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Some Problems in Anaximander

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. S. Kirk
Affiliation:
Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Extract

This article deals with four almost classic problems in Anaximander. of these the first is of comparatively minor importance, and the second is important not for what Anaximander thought but for what Aristotle thought he thought. Problem i is: Did Anaximander describe his as ? Problem 2: Did Aristotle mean Anaximander when he referred to people who postulated an intermediate substance ? Problem 3: Did Anaximander think that there were innumerable successive worlds? Problem 4: What is the extent and implication of the extant fragment of Anaximander? Appended is a brief consideration of the nature of Theophrastus' source-material for Anaximander; on one's opinion of this question the assessment of the last two problems will clearly depend.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1955

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References

page 21 note 1 See also my Heraclitus, the Cosmic Fragments, 20–25, 30.

page 21 note 2 Not, however, by McDiarmid, who in a note to the article already mentioned (Harvard Studies lxi (1953), n. 46 on pp. 138–40) argues in favour of the conclusion put for ward here. However, he rejects Burnet's interpretation of (see p. 23), and tentatively suggests reading (see p. 23 below) for His objections to that interpretation are: (1) it ‘does not render the Greek, as Jaeger claims’: with this I disagree (see n. i on p. 23). (2) ‘It makes no sense, since Simplicius has already treated the water of Thales as a material substratum of the opposites (Phys., p. 149, 5–7 and p. 150, 11–12). ‘This objection seems to me to be met by my submission below that ‘Anaximander would be singled out here as the first explicit holder of the idea in question because opposites were actually named by him (and not of course by Thales) as emerging from the arche. ‘But McDiarmid would not accept this: see n. 2 on p. 26. He usefully calls attention to another passage in Simplicius, de Caelo p. 615. 15 Heiberg, which possibly supports the minority view: (Anaximander).Google Scholar

page 22 note 1 At any rate Jaeger's objection, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers 201, n. 28, that must mean literally ‘to give the name of, is not cogent. This verb is sometimes used loosely to mean ‘specify as’, ‘identify as’;; e.g. Plato, , Rep. 4. 428 e … Google Scholar

page 23 note 1 With McDiarmid's support I now feel inclined to claim rather more than this.

page 24 note 2 McDiarmid has a good discussion (op. cit., pp. 100 ff.) of the way in which Aristotle and then Theophrastus were able to treat Anaximander as both a monist and a pluralist. He does not go into the particular difficulties of the intermediate-substance terminology, but obviously assumes that Anaximander is sometimes meant.

page 24 note 1 Nevertheless, Nicolaus and Porphyrius suggested Diogenes of Apollonia, whose arche was indubitably air and not an intermediate; while Zeller and Diels hit infelicitously upon one Idaeus of Himera, about whom we are told one thing and no more by antiquity, that he, too, believed the arche to be air.

page 25 note 1 So also McDiarmid, , Harvard Studies lxi (1953), 99.Google Scholar

page 25 note 2 Hölscher, U., Hermes lxxxi (1953), 261 f. (cf. 265–7), thinks that it was Aristotle who supplied the opposites in Anaximander, because he took Anaximander's use of (which need not imply opposites) to imply the of Aristotle's own opposites and the four simple bodies. One should certainly be cautious here, but I think that Hölscher's attempt to deny the concept of opposites to Anaximander has no indisputable foundation, and that it is contrary to the probable implications of the fragment and to Heraclitus ‘implicit correction of Anaximander. McDiarmid now adds his warning (op. cit., pp. 101 f.) to Hölscher's, and in particular calls attention to Simplicius in Phys. p. 27. 11 Diels (Dox. 479. 2), where Simplicius may assert that, according to Theophrastus, Anaximander separated gold and earth out of his . The question is whether here refers to Anaximander or to Anaxagoras (the two are being compared). Both views have been taken, and I am not convinced that McDiarmid is right in saying that must be Anaximander. We have to take into account that the choice of the strong demonstrative may have been determined by the lost context in Theophrastus himself, or even in Alexander, and not by the extant context in Simplicius' version. In this extant context, it is true, should refer to Anaximander: and this is important evidence so far as it goes. In any event, I do not maintain that what is separated off from Anaximander's must only be the two important pairs of opposites mentioned by Heraclitus, canonized by Empedocles, and taken over by Aristotle though these were the most obvious cosmological (and meteorological) oppositions at any date. Nor would I insist that only objects defined by their names as opposites (e.g.) are separated off. We can see from Anaxagoras fr. 4 that no one kind of classification would necessarily be used. If Anaximander (and not only Anaxagoras) mentioned gold and earth among the things separated from the Indefinite, this does not mean that he did not feel all those things to possess contrary in one way or another; though some would have a more obvious polarity (and would perhaps be more important cosmologically) than others. See also p. 33 below.Google Scholar

page 26 note 1 A slip by Aristotle, or a displacement in the text-tradition, is a possibility, of course, but hardly more probable than not. We have allowed him one such slip already— the intermediate between water and fire (omitting air) at Phys. A 6. 189 b;1.

