Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words 'Phusis kruptesthai philei.' How the aphorism, usually translated as 'Nature loves to hide,' has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words. Over time, Hadot finds, 'Nature loves to hide' has meant that all that lives tends to die; that Nature wraps herself in myths; and (for Heidegger) that Being unveils as it veils itself. Meanwhile the pronouncement has been used to explain everything from the opacity of the natural world to our modern angst.

本书系皮埃尔•阿多的古代哲学研究自选集，所选的研究文本，既有对“注释”“术语”的精微解读，又关涉“古代思想、历史”的基本面向；清晰地展示了阿多所说的“作为生活方式的哲学”的研究进路和对古代哲学研究的问题意识。
在本书中，阿多将一种对哲学文本的解释能力置于“教学与生活”之中，厘清了“哲学”在西方古代及现代研究的基本线索和问题，重新思考了何为“哲学”这一问题；并将其置于 “希腊化思想与罗马思想史”的研究视野之下，从中我们可以感受到阿多深厚的学养严谨治学风范。