Anaxagoras of Clazomenae proposed a theory of everything. Like other Presocratics, Anaxagoras addressed topics that could now be placed outside the sphere of philosophical inquiry: not only did he explore metaphysics and the nature of human understanding but he also offered explanations in physics, meteorology, astronomy, physiology, and biology. His aim seems to have been to explain as completely as possible the world in which human beings live, and one's knowledge of that world; thus he seeks to (...) investigate the universe from top to bottom. This article explores Anaxagoras's world from its basic foundations. It undertakes to show the connections among the metaphysical, epistemological, and cosmological parts of Anaxagoras's theory. The discovery and publication of new material has also enhanced the understanding of Presocratic thought. A spectacular example is the new material from Empedocles of Acragas that has become available. (shrink)

No pre-Socratic philosopher, perhaps, has caused more disagreement, or been more variously interpreted, than Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. Among recent attempts to reconstruct his system some of the more notable are those of Tannery, Bailey, Cornford, Peck, and Vlastos. Each of these reconstructions, and especially that of Tannery, has its adherents; and since none of them has much in common with any other, a universally acceptable solution to the fundamental problems involved may well by now seem unattainable. It is (...) my belief, however, and it is the object of this paper to try to prove, that all these modern reconstructions have at least one quality in common, namely an undue complication. The actual system of Anaxagoras was, I believe, considerably simpler than any reconstruction yet forthcoming. Unfortunately what I take to be the basis of the whole system, Anaxagoras' reaction to his Eleatic predecessors, is by.no means easy to convey in brief and simple terms. But if I should succeed in conveying it, then it will, I hope, be seen in itself to possess such a simplicity and neatness that my contention will carry with it a fair warrant of its own truth. I shall, for convenience, divide my argument into ten sections, to which I shall append a brief summary of my conclusions. (shrink)

No pre-Socratic philosopher, perhaps, has caused more disagreement, or been more variously interpreted, than Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. Among recent attempts to reconstruct his system some of the more notable are those of Tannery, Bailey, Cornford, Peck, and Vlastos. Each of these reconstructions, and especially that of Tannery, has its adherents; and since none of them has much in common with any other, a universally acceptable solution to the fundamental problems involved may well by now seem unattainable. It is (...) my belief, however, and it is the object of this paper to try to prove, that all these modern reconstructions have at least one quality in common, namely an undue complication. The actual system of Anaxagoras was, I believe, considerably simpler than any reconstruction yet forthcoming. Unfortunately what I take to be the basis of the whole system, Anaxagoras' reaction to his Eleatic predecessors, is by.no means easy to convey in brief and simple terms. But if I should succeed in conveying it, then it will, I hope, be seen in itself to possess such a simplicity and neatness that my contention will carry with it a fair warrant of its own truth. I shall, for convenience, divide my argument into ten sections, to which I shall append a brief summary of my conclusions. (shrink)

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (a major Greek city of Ionian Asia Minor), a Greek philosopher of the 5th century B.C.E. (born ca. 500–480), was the first of the Presocratic philosophers to live in Athens. He propounded a physical theory of “everything-in-everything,” and claimed that nous (intellect or mind) was the motive cause of the cosmos. He was the first to give a correct explanation of eclipses, and was both famous and notorious for his scientific theories, including the claims that (...) the sun is a mass of red-hot metal, that the moon is earthy, and that the stars are fiery stones. Anaxagoras maintained that the original state of the cosmos was a mixture of all its ingredients (the basic realities of his system). The ingredients are thoroughly mixed, so that no individual ingredient as such is evident, but the mixture is not entirely uniform or homogeneous. (shrink)

In my paper, I shall provide a reading of Diogenes of Apollonia such that his understanding of the metaphysics of differentiation and of individual ensoulment may constitute an ingenious answer to the problems of his time. To this extent, I will argue that Diogenes' worldview solves the difficulties of Anaxagoras' metaphysics and successfully integrates mentality in a causally closed conception of nature. Finally, I will suggest that a Diogenes-inspired approach might be relevant to treat some pressing concerns in the (...) contemporary philosophy of mind – thus demonstrating how his production might offer some interesting solutions for the problems of our time too. (shrink)

