Finkelberg A Anaximander's Conception of The Apeiron

Anaximander's Conception of the "Apeiron"
Author(s): Aryeh Finkelberg

Source: Phronesis, Vol. 38, No. 3 (1993), pp. 229-256
Published by: BRILL
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182446 .
Accessed: 24/09/2013 11:02
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phronesis.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 193.205.6.111 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:02:08 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Anaximander's conception of the apeiron
ARYEH FINKELBERG
Anaximander's Apeiron is perhaps the most obscure notion in Greek philos-
ophy. Aristotle was puzzled by it, suggesting various and greatly differing
interpretations of the concept. But while Aristotle's construals were in a
sense predominantly ad hoc and exempli gratia, Theophrastus committed
himself, at least in the expository sections of his Physical Opinions, to a
concise presentation - with attention to their authentic setting and idiom -
of the teachings of the earlier thinkers. Theophrastus' statement concerning
the Apeiron has come down to us in the following three versions:
Simpl. Phys. 24, 13 (DK 12 A 9): Anaximander... said that the arche and
the element of existing things was the Apeiron... and he says that it is
neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other infi-
nite nature...
Diog. ii 1 (DK 12 A 1): Anaximander... said that the arche and the
element is the Apeiron, not determining whether it is air or water or some-
thing else.
Aet. 1 3, 3 (DK 12 A 14): Anaximander... says that the arche of existing
things is the Apeiron... but he errs in that he does not say what the Apeiron
is, whether it is air, or water, or earth, or some other body.
The question whether Simplicius or Diogenes and Aetius are true to
Theophrastus' genuine wording is not of a purely philological interest. As
Barnes notes, 'the view that Anaximander's principle was qualitatively in-
determinate loses in plausibility if he did not positively distinguish it from
the elements'.' Kahn says that 'here again the words of Simplicius must
closely reflect the text of Theophrastus. The parallels [in Aetius and Dio-
genes] prove this, even if they are not precise enough to establish the
original wording'.2 Barnes also says that he does not see that we can answer
'
J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (hereafter PP), rev. ed., London, 1983, 32.
'
C.H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, New York, 1960, 33.
Phronesis 1993. Vol. XXXVIII/3 (Accepted February 1993)
229
the question: 'indeed, we cannot tell whether Simplicius or Diogenes better
represents Theophrastus' judgement'.3 Yet the decisive answer has already
been given by Holscher who assessed Simplicius' words as 'clearly a dis-
tortion; the correct phrase in Diogenes, ob 6LOQfwV', and this not merely
because Simplicius is in a minority, but for the simple reason that 'other-
wise there could have been no discussion about it [s(. the
Apeiron]
at all'.4
What then Theophrastus actually said is that Anaximander did not deter-
mine his arche and element in respect of qualities. But it is one thing to say
that Anaximander did not determine his arche qualitatively and quite anoth-
er to say that he posited a qualitatively indeterminate body as the arche; and
to conclude from the former to the latter is not an inference that logicians
would approve.
Yet this is not to say that Anaximander provided his arche with no
qualification at all - he called it Tlo ?jbTtov. Now the Greek word may
mean 'boundless, infinite, countless' and 'endless' in the sense of 'circular'
(see LSJ, s. v.; the third meaning - 'without outlet' is surely irrelevant to
Anaximander). Gottschalk is thus right in pointing out that the widely ac-
cepted idea that under TO diTrcQov Anaximander meant 'that which is with-
out internal boundaries or distinctions', in effect, 'qualitatively indetermi-
nate', has no linguistic justification.5 In calling his principle To
&JtELQOV
Anaximander may have meant to specify it as spatially infinite (or more
plausibly historically
-
indefinitely large) or temporally infinite, viz. eter-
nal, or, what is most probable, both; or even as spherical;6 but qualitative
indefiniteness certainly was not what he could have intended to express by
this term.7
The scholarly belief that Anaximander posited a qualitatively indefinite
body as the principle is thus, at the best, a speculative conjecture and at the
3 Barnes, PP, 32.
4
U. H6lscher, 'Anaximander and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy' in: D.J. Furley
and R.E. Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, i, London, 1970 (hereafter FA),
304, n. 54.
'
H.B. Gottschalk, 'Anaximander's Apeiron', Phronesis x (1965), 51-52.
6
As F.M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae, Cambridge, 1952 (hereafter PS), 176-77,
suggests; cf. W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, (hereafter HGP), i, Cam-
bridge, 1962, 85.
