Order 517382: Pre Socratic Philosophy

Phil 260/2A Presocratics and Plato W 2/1 Instructor: Andrea Falcon

Anaximander

A) Anaximander and Thales 1. Diogenes Laertius Lives 1.13 The men who were commonly regarded as sages [sophoi] were the following: Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulos, Chilon, Bias, Pittacus …. Philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom, has a twofold origin; it started with Anaximander on the one hand, with Pythagoras on the other. The former was a pupil of Thales, while Pythagoras was taught by Pherecydes. The one school was called Ionian because Thales, a Milesian and therefore an Ionian, instructed Anaximander; the other school was called Italian from Pythagoras, who worked for the most part in Italy.

2. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 10.14.11 Anaximander was a student of Thales, being son of Praxiades and himself Milesian by descent. He first fashioned gnomons for distinguishing solstices, times, seasons, and equinoxes. 3. Diogenes Laertius Lives 2.1-2 Anaximander, son of Praxiades, of Miletus. He said the source and element was the boundless [to apeiron], not defining it as air or water or anything else. And the parts change, but the totality is changeless. … He first discovered the gnomon and set one up in Sparta, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous Studies, to mark solstices and equinoxes. … And he first drew a map of the earth and sea, and he also fashioned a sphere of the heavens. While Aristotle traces the beginning of philosophy back to Thales, the tradition we find in Diogenes Laertius, Lives 1.13 favor Anaximander and Pythagoras as the founders of the two main traditions of philosophy. More directly, Thales is one of the seven sages and the teacher of Anaximander, who is the founder of the Ionian style of philosophy.

B) Anaximander and his archê

A Presocratics Reader, pp. 16-19: T9 (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 24.13-21); T10 (Hyppolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 1.6.1-2), T11 (Aristotle, Physics 3.4.203b10-15), T15 (Hyppolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 1.6.3-7); T18 (Aëtius, Placita 45.19.4) and T19 (Ps- Plutarch Placita 2).

Anaximander develops his account in the framework of a cosmogony, which is to say an account of how the present world arouse out of a primeval undifferentiated state. He identifies the starting point or archê for his cosmogony in the apeiron or boundless. Apparently, he was the first to use this word (sc. apeiron). The key text for us is T9. It contains a quotation from Anaximander’s book. As with many putative fragments, the extent of the quotation is subject to some disputed, but the fact that Simplicius draws attention to Anaximander’s chosen form of diction implies that some of the preceding lines contain Anaximander’s actual words. At least the following words should go back to Anaximander: “for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time.” Here Anaximander seems to say that all interchanges between the main things in his cosmogony as governed by rule of exchange (e.g., all air that is converted into water is done at a certain “exchange rate,” and over time it will eventually be returned: water will in time repay its debt to air). Within this theoretical framework, Anaximander offers a cosmology which is to say an account of the present world order. In his cosmology, Anaximander explains why the earth remains at rest in the center of the cosmos, and how phases of the moon and eclipses occur. He assign relative dimensions to the earth and relative sizes to the surrounding heavenly rings. Anaximander also provides explanation of the existence of the sea, and of meteorological phenomena such as wind, storms, thunder, and lightning. He deals with biology within the framework of cosmogony: life originated in the sea, and some animals migrated to land, where they emerged from protective shells. The first human beings must have been nurtured inside fish, so that they could grow to maturity before they emerged on land. There is no doubt that Anaximander offered the first obvious example of theory in which we are given a framework for thinking about nature as a whole in a certain way.

C) Apeiron Etymologically apeiron is the neuter form of an adjective ultimately connected to the root *per- which shows up in the verb peiraô, “cross through,” and in the noun peras, limit or boundary. Early uses of this negative compound suggest that “uncrossable” may be the original sense. But from there it comes the mean “vast” and boundless”. Later the term will come to mean “infinite” in a mathematical sense (Aristotle). The apeiron is neither water not fire, neither hot nor cold, neither heavy nor light, neither wet nor dry. As the ultimate source of all things it can be none of those things and can

have none of their definite characteristics. Otherwise, it would be subject to the same rule that is described in T9: “according to necessity: for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time.” These appear to be Anaximander’s actual words. Anaximander posited one thing as the archê of everything, but this archê was not a thing with definite characteristics (e.g. water). It is described as “eternal” and “ageless”, “deathless” and “indestructible,” and hence “divine.” These too may have been his actual words. D) Anaximander and his cosmogony T12 is the key text for Anaximander’s cosmogony. Anaximander seems to have argued that the apeiron is capable of giving birth to the hot and the cold. More directly, the hot and the cold are separated off from the apeiron. They are described in concrete terms flame and dark mist. Since at this state there are only two things, fire and mist, corresponding to hot and cold, the mention of earth refers to a later stage of differentiation which may occur at the same time as the breakup of the sphere of flame into the circles to make the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Anaximenes A) Anaximenes and Anaximander Diogenes Laertius Lives 2.3 Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, of Miletus. He was a student of Anaximander, and some say he was a student of Parmenides too. He said the source [archê] and the boundless [apeiron] was air. B) Anaximenes, his archê, and his cosmogony

A Presocratics Reader, pp. 19-22: T21 (Theophrastus, as quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 24.26-25.1); T24 (Hyppolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 1.7.1-3).

Anaximenes is often regarded as the founder of Material Monism, the theory by which there is one on substance out of which everything else is a mere modification. In T 21, we are given a cosmogonic account in which the basis stages of change are enumerated with determinate stuffs: (1) fire, (2) air, (3) wind, (4) cloud, (5) water, (6) earth, and (7) stone. Anaximenes links them in a series from the most rare to the most dense, and he sees the degree of density as the cause of the different stuffs. He identifies air as the archê of all the others. He gives us a simple, clear, and elegant cosmogonic account in terms of condensation and rarefaction. This account replaces the inscrutable process outlined by Anaximander. T22 draws a close connection between air (aêr) and breath (pneuma), and between soul (psychê), the provider of life, and air (aêr). Aêtius, who quotes this passage, adds that aêr and pneuma men the same thing. For more on the connection between aêr and pneuma see the Hippocratic writing Breaths, which is clearly influenced by Anaximenes (and Diogenes of Apollonia). GLOSSARY: apeiron, cosmology, cosmogony, material monism, sage (sophos)