This paper elucidates how the thinking about opposition that we find in the surviving passages of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and in the fragments of Heraclitus of Ephesus informs discussions of the separability of the body and the soul in the Phaedo. I offer a reconstruction of the way in which these pre-Socratic ideas of opposition are appropriated and refracted in Plato’s Phaedo (especially at 85e–86e, 92a–95a, 102c–e, 102b–107a). I treat Anaxagoras first, in order to explicate how his (...) ideas make up the background of the dialogical study of the separation of the soul from the body (102b–107a). My analysis of Heraclitus comes second and shows how his ideas inform the interlocutors’ assessment of the unity characteristic of the body and the soul (92a–95a). I set the stage for the discussion of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus by relating these thinkers to the broader Pythagorean background that is apparent in the dialogue. (shrink)

In the field of natural science, Aristotle recognizes as his forerunners a select group of theorists such as Heraclitus of Ephesus, Empedocles of Acragas, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera. In addition, he mentions in the same contexts some whose claims to be “natural philosophers” are doubtful, yet who deserve notice in the same context, including Parmenides of Elea, Melissus of Samos, the people called Pythagoreans, and Plato as the author of the Timaeus. Aristotle takes (...) seriously almost all of these people, treating them as exemplary pioneers and valuable partners in the enterprise of “natural philosophy.” This article examines earlier opinions on certain fundamental questions about the natural world, as treated in the first three books of the Physics and in the first book of the Metaphysics. In Physics II and III, Aristotle represents most if not all of his predecessors as disastrously misunderstanding, in more than one way, the nature underlying the natural world. (shrink)

Anaxagoras’ theory of matter offers a problem which, in bald outline, may be stated as follows. The theory rests on two propositions which seem flatly to contradict one another. One is the principle of Homoeomereity: A natural substance such as a piece of gold, consists solely of parts which are like the whole and like one another—every one of them gold and nothing else. The other is: ‘There is a portion of everything in everything’, understood to mean that a (...) piece of gold , so far from containing nothing but gold, contains portions of every other substance in the world. Unless Anaxagoras was extremely muddleheaded, he cannot have propounded a theory which simply consists of this contradiction. One or the other proposition must be reinterpreted so as to bring them into harmony. Some critics attack one, some the other; some try to modify both. Mr. C. Bailey has recently published a fresh attempt to reconstruct the theory in a form consistent with itself. But the result, as he admits, is arbitrary and uneconomical. These defects, like all the contradictions and obscurities found in other accounts of the system, can be traced to the second proposition: ‘There is a portion of everything in everything’, or rather to the construction put upon it. The language is crude, vague, and ambiguous. What does ‘everything’ mean? Has the first ‘everything’ the same sense as the second ? If taken to mean that there is a portion of every material substance in every material substance, the proposition leads to a result for which ‘uneconomical’ is an indulgent epithet. (shrink)

The earlier part of this paper yielded the result that the assertion ‘A portion of everything in everything’ has no place or function in the explanation of any sort of apparent ‘becoming’ or change. This conclusion is important because, ever since Aristotle, it has been assumed that the assertion was made in order to explain away becoming and change. But if , according to the best evidence, becoming and such sorts of change as Anaxagoras considered can be explained away (...) without using the assertion at all, it follows that the motive for it must be sought, not in the processes of apparent becoming and change, but in the permanent constitution of the ungenerated and unchanging things which figure as elements in the system. A visible mass of gold or of flesh is formed by the aggregation of smaller particles of gold or of flesh, and it is infinitely divisible into parts, every one of which is gold or flesh. But what is the constitution of a piece of gold of whatever size, and how does it differ from the constitution of a piece of flesh? The proposition we have so far successfully excluded comes in here as part of the answer to this question. (shrink)

Origen has been always studied as a theologian and too much credit has been given to Eusebius’ implausible hagiography of him. This book explores who Origen really was, by pondering into his philosophical background, which determines his theological exposition implicitly, yet decisively. For this background to come to light, it took a ground-breaking exposition of Anaxagoras’ philosophy and its legacy to Classical and Late Antiquity, assessing critically Aristotle’s distorted representation of Anaxagoras. Origen, formerly a Greek philosopher of note, (...) whom Proclus styled an anti-Platonist, is placed in the history of philosophy for the first time. By drawing on his Anaxagorean background, and being the first to revive the Anaxagorean Theory of Logoi, he paved the way to Nicaea. He was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher with far-reaching influence, also on Neoplatonists such as Porphyry. His theology made an impact not only on the Cappadocians, but also on later Christian authors. His theory of the soul, now expounded in the light of his philosophical background, turns out more orthodox than that of some Christian stars of the Byzantine imperial orthodoxy. (shrink)