Guthrie, HGP i, 86, argues that, among all senses of
i7twLQog,
the alleged meaning
'intemally indeterminate' is likely to have been uppermost in Anaximander's mind,
'since it offered a solution to the problem that he was trying to solve'. This reasoning, to
use Guthrie's phrase (ibid. 132) 'comes perilously near to a petitio principii'. Kirk, in
G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven, M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge, 1983
(hereafter KRS), 110. while favorably considering the possibility that li7trLQog
may
mean 'indistinct, indefinite in kind', admits that such a sense of the word has no paral-
lels.
230
worst, a confusion which has neither doxographical nor linguistic support
and moreover, strictly speaking, goes against our evidence.
1. The Apeiron as the airy arche
What then, on our evidence, Anaximander did posit was a huge and eternal
body whose nature he seems to have believed could not be expressed in
terms of material qualities. Although our doxographic sources make it cer-
tain that Anaximander avoided the attribution of any qualitative identity to
the Apeiron, an attentive reading of the evidence reveals that he, surprising-
ly, conceived of it as a definite body.
Ps.-Plutarch (Strom. 2
=
DK 12 A 10) tells us that Anaximander's cosmo-
gony began with the separation-off of the gonimon of hot and cold, and
'from it some sphere of flame grew round the air which was round the
earth'. The separation-off of the gonimon is a differentiation of the arche.
For the purpose of the present discussion it is immaterial whether the pre-
sumably Theophrastean gonimon refers to some unified nature which was
broken into opposite hot and cold substances or to a portion of the arche
which came to be distinguished from the rest of it by turning into partly a
hot and partly a cold substance.8 In either case the final result of the differ-
entiation must be the emergence of three distinct bodies, the hot, the cold,
and the remainder of the arche. As a matter of fact the report mentions
precisely three distinct bodies, but all of them are definite substances
-
fire,
air, and earth. Where is the remainder of the Apeiron and, if the fiery sphere
and the earth stand for the hot and the cold natures of the gonimon respec-
tively, where did air come from? It seems that the mysterious disappearance
of the remainder of the Apeiron does not trouble critics; but as for the
unexpected emergence of air, commentators have an explanation.
We are told that Anaximander's
diQ
means, not air, but mist which,
together with water on the earth's surface and the earth itself, belongs in the
cold and damp inferior of the newly born world as opposed to its hot, fiery
circumference. As Burnet says: 'Anaximander put fire on one side as the
hot and dry, and all the rest of the other as the cold, which is also moist.'9
Apart from the questionable assumption that moisture, though not men-
tioned in the report, must nevertheless already exist at this cosmogonical
phase or, alternatively, that what in the report is referred to as earth is
8
Holscher, 'Anaximander', 292, is correct in pointing out that what were separated off
were not opposites as such but rather substances possessed of opposite qualities; see
further G.E.R. Lloyd, 'Hot and Cold, Dry and Wet in Early Greek Thought' in FA,
260-61.
9
J. Bumet, Early Greek Philosophy4, London, 1930 (hereafter EGP), 65. Cf. Kahn,
231
actually something more like the Xenophanean
TnlX6;g,'
the explanation
turns on the suggestion that
&'Q
here must mean 'mist'. The view that in
the early cosmogonies
&Q
must be taken to mean 'mist' was put forward
by Burnet whose argument goes as follows:
The air Anaximenes speaks of includes a good deal that we should not call by the
name. In its normal condition, when most evenly distributed, it is invisible, and it
then corresponds to our 'air'; it is the breath we inhale and the wind that blows.
That is why he called it
JIvEci[a.
On the other hand, the old idea that mist or
vapour is condensed air, is still accepted without question. It was Empedokles...
who first discovered that what we call air was a distinct corporeal substance, and
not identical either with vapour or with empty space. In the earlier cosmogonists
"air' is always a form of vapour, and even darkness is a form of 'air'."
In reading this passage attentively one cannot stop wondering. How can the
fact that 'in its normal condition' the Anaximenian &uje 'corresponds to our
"air" be reconciled with the conclusion that 'in earlier
[than Empedocles]
cosmogonists "air" is always [my
italics]
a form of vapour'? What is the
form of what, 'mist or vapour is condensed air' or, on the contrary, ' "air"
is always a form of vapour'? And how does the fact that mist is condensed
air help to show that 'air is a form of vapour'? (What it does prove is just
the contrary, namely, that vapour is a form of air.) What is the fact that in
Anaximenes 'mist or vapour is condensed air' supposed to demonstrate if in
Anaximenes everything is condensed air (except itself and fire which is
rarefied air)? In this sense Anaximenes' air indeed 'includes a good deal
that we should not call by the name', for example, stones, and it is hard to
see why the air's turning into mist proves that Anaximenes 'accepts ...the
old idea that mist or vapour is condensed air', while its turning into stone
does not prove that he accepts still another old idea that stone is condensed
air.'2 But let us put aside Burnet's argument and examine the theory on its
merits.
