Abstract
Does Anaxagoras admit that the world is destructible? Aëtius’ doxographical handbook says as much, and so does a doxographical scholion derived from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ lost commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (Frag. 539 Rashed) according to the transmitted text. However, because of other difficulties occurring in the same scholion, Rashed was led to correct not only this text, thus making it contradict Aëtius’ testimony, but also the entry dedicated to Plato. My article suggests that while Rashed’s corrections are superfluous, the problems that triggered them are of great interest for the history of the doxographical tradition, for the way in which this tradition was used by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius in their commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and, last but not least, for the understanding of the difficulties that ancient interpreters had to confront when they had to make sense of the lines now known as Anaxagoras B12 DK – difficulties that modern interpreters have still to confront.
Appendix: Note on the structure of the doxography in the scholion
On the basis of the reading I suggested for the Plato entry above p. 414, the scholion could reflect 5 rather than 6 lemmas, because the entries labeled 4a and 4b below really result from a dissociation of one single doxa, as is shown by a comparison with Aëtius 24.9 Mansfeld and Runia (cf. above p. 414, n. 24):
| 1. ἀπείρους κόσμους γενητοὺς [καὶ φθαρτούς | Δημόκριτος, Ἀναξίμανδρος, Ἐπίκουρος. |
| 2. ἕνα κόσμον γενητὸν καὶ φθαρτὸν [ἄλλον καὶ ἄλλον | Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ᾽Αναξιμένης, Διογένης, Ἡράκλειτος, [ἡ Στοά. |
| 3. ἕνα κόσμον γενητὸν καὶ [φθαρτόν ἐξ ἡσυχίας | Ἀναξαγόρας Ἀρχέλαος Μητρόδωρος. |
| 4a. ἕνα κόσμον γενητὸν καὶ[φθαρτόν ἐξ ἀταξίας | Πλάτων, ὡς δοκεῖ· |
| 4b. ἕνα κόσμον γενητὸν καὶ [ἄφθαρτον. [34] | <Πλάτων καθ᾽ ἀλήθειαν> vel <Πλάτων> [35] |
| 5. ἕνα κόσμον ἀγένητον καὶ [ἄφθαρτον | Ξενοφάνης, Παρμενίδης. |
The chapter is progressing both from ‘illimited’ number to ‘unicity’ and from ‘genesis-cum-destruction” to ‘non-genesis-cum-non-destruction’. The main divide is between illimited number and unicity, that is between 1 and 2. There is a remainder of multiplicity in 2, since the cosmos is generically one, but specifically different inasmuch as it is periodically regenerated (ἄλλον καὶ ἄλλον). This remainder is progressively eliminated in the four remaining lemmas, which consider the case of a straightforwardly unique cosmos. The modality of the genesis, which was not mentioned in the first two entries and is irrelevant to the last one where there is no genesis, is explicitly mentioned in 3 and 4. Whereas ἡσυχία refers to the immobility characteristic of Anaxagoras’ mixture before the intervention of Nous, which initiates motion (cf. B12), ἀταξία, by contrast, points not only to the notion of disorder, but to the agitation characteristic of the chora in the Timaeus (cf. Tim. 52e). At the same time, Plato’s doxa directly leads to the Eleatic position, in an inversion of the move that leads from the first to the second entry: whereas entry 2 still implied some multiplicity in an already single-world scheme, entry 4 still contains a generative moment, which is then totally eliminated in the last, fully Eleatic doxa.
If this description is right, the scholion not only contains new information about the opinions of some of the authors it mentions (cf. supra, p. 405, n. 6 and Rashed 2011, p. 489f), but it above all presents an original organization of a material abundantly represented in the ancient debate (cf. the references collected by Mansfeld and Runia 2009 at the end of their reconstruction of Aëtius 2.4., p. 364–366). This topic would require further investigation, too. [36]
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