It is a point of some interest to the historian of the social and intellectual development of Athens to determine, if possible, the exact dates between which the philosopher Anaxagoras made that city his home. As everyone knows, the tradition of the third and later centuries was not uniform. The dates from which the Alexandrian chronologists had to arrive at their results may be conveniently summed up under three headings, date of Anaxagoras' arrival at Athens, date of his (...) prosecution and escape to Lampsacus, length of his residence at Athens, The received account , was that Anaxagoras was twenty years old at the date of the invasion of Xerxes and lived to be seventy-two. This was apparently why Apollodorus placed his birth in Olympiad 70 and his death in Ol. 88. I, thus giving the years 500–428 B.C. of our reckoning, The further statement of Apollodorus that Anaxagoras xs1F24ρξατο xs03D5ιλοσοxs03D5εxs1FD6ν xs22EFπxs22EF Καλλίον has given rise to discussion; but when we remember that Demetrius of Phalerum had made what ‘Diogenes’ regards as an equivalent statement in his register of archons, and had said that Anaxagoras was twenty years old at the time, I think there can be no doubt of the meaning. Demetrius had clearly mentioned something about Anaxagoras which was looked on as giving the date at which he ‘began to philosophize,’ and had given his age at the time. The natural interpretation is that Demetrius mentioned the year of Anaxagoras’ arrival at Athens, and that this was taken as the time at which he ρξαtο φιλοσοφεlσ And it is further reasonable to suppose that this date was the source of the further statement of Demetrius, that Anaxagoras was born in or about 500 B.C. We may, I think, infer that Demetrius recorded the arrival of Anaxagoras in Athens under the year 480, giving his approximate age at that time. (shrink)

Le présent article vise à éclairer la nature des activités perceptives et cognitives attribuées au νοῦς d’Anaxagore, en particulier à lever les difficultés liées à l'évaluation de la part des dimensions mécaniques, cognitives et téléologiques dans l'activité du νοῦς cosmique, par une comparaison avec l'usage des verbes γιγνώσκω, νοέω et du substantif νοῦς dans le contexte du champ de bataille homérique. Les rangeurs d'hommes homériques partagent avec le νοῦς d'Anaxagore une description de leurs activités en termes de tri, d'extraction et (...) de mise en ordre, par l'usage commun des verbes διακρίνω, ἀποκρίνω, διακοσμέω. Or l'analyse des opérations perceptives et cognitives de ceux-là révèle un modèle d'action immanente, liant la perception des singularités au sein de touts complexes et mouvants à l'appréhension globale des positions passées, présentes et possibles des troupes en action. Pensé sur ce modèle, le νοῦς d'Anaxagore sera conçu selon un modèle de perception par immersion dont sa nature physique très particulière le rend capable : c'est en faisant intégralement corps avec le mélange matériel que le νοῦς se rend capable d'en faire le tri et d'en anticiper les états possibles. L'illimitation de sa connaissance et de son pouvoir a néanmoins une conséquence qui le différencie du chef homérique : n'avoir aucun choix du fait de la puissance de réaliser toutes les différenciations possibles. (shrink)

This book, a part of a larger work by the same authors, is concerned with the roots of scientific inquiry which are to be found in Anaxagoras' picture of the world. Application of his method, which they describe as a combination of meticulous observation and logical analysis, to the study of physical change led Anaxagoras to discover the principle of Mind as the unifying factor of all that exists. This principle, together with the description of matter in terms (...) of homeomerous substances, is sufficient for Anaxagoras to provide explanations of all physical events, as is illustrated by the specific theories discussed in the second half of the book. While the book is intended to present conclusions rather than scholarly material, it seems to this reader that the description of Anaxagoras as scientist wholly in terms of an unexamined model of contemporary scientific method does not do him justice, insofar as it neglects to consider what may be important in the differences between his approach and ours.—O. H. (shrink)