What Burnet wishes to say is that in the early cosmogonists the word
dQ
is used in the same sense as in the archaic epics, where it is supposed
Anaximander, 87, and less boldly, Comford, PS, 163-64; Guthrie, HGP, i, 92; M.
Stokes, 'Hesiodic and Milesian Cosmogonies-ii ', Phronesis viii (1963), 9-11.
'0 Kahn, Anaximander, 87, goes even further, suggesting that this 'must be something
very much like the primeval moisture of Thales'.
"
EGP, 74.
12 Poor argument notwithstanding, Bumet's view has become a communis opinio. In the
course of time, however, the only agreed exponent of the 'archaic sense of
dtiQ'
has
remained Anaximander. Commentators have acknowledged that in Xenophanes' B 28, 2
&jDQ (a generally accepted emendation of Diels) must mean 'air', and some critics
(notably Kirk, KRS, 146, and Guthrie, HGP, i, 126) have come to the conclusion that
Anaximenes'
&jQ
is atmospheric air. Kahn discusses the subject extensively in his
232
to mean 'mist', 'haze' (see LSJ, s. v.). The epic use of the word was
thoroughly examined by Louis'3 who arrived at the following conclusions.
First, dQ
is the vapour which rises from the earth or the sea and is sus-
pended in the lower part of the atmosphere; as such it is often connected
with
vwqpkij
and
6[dX1.'4
But, secondly, one should not exaggerate the
idea of opaqueness in connection with
&Q,
for to obstruct vision it needs
must be especially condensed;
dIQ
as such is thus to be assumed to possess
all possible degrees of visibility.'" Thirdly, as opposed to cdOaiQ, which
designates the bright superior region of the atmosphere, Ue designates its
inferior region which is often obscured by a more or less opaque mist or
Anaxirnander, 143-63, but it seems to me that he does not make himself entirely clear.
At p. 101 he suggests that the resemblance of Anaximander's
&tQ
to the primordial
moisture 'is probably so great as to fade almost into identity', but a few lines later he
proposes a different view: 'rain and wind represent two opposite products of the dijQ...
We find here in virtual form a theory of the entire atmosphere as
&iQ, although what is
emphasized is not the unity of this medium, but its polar analysis into fine and gross, wet
and dry'. Still another view is found at pp. 147-48: 'In order to make any sense of his
cosmology, one must credit Anaximander with the Ionian notion of the earth's envi-
ronment as a vast expanse of atmospheric air, stretching outwards to the limits of the
world, issuing in wind, rain, clouds, or fire according to circumstances'. This must be a
result of what Kahn believes to be the extension of the sense of the word which came to
include 'the air we breathe and in which the birds fly as well as the substance of the
wind and cloud' (p. 145). However, Kahn immediately abandons this view in favour of
the conception of
&eQ
as 'analyzed into fine and gross', viz. into wind and cloud. This
analysis leaves no room for atmospheric air, and Kahn prefers to speak of 'repre-
sentation' of
&kQ
by wind and cloud as well as other meteorological phenomena (pp.
149-50; cf. p. 151). Yet in concluding his whole discussion on the subject he writes: 'On
the one hand stand hot, dry, bright, and rare; on the other, cold, damp, dark, and dense.
The first series is naturally connected with the sun, and with the upper heavens in
general; the second with terrestrial moisture and its solidified residue, the earth... The
thick and opaque lower forces may very well have been identified by Anaximander with
the &fQ, for here the link with the Homeric sense of the word is perfectly clear.' (p.
162). It thus finally appears that 'dry and fine' do not belong to
MQ
at all, and as far as
the wind is dry (p. 101), it does not 'represent'
dQ
The ensuing view of
drQ
as
belonging to the realm of 'cold, damp, dark, and dense' brings us back to the notion of
&nQ,
the distinction between which and the primordial moisture 'fades almost into
identity' (p. 101).
"
P. Louis, 'Sur le sens du mot AHP chez Homere', Revue de Philologie, ser. 3, xxii
(1948), 63-72. The article AHP in P. Chantraine's Dictionnaire e&ymologique de la
langue grecque (histoire des mots), i, Paris, 1967, very closely follows Louis' paper.
'4
Louis, art. ciit., 64-65, 72.
'5 Louis, art. cit., 69: '...quand il [Hom&e] veut parler d'un brouillard opaque, il joint a
&ln un adjectif tel que 3rol4V5, noXkk, IacOcla,
tQEPevvi.
