thought. If language has its authentic life only in conversation, then the Platonic dialogue may awaken a living discussion now as before, and achieves the fertile fusion of all horizons in which, questioning and searching, we must find our way in our own world. The Socratic dialogue and the Socratic question of the good was the life-worldly background from which Plato could call philosophy "dialectic" in the first place. In Germany the Socratic question had to reveal, with an inner necessity, the weakness and powerlessness of our own national consciousness.