In the first argumentative section of Book 1, Lucretius establishes the existence of matter and void , and in the second identifies matter as the atoms and defines their properties . In the third section, following Epicurean tradition, he attempts to refute a representative selection of Presocratic philosophers – Heraclitus , Empedocles and Anaxagoras – whose explanations of basic matter are potential rivals to the atomist theory which he has just outlined. The climax to this section is reached in (...) Lucretius' triumphant personal claim to be an original poet and health-bringing purveyor of truth . His foregoing criticism of the Presocratics as writers and thinkers is deeply coloured by the values he openly professes here. The introductory passages to each philosopher, in particular, are highly revealing of Lucretius' personal inclinations as a poet and exhibit a virtuoso command of several styles and techniques. (shrink)

Cornford's interpretation of Anaxagoras' theory of matter was an attempt to solve the apparent contradiction between the Principle of Homoeomereity, as he calls it, and that which asserts that ‘there is a portion of everything in everything’; and also, perhaps, to assign a more definite place in the system to the qualitative ‘Opposites’ which Tannery and Burnet had asserted, in rather vague terms, to be Anaxagoras' elements. In effect he solves the problem by applying the former principle to (...) the phenomenal world and to the Seeds which are the elements for Anaxagoras, and confining the latter, the principle of Universal Mixture as we may call it, to the Opposites, which are the substantial but inseparable constituents of the Seeds. By this tidy and ingenious solution he avoids not only the above-mentioned contradiction but also what he calls the grotesque and gratuitous absurdity of holding that a Seed of gold contains mostly gold, but also flesh and all other natural substances, in order to explain the possibility of various changes, the great majority of which never occur anyhow. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, I shall argue that Apollodorus of Athens, in his Chronica, dated Anaxagoras' arrival at Athens to 456/5, following Demetrius of Phalerum. Rejecting the divergent opinion of others, he also followed Demetrius' estimation of the Athenian period as having lasted 20 years, which makes 437/6 Anaxagoras' last year at Athens 1). In the second part I shall argue that the trial of Anaxagoras, about which no information survives in the remains of (...) Apollodorus but which is reported by several other sources, should probably be dated to 437/6. This second argument is independent of the first; both run counter to the view, still rather popular among historians of ancient philosophy, which favours a date for the trial either immediately preceding or even following upon the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, as well as to the communis opinio according to which the Athenian period lasted 30 years. What is common to both parts of this inquiry is a refusal to study the chronology of Anaxagoras' career in isolation. In part I, which is chiefly concerned with an analysis of the relevant passage in Diogenes Laertius qua specimen of Apollodorean reasoning, the problem is discussed against the background of Apollodorus' synchronistic matrices. In part II, the trial and the decree of Diopeithes which made it possible are studied in connection with the plot against Pericles and certain members of his circle.-A suggestion regarding the date of 'publication' of Anaxagoras' treatise will be appended to part II. (shrink)

In the first argumentative section of Book 1, Lucretius establishes the existence of matter and void, and in the second identifies matter as the atoms and defines their properties. In the third section, following Epicurean tradition, he attempts to refute a representative selection of Presocratic philosophers – Heraclitus, Empedocles and Anaxagoras – whose explanations of basic matter are potential rivals to the atomist theory which he has just outlined. The climax to this section is reached in Lucretius' triumphant personal (...) claim to be an original poet and health-bringing purveyor of truth. His foregoing criticism of the Presocratics as writers and thinkers is deeply coloured by the values he openly professes here. The introductory passages to each philosopher, in particular, are highly revealing of Lucretius' personal inclinations as a poet and exhibit a virtuoso command of several styles and techniques. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

The great number of contradictory statements which confront us when we examine the various explanations of Anaxagoras' philosophy make it more than usually important to decide what is to be admitted as first-hand evidence and what is not. I purpose, then, to begin by accepting the barest minimum of data, and I shall try to exclude any direct comments upon Anaxagoras' work by later writers. Sufficient justification for such a course may be found in the bewildering masses of (...) confusion which have gathered around his teaching. (shrink)

In Anaxagoras’ system, cosmic Mind is one, indivisible and immutable and thus cannot be divided into parts, into individual minds residing in living beings. The same Mind is in one living being as it is in another. Also, the soul is an individual entity, one soul in one living being. Mind does manifest itself in a living being, not as the soul, but through the soul. Mind must be constantly present in the individual soul for the soul to be (...) capable of thought. Only in this sense could the soul’s dormant cognitive ability be called an individual mind. However, for man, only this life remains, although man is highest in the hierarchy among existing beings. Mind seems to make man alive and rational so that man can admire its handiwork, the order and harmony of the world. But this is where man’s cosmic role ends. (shrink)