Ces expressions prouvent
bien que &?Q seul ne signifie pas brouillard opaque'.
233
haze.'6 Now while the second and the third points seem indusputable, the
first one makes the whole picture somewhat uncomfortable. Indeed, even
'without exaggerating' its opaqueness, one can hardly imagine an entirely
transparent mist; again, if
HQ
designates various kinds of mist and vapour
as well as the lower region of the atmosphere, the latter must be composed
of these, but one may wonder what it consists of at times when it is not
'obscured by a more or less opaque mist'.'7 What the picture lacks to
achieve coherence is an additional sense of the word, namely, a substance
which is indeed transparent and which constitutes the lower region of the
atmosphere when it is not obscured with mist, in a word, atmospheric air.8
But les us consider the following lines from Hesiod's Works and Days:
WVXQ1 y6Q
T'
f6b srXcrat BoLtao ;ua6VvTO,
io0gb
' br!i yoiav cur'
obi(avoi3 &GTEQOEVTOg
zInQ rVQOOQOg TETCaT
[taXaQwV
ti tEQyOL;,
6; tE d
JVdtEvog 7roTasv &ru6 odrva6vTwv,
i5WOfV lbnhQ
ytCEg dOQOE!
dV'LOLO OvEXXT
dXkoTE r EV 0' Fri totL tO3tEQOV, dXXoT' 6Erol,
nvxv6
EQqLX(oV
Boetw vtpea xkovWovTo;
(547-553)'9
Louis adopts the translation of P. Mazon who renders
dHQ
as 'vapeur',2( but
the question is whether this rendering is indeed justified by the context or is
imported into it on the grounds of certain preconceptions concerning the
archaic sense of the word. In referring to the winter month Lenaeon Hesiod
says:
'When Boreas has assailed, dawns become chill,
-
at dawn a fruitful
16
Louis, art. c it., 70.
'7 Chantraine, Dictionnaire, s.v., does not propose a more integrated picture: 'Le mot
signifie toujours chez Homere le brouillard et notamment le vapeur qui s'eleve du sol et
reste en suspension dans la partie la plus basse de l'atmosphere... Le sens de partie basse
(et un peu brumeuse?) de l'atmosphere se trouve 11. 14. 288.'
'" It seems that critics are not entirely aware that their denial of the idea of atmospheric
air to the Greeks of the archaic age implies that these people believed themselves to
abide in a gloomy mist and to breathe a foggy haze. This in itself would be quite an
eccentric and distressing idea of one's environment, but the partisans of this conception
regrettably offer no suggestion as to what caused these unfortunate people to develop
such a peculiar theory and how they bridged between it and their everyday experience in
their sunny country.
'9
This is the passage from which Louis, art. cit., 65-66, derives his notion of
4iLq
as 'le
vapeur s'eleve du sol et reste en suspension (Louis' italics) dans la partie la plus basse de
l'atmosph6re'. Chantraine, Dictionnaire, s.v., who adopts this definition verbatim, also
refers 'par excellence' to these lines. Cf. also Kahn, Anaximander, 145-46.
20
Louis, art. cit., 65. Similarly, H.G. Evelyn-White in the Loeb edition of Hesiod
translates
dtiQ
as 'mist'; so also Kahn, Anaximander, 145, and M.L. West in the com-
mentary ad 11. 550-53 in his edition of Hesiod's Works and Days, Oxford, 1978, 297.
234
dtMQ
from starry heaven is spread over the earth upon the fields of blessed
men; having drawn [moisture] from ever-flowing rivers2' and, raised high
by storm, it now pours rain22 towards evening, now blows,23 when Thracian
Boreas drives [the hordes of] thick clouds.' Louis explains the passage as
follows: 'II s'agit donc bien d'une vapeur legere qui mont du sol humide...,
d'un brouillard fugitif qui s'eleve... des cours d'eau et que le vent dis-
perse.'24 This is simply not true. &e is said to draw from rivers, which is
not the same as to rise up from rivers or 'du sol humide'; its provenance, as
Hesiod explicitly says, is 'starry heaven', not rivers or damp earth. Nor is
dujQ
here a mist or vapour: these are forms of moisture, while the passage
clearly distinguishes between d&jQ and its wetness which it acquires by
drawing moisture from rivers. As such it is not moist but only capable of
being saturated with moisture, and when it is saturated and raised in hight it
blows with a damp wind or discharges the absorbed moisture as rain. If this
is not atmospheric air, I do not know what atmospheric air is.25
The early sense of
d&Q
thus includes both 'mist' and 'atmospheric air'
(and for this reason it can be associated with opaqueness and darkness, but
21
Not 'it [sc.
