This course is devoted to a careful reconstruction of how some of the key figures in 20^th century German philosophy used the Greek tradition to rethink their philosophical practices. The starting point is obviously Nietzsche, who, with his critique of metaphysics and the fundamental tenets of Platonism and Christianity, marks a caesure in the philosophical tradition. His attempt to find intellectual inspiration in pre-Platonic figures such as Heraclitus and Aeschylus, can be seen as a precedent to Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics and his reinterpretation of the works of Presocratics such as Heraclitus, Parmenides and Anaximander, in order to overcome what he saw as the limitations of the tradition of metaphysics as it developed from Plato and Aristotle onwards. Besides this reevaluation of pre-Platonic texts as an alternative kind of philosophy, we also find a revival of interest in Plato in the works of Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss – the focus being, in this case, the tension between philosophy and politics. In spite of their differences, what all these thinkers have in common, is an intense engagement with the ancient Greek tradition in order to reshape the thinking of their own day. Why would 20^th century thinkers feel the need for a reevaluation of the ancient Greek tradition in order to find new ways of thinking for their own time? What conception of philosophy and of the relation between history and the possibilities of philosophizing, or history and ontology, play in the background here? What makes pre-Platonic texts so particularly attractive for Nietzsche and Heidegger in this regard and what does this mean for their appreciation of Plato? How could Hannah Arendt find inspiration for dealing with the problems of ‘our’ time in a reinterpretation of Plato’s Socrates? These are some of the problems we will discuss.