page 27 note 1 The intermediate between water and earth is not mentioned, since it would be liable to the same obvious objections as earth, though to a lesser degree.

page 27 note 2 Before leaving this problem mention should be made of an hypothesis propounded by Gigon, O. in his Der Ursprung der griechischen Philosophie, pp. 68 ff. In our nine Aristotelian passages which refer to an intermediate he distinguishes between those that describe it as denser than one element and finer than another, and those (four in number) which simply call it and do not mention density. These latter passages, Gigon asserts, are accurate references by Aristotle to Anaximander; while the others are classed as ‘a later interpretation’on the dubious ground that the idea of rarefaction and condensation does not antedate Anaximenes. On this criterion the crucial passage Phys. A 4. 187 a 12 is ‘a later interpretation’. But this does not explain the opposition in that passage between Anaximander and the intermediate; for the so-called later interpretation, of substance intermediate in density, was at any rate an interpretation of Anaximander, and must have been to some extent associated by Aristotle with him. The suggestion that, in those passages where as it happens (as I would contend) Aristotle does not mention density in connexion with the intermediate, we are face to face with a genuine undistorted account of Anaximander is surely rather extravagant. This suggestion is made in order to support a theory that many will find implausible, that Anaximander's was intermediate between light and night, in a manner not so much physical as metaphysical or ideal! As so often an apparently promising initial examination of the evidence is followed by highly specuative conclusions which lie far beyond the range of that evidence.Google Scholar

page 28 note 1 Collingwood's interpretation here is influenced by his tendency to view archaic Greek speculation through the medium of later thought. In this case he is projecting the ideas of the Timaeus on to the Ionians (cf. op. cit. 72).

page 29 note 1 Of course, Theophrastus might simply have referred this opinion to Anaximander because he thought that he at any rate postulated successive worlds; but on such grounds he might have referred it also to, for example, Empedocles. It would fit in, too, with Anaximander's known anthropogonical theories, to which the suggestion of Alexander is not opposed.

page 29 note 2 Aristotle called such periods ‘great summer’ and ‘great winter’ (Meteor. A 14. 352 a 30), though he himself argued that changes in climate and in the conformation of land and sea were localized, and were balanced by reverse changes elsewhere.

page 29 note 3 Or the coherence of Simplicius ‘account of Theophrastus, I might now add in view of McDiarmid's interpretation discussed in n. 1 on p. 34.

page 29 note 4 Less so, if one stomachs coexistent worlds in c. 6.

page 30 note 1 I owe this suggestion to Professor R. Hackforth.

page 30 note 2 It is important that St. Augustine, whose source for Theophrastus is separate from Simplicius', attributed Atomistic-type worlds to Anaximander: CD. 8. 2 (DK 12 A 17).

page 31 note 1 Burnet though it ‘much more natural’ to understand intervals of space rather than of time. Cornford wrote as follows: ‘That Cicero himself took “intervals” to refer to time seems probable from Velleius’ next words, “sed nos deum nisi sempiternum intellegere non possumus”.’ Here is an example of special pleading almost as notable as anything Burnet ever perpetrated: for the contrast implied in ‘deum … sempiternum’ is adequately provided by nativos and orientis occidentisque.

page 31 note 2 McDiarmid, Similarly, Harvard Studies, Ixi (1953). 9798.Google Scholar

page 32 note 1 See Theophrastus' de sensibus for his tendency to quote isolated words and short phrases.

page 32 note 2 I deliberately do not emphasize any possible biological meaning in . It may have such a meaning here, it may imply that Anaximander used here, like the Theogony, the metaphor of sexual generation. Yet there are at least two instances in Plutarch where means simply ‘productive of, in a purely metaphorical and weakened sense and without any noticeable implication of sexual generation: Qu. conviv. 7. 715 f; Maxime cum princ. 3. 978 c. We simply cannot be sure, therefore, of its exact connotation in the pseudo-Plutarch passage.

page 32 note 3 The analysis into ‘opposites’, in the developed world, was certainly made shortly after Anaximander, most notably by Heraclitus; we are told that Anaximander used opposites at some stage in cosmogony (though see n. 2 on p. 26); it is reasonable to assume, therefore, quite apart from the evidence of the fragment, that he did not simply ignore their future history but retained them as constituents of our developed world of experience. It is from this world, after all, that the analysis into opposites must originally have been derived.