&uQ]
is drawn from ever-flowing rivers' as Evelyn-White translates,
taking the middle voice participle
dQuoud[tEvo;
as if it were passive; incidentally, this
translation makes Hesiod say that
&iQ
is both from 'starry heaven' and from 'ever-
flowing rivers'. Kahn, Anaximander, 145-46, and West, Works and Days, 297, ad 11.
550-53 also entirely ignore the heavenly provenance of
dtlQ
22 Not 'it [sc. &ue] turns to rain', as in Evelyn-White, nor also 'elle finit par retomber en
pluie', as in Mazon. For iULt has 6; as its subject, - so correctly West, Works and Days,
297, ad 11. 550-53, pace LSJ, s.v. tw.
23 Not 'tums into wind', as in Evelyn-White. We may observe that the strong presum-
ption that
&nQ
here must be mist causes the philologists even to mistranslate the Greek.
24
Louis, art. cit., 66.
25
Not any air is damp and thus beneficial to farmers' fields, and therefore some such
qualification of
&iQ
as Hesiod's
nuQoq0Qog
(lit. wheat-bearing) is indispensable. But
if understood as mist, AeL1 may well dispense with the specification, and F. Solmsen in
his Oxford edition of Hesiod reads -
against the consensus of all manuscripts except
one, and contrary to the agreement of Hesiod's scholiasts and a papyrological evidence -
tuQoqy6QoL;
(reading proposed by Hermann) instead of
nuLQoqp6Log,
thus taking the
epithet with ItaxdQwv
EQyoL;,
viz. farmers' fields. Incidentally, on this reading the first
hemistich of the hexametrical line loses its syntactical unity, which is against the prac-
tice of traditional epic poetry. West, Works and Days, 246, ad 1. 549, though admitting
that the reading
uLoqp6QooLq
is textologically extremely weak and metrically implausib-
le, defends the emendation on the plea that 'wheat-bearing
&uQ'
is nonsense; yet the
scholiasts did not feel so at all (see Scholia vetera in Hesiodi Opera et Dies, Recensuit
A. Pertusi, Milan, 1955, 179-80, ad 11. 548-54 and 549a), and in such matters their
sentiment is decisive.
235
this association may well be absent26). The Homeric
A'Q
differs from the
English 'air' not in that the former signifies mist and the latter atmospheric
air, but in that the former has a more extensive value than the latter, signify-
ing mist as well as air.27 To put it otherwise, the Homeric
&tfQ
has a content
which in English is divided between two words, 'air' and 'mist'. Conse-
quently, the history of the Greek word is not that of the extension of mean-
ing, as Kahn believes; on the contrary, its history is that of the narrowing of
its sense (so rightly Louis) to the eventual exclusion of the meaning 'mist'.28
We may return now to the Milesians. Hippolytus (Ref. i 7, 2-3
=
DK 13 A
7) explains Anaximenes' notion of
&iQ
as follows:
dutn is a thing of this kind: when it is most even, it is unapparent to sight, but it
becomes apparent by the cold and the hot and the damp and by movement... For
through becoming denser or thicker it assumes different appearances: when it is
dissolved into a more rarefied state it becomes fire, while winds, on the other hand,
are condensed
dtug,
and by felting from &nQ cloud is produced; a further condensa-
tion produces water, still further, earth, and in its most condensed condition it is
stones.29
26
As in Theog. 697 and ll. 14, 288; so correctly Louis, art. cit., 70, pace Kahn, Anaxi-
mander, 145.
27
On the difference between signification and value see F. de Saussure, Cours de
linguistique generale, Deuxieme partie, Chap. iv, 2. Ensuing incongruities between 'the
same' words in different languages are further discussed and exemplified in L. Hjelm-
slev's Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, Section 13, and in his article 'Dans quelle
mesure les significations des mots peuvent-elles etre considerees comme formant une
structure?' in Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Linguists', Oslo,
1958, 636-54.
28 That in Anaximenes' lifetime this process was still unaccomplished is evidenced by
his coupling
tiQ
with jtveitLca in Aetius' paraphrase (i 3, 4 = DK 13 B l); he still
sometimes needed to specify in exactly which sense his
A*Q
is to be understood. On
nv6Ri,a in Anaximander see below.
