German Philosophy and the Ethical Life (On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life) (Book Review‪)‬

On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life, by Dennis Schmidt, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. 337pp. AT THE VERY BEGINNING of L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between (1953), an elderly narrator, about to take up a story from his youth, cautions his readers that what they are set to hear may prove difficult to comprehend. "The past is a foreign country," he admonishes, "they do things differently there." Hartley's caveat concerning the hermeneutic limits of historical comprehension offers a warning to all who would precipitously embark on a journey to recover the past. Every relation to the past, Hartley seems to say, needs to be rethought ever more cautiously in terms that make us aware of our own situation as historical inquirers.