page 33 note 1 McDiarmid, , op. cit., p. 97, agrees that the payment cannot be between the world and the ; and also shows that the Cherniss–Vlastos suggestion is untenable. But he goes on to argue that the subject not pairs of opposed substances, but is the existing things of the separated world—as is shown by ot in the preceding sentence in Simplicius (n. 48 on p. 140). I would reply that these very existing things are in fact opposites, in the sense suggested in n. on p. 27; but thai it is illegitimate to use sentence-sequence here in order to determine the precise reference of , since on any interpretation, and particularly on McDiarmid's, there is confusion in the sequence of Theophrastean generalization and direct quotation. Indeed McDiarmid himself states on p. 98 tiiat ‘The generation–destruction clause is not to be connected with the metaphor’. His own interpretation of the whole passage is ingenious He argues that in Theophrastus’ is quoting what appears to be Anaximander's justification of his own doctrine against Thales and anyone else who made one of the opposed elements the primordial matter'. The world-constituents, I take this to mean, pay the penalty to each other, i.e. each to all the others, and not all one constituent material, the in the Thales-type theory. The gist of the Theophrastean extract according to McDiarmic is, then, as follows (p. 98): ‘Anaximandei declared the Infinite to be the principle all things (i.e., that out of which all things are generated and into which they are destroyed); and he said that the Infinite is some body which is not water or any other of the so-called elements, for, as he said, “they make reparation and satisfaction to each other for their injustice”. This interpretation deserves a fuller examination than, can be given it here, and is in many ways an attractive one which cannot be lightly dismissed. I will only say that its plausibility is severely diminished by the necessity of assuming that, in McDiarmid's words, ‘The thread of the argument has been obscured, probably by Simplicius’. If the meaning were as proposed, we should expect (not ), and (or another strong demonstrative), not In addition, the sentence-order would be different. But why should Simplicius or any intermediary have ruined the emphasis by tampering with pronouns and connecting particles—a far profounder change dian the mechanical shift of a sentence or two? Further, the addition of whether by Theophrastus or by Anaximander himself, removes the heavy emphasis on (which is not, in any case, in a particularly emphatic position), which is demanded if the argument is to be that which McDiarmid suggests. In any case, it seems difficult to exclude from the injustice-metaphor the implication that the things of the world are opposed to each other.Google Scholar

page 34 note 1 It might be argued that Aristotle Phys. Γ 4. 203 b II, needs some explaining. How does the Boundless ‘govern’ or ‘steer’ all things? By virtue, obviously, of surrounding or containing them; but what actual control can it exercise within the cosmos, if the idea of innumerable destructions and re-creations is rejected ? The question is difficult to answer on any hypothesis; we cannot be absolutely sure, of course, that though perhaps an archaic phrase, is taken from or refers specifically to Anaximander. Heraclitus' fire steers all things (fr. 64), but that of course exists within the cosmos, to some extent. We cannot suppose that the Boundless as such interpenetrates the differentiated world. But presumably it may have been thought of by Anaximander as the ultimate source of the between opposites on which the stability of the world depends. By enclosing the world, the Boundless prevents the expansion of differentiated matter; if there is thought to be any loss (which is doubtful), the Boundless would make it good. Possibly, if Anaximander thought of the Boundless as divine, he automatically gave it control, without determining precisely how this control was to take effect.

page 34 note 2 McDiarmid, , op. cit.141Google Scholar f., is won over by such similarities, and accepts the view of Dirlmeier, Rh. M. lxxxvii (1938), 380 f., is Theophrastus' paraphrase of Google Scholar

page 34 note 3 Bergk's conjecture in line 3 is unnecessary, improbable in itself, and entirely lacking in textual warrant. It is approved by Dirlmeier, , Rh. M. lxxxvii (1938), 378.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 Whether in the fragment means ‘act of assessing’ or ‘objective assessment’ (i.e. the result of an act of assessment) makes no material difference, as it happens, to the meaning. Jaeger approved the translation ‘ordinance’ (e.g. Paideia 2, Eng. tr.3, Oxford, 1946, 159, f. and n. 50 on p. 455). A consideration of the meaning of nouns in in the Iliad and Odyssey suggests that the active meaning is more likely here. Professor D. L. Page drew the following conclusion from a review of the Homeric evidence which he kindly sent me: ‘It is strongly suggested that a new formation, such as , will have been intended to denote the action of the verb, not its result, at least in archaic Greek.’ But Jaeger's assumption that active uses were necessarily legal is discredited by the use of the verb, and the necessary supplement of the noun, in the tribute-lists; though even there (as indeed in Jaeger's examples from Plato, Politicus 305 c and Laws 925 b) it cannot be proved that the sense of the noun is active.

page 35 note 2 As, for example, in Empedocles fr. 30. 2: Vlastos, , C.P. xlii (1947), 161, n. 48, has no grounds for his assumption that Anaximander's phrase must have had an equivalent application to that of Empedocles here.Google Scholar

page 36 note 1 See the index of Heraclitus, the Cosmic Fragments, s.v. ‘Book’ and ‘Theophrastus’. Whether Heraclitus himself ever ‘wrote a book’ in the usual sense seems doubtful.