29 Kirk, KRS, 145, asserts that the report 'contains additional (sometimes non-Theo-
phrastean) interpretation' but does not share his reasons with the reader, nor does he
even specify where exactly Hippolytus deviates from Theophrastus. This is especially
regrettable in view of the contrary assessment of Diels, Doxographi Grae(i4, Berlin,
1879 (repr. 1965), 144 (cf. Kahn, Anaximander, 15-16 and esp. 149). Stokes, 'Cosmogo-
nies-ii' (above n. 9), 26, thinks he detects the non-Theophrastean interpretation in the
description of air as invisible when it is most even but becoming apparent by movement,
which, as he believes, contradicts the certainly Theophrastean statement that air is 'al-
ways in motion'. This argument consistently applied makes nonsense of Anaximenes'
teaching as a whole. Under eternal motion Theophrastus certainly means air's rare-
faction and condensation (Simpl.
Phys.
24, 26; Ps.-Plut. Strom. 3 = DK 13 A 5, 6; so
also in Hippolytus - xLvEioYaLtb 6lE &cE),
VpcEtoLVy
MYO 01LkLTaTLW
Vlp
avyeo
(Vpp.
WoQvyoQ6,
PS, 179; Holscher, 'Anaximander', 285). If Stokes wishes to take the
eternal motion of Anaximenes' air to the effect that at any given moment at any point it
is in motion, he has to conclude that never and nowhere does air exist as such. In fact.
236
Condensation and rarefaction cause
6.#Q
to assume a series of opposite
qualities, - hot, cold and wet. But this list conspicuously lacks the comple-
mentary of wet, namely, dry. Dryness is thus not among the qualities which
make dcjp apparent to sight, and so must belong to it when it is 'most even'
(viz. neither excessively rare nor excessively dense). But this is the only
condition in which it is
&qQ
proper, whereas rarefied or condensed it is all
the other components of the world. It follows that
6tIQ
as such is dry, and
this conclusion finds support in the series of its transformations as reported
in Hippolytus and in Simpl. Phys. 24, 26 (= DK 13 A 5): Me is assumed to
turn into fire directly, while its turning into water is mediated by passing
through the states of wind and cloud. This 'unapparent to sight', viz. trans-
parent, and dry
dziQ
certainly is not dark mist; rather it is obviously atmo-
spheric air. It may be added that it is not a cold substance. Plutarch (De
prim. frig. 7. 947 F
=
DK 13 B 1) informs us that Aristotle criticized
Anaximenes' proof that the more air is condensed the colder it is. Anaxi-
menes thus explicitly associated coldness with the condensed condition.
According to this logic, cold substances must be earth and stones, while air,
yielding in fineness only to fire, should yield only to it in hotness.30 These
conclusions are not at all surprising. Air could not possibly have been
chosen by Anaximenes as the divine principle of the world and the sub-
stance of the human (as well as the world's) soul had it been envisaged as
dark and cold, since these qualities were loaded with distressing associ-
ations.31
Anaximenes' notion of
detQ
is clearly of direct and extreme relevance for
the understanding of Anaximander. As a younger contemporary and fellow-
townsman Anaximenes must have shared in the same stock of popular ideas
as reflected in the local linguistic idiom. The assumption that Anaximan-
der's notion of dUiQ did not essentially differ from Anaximenes' is then the
most natural and plausible one.32 This conclusion can be confirmed by the
following observations.
Stokes misinterprets Hippolytus' phrase: the motion in the sense of qualitative change is
specified here as air's becoming cold, hot or damp; the addition 'by movement' obvi-
ously refers, not to additional qualitative changes, but to air's mechanical motion.
30 If, as it seems, Empedocles' B 21, 4 refers to air, it appears that he conceived of air as
bright and warm.
3" In the Greek mind dark as well as cold were unambiguously associated with death,
horror, unhappiness, and the like, as well as with the inferior side (left), sex (female),
and so on, see Lloyd, 'Hot and Cold', 271; id. 'Right and Left in Greek Philosophy',
Journal of Hellenic Studies lxxxii (1962), 56-66; id., Polarity and Analogy, Cambridge,
1971, 42-43.
32 As Stokes, 'Cosmogonies-ii', 13, says 'it is conceivable, though improbable, that air
did not mean the same to both of them'. Nevertheless some critics (notably, Kirk, KRS,
237
Hippolytus (Ref. i 6, 7 = DK 12 A 1 1) reports that according to Anaxi-
mander 'winds occur when the most fine vapours of
UQ
(TIOV XETTO-
TaTWV
61TRLWV
Tol
aeQog)
are separated off and being gathered together
are set in motion, while rains ({ITOiV; 6E) come from exhalations given off
from the earth by the action of the sun.' The second clause of the report is
corrupted and different readings have been proposed,3 but in all of them the
account implies a certain contrast between winds and rains as two kinds of
vapours of different provenance. Critics are used to understand 'the most
fine vapours' of air as its most dry part,'4 but the report can just as well be
understood to the contrary effect: nothing except the presumption that
6nQ
must here mean 'mist' prevents taking 'the most fine vapours of
&oQ'
in the
sense of 'slightly wet 6u jQ'. Now it is the latter meaning that is suggested
by the antithetic structure of the report: the two phenomena often associ-
ated, winds and rain, are contrasted by their provenance, &njQ
and earth; the
two sources are more distant from each other than their products in which
they, so to speak, come to meet each other. The intrinsic logic of the report
suggests the following order of substances: &fQ - the most fine vapours of
d&rQ (= winds)
-
[less fine vapours of 6EfQ (= clouds)
?]
- rains
-
the
moisture of the earth. If my understanding of the report is correct, Anaxi-
mander's order of substances exactly parallels Anaximanes' series of the
air's transformations; Anaximander's du&Q precisely corresponds to Anaxi-
menes' air, while in both wind is conceived of as a slightly wet
?<Q.31
(It
146, and Guthrie, HGP, i, 126) though recognizing that Anaximenes'
dIfQ
must be
atmospheric air, still maintain that in Anaximander the word means 'mist'. Certainly, as
Stokes (who adheres to the latter view) critically notes, 'so sharp a distinction between
Anaximander and his contemporary as a fundamental difference in their use of the word
&irj demands more justification than has yet been offered' ('Cosmogonies-ii', 27).
33 For which see Kahn, Anaximander, 63-64.
3 See, esp., Kahn, Anaximander, 63, and Kirk, KRS, 138, who misleadingly says that
wind is due to the separation off of the finest parts of air, - the report reads 'the finest
vapours of air' which may well be its cruder part.
3 This seems to be the point which gave rise to the confusion found in Galen. In Hipp.
de hum. III xvi 395 K = DK 13 A 19, namely, that according to Anaximenes 'winds
come from water and air'. Aetius' account of Anaximander's explanation of wind (ii 7, 1
= DK 12 A 24), namely, that 'wind is a flow of air when the most fine parts in it and the
most damp are moved or melted by the sun (&vErLov ELVtC tV'JLV
&CQOg
TWV XM-
TOTdTUWV tV CUt() Xai
1JyQOTITWV
VJtO TOll fXCov
XLVOU[ttVW0V
11 TflXO%tCVoV)', iS
patently confused. The identification of the most fine with the most damp is nonsense:
what is most fine must be also the most dry, while the dampest is the crudest. The report
certainly derives from the expression 'the most fine vapours of air' in which 'vapours'
were glossed as 'the damp' and then the whole expression was misunderstood and
rearranged - 'the most fine in air' and 'the most damp in it'. Yet Kahn, Ana.vimander.
238
may be noted that the very fact that on the proposed understanding of
Hippolytus' account Anaximander's theory appears to be similar to Anaxi-
menes' strongly supports this construal.)
Further, Anaximander explains thunder and lightning as effect of the
splitting of clouds by nwv*6ct because, as Aetius (iii 3, 1
=
DK 12 A 23)
explicates, of its lightness and the fineness of its constitution. This quality
of nwvEta suggests its closeness to fire, and as a matter of fact Seneca's
report (Nat. Qu. ii 18
=
DK 12 A 23) testifies that Anaximander conceived
of nvEii,ua as productive of flashes and lightning. This indicates that
rnvEi4ta is a dry substance.36 What rvUnict precisely is appears from Anax-
imander's explanation of earthquakes (Ammian. xvii 7, 12
=
DK 12 A 28):
'...the earth yawns great fissures in which air from above (supernus aer),
violent and excessive, penetrates, and shaken by vehement spiritus (= J7twve
[ca)
[rushing] through these [fissures] the earth trembles in its bottoms.'37
3TvEfita then is flowing atmospheric air, and air is that dry substance which
because of the fineness of its constitution splits clouds and easily turns into
fire. This notion of air does not differ from Anaximenes' who, significantly,
63, takes Aetius' report as evidence in its own right and tries to make sense of it by
torturing the already confused Greek. (Incidentally, Kahn's reference to Anaximenes'
view that cloud is distinguished from wind 'by a progressive condensation of the prime-
val air', ibid., undermines rather than supports his interpretation of Aetius' account, see
above, n. 34.)
36 Cf. Kahn, Anaximander, 102, 108.
37 Kahn, Anaximander, 68, suggests that the teaching may well belong to Anaximenes
and is attributed to Anaximander by doxographic confusion (so already Diels, DK, ad
loc.), 'since the same view is ascribed to Anaximenes by Aristotle (Meteor. 365b6 =
Vors. 13 A 21) and by Theophrastus (in the version of Hippolytus, Vors. A 7, 8)', while
at Meteor. 365a16 'Aristotle emphasizes that there were but three explanations of earth-
quakes offered before his time: those of
Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Democritus.' But
first, the view ascribed by Aristotle to Anaximenes is not the same as that accounted for
by Ammianus as Anaximander's. The two explanations concur in that the precondition
of earthquakes is the excessive dryness or wetness of the earth which then cracks, but
they differ in the immediate cause of the earthquakes
-
the earth's collapsing inside
these cracks (cf. Seneca, Nat. Qu. vi 10, 1) in Anaximenes and the rushing of 7tvca
into the cracks in Anaximander. Secondly, Theophrastus (ap. Hippolytus) does not attri-
bute to Anaximenes the view accounted for in Ammianus as Anaximandrean: Hippoly-
tus refers only to the earth's excessive heating and cooling (sic!), which are the precon-
dition of earthquakes in both explanations. As to Aristotle's silence about Anaximan-
der's explanation of the phenomenon, it must be taken, I believe, as evidence that
Anaximander's 'theory' is mostly Theophrastus' rationalisation derived from some de-
scription of 7rvei,jut as capable of shaking even the earth when great masses of it rush
down into the fissures produced in it by heat or water. (I would surmise that this might
well be a part of the description referring to the ntvei4w's capability of splitting clouds.)
239
also uses nvivtV a as a synonym of 6iQ (Aet. i 3, 4; cf. iii 4, 1 = DK 13 B 1,
A 17).38
The sense of Anaximander's
6EjQ
having been clarified, we can return to
Ps.-Plutarch's account of Anaximander's cosmogony. The fact that in
Anaximander
6,riQ
is dry atmospheric air undermines the current view of it
as a part of the cold and damp 'interior' of the world. The fiery sphere and
the earth stand for 'hot' and 'cold' of the gonimon respectively; the un-
prepared emergence of air suggests that it stands for the remainder of the
Apeiron. Let us see now whether the identification of Anaximander's Apei-
ron with air may find support outside this report.
The ancients tell us that Anaximander believed in periodical destructions
of the world,39 though they do not specify how exactly these were supposed
to happen. Now Aristotle (Meteor. B 1, 353b6
= DK 12 A 27) relates the
view that the sea is a residue of the primary moisture which at first covered
all the earth but was gradually dried up by the sun; the process is still at
work: the sea is becoming less and less and eventually will be completely
dried up. In commenting on this theory Alexander (In Meteor. 6, 7
=
DK 12
A 27), on the authority of Theophrastus (cf. Aet. iii 16, 1
=
DK 12 A 27),
attributes it to Anaximander and Diogenes of Apollonia. Naturally, such a
permanent drying up of the world must end with its destruction. Yet com-
mentators are reluctant to accept this,40 since, as Kirk puts it, 'that would
implicitly qualify the Indefinite itself as dry and fiery'.4' Apart from 'fiery',
which is unnecessary, this is precisely the case. It should be noted in this
connection that both Aristotle and Alexander mention that the exhaled
moisture turns into winds (TrvEvitaETC; I suspect that Anaximander rather
spoke of jTvE4tca) or, as Aristotle says elsewhere (Meteor. B 2, 355a21),
into air.42 Thus the drying up of the moisture constantly increases the
3'
For the use of the word UVE6uLC in the sense 'air' in the Hippocratic writers see A.D.
Papanikolau, 'AHP. Anaximenes und Corpus Hippocraticum' in: K.J. Boudouris (ed.),
lonian Philosophy, Athens, 1989, 319-26, esp. 321-22.
39
The current tendency to deny Anaximander this doctrine is properly met by G. Freud-
enthal, 'The Theory of the Opposites and an Ordered Universe: Physics and Metaphysics
in Anaximander', Phronesis xxxi (1986), 218-19. See also my 'Plural Worlds in Anaxi-
mander' forthcoming in American Journal of Philology.
40 But see 0. Gigon, Der Ursprung der griechischen Philosophie, Basel, 1945, 94;
Holscher, 'Anaximander', 299; Freudenthal, 'The Theory of the Opposites', 217-19.
4'
KRS, 140.
42 If, of course, the theory accounted for at Meteor. 355a21 is, as scholars believe (see
Kahn, Anaximander, 66-67; Stokes, 'Cosmogonies-ii', 6-7), Anaximander's. The prob-
lem is that Aristotle says that the evaporation of the primary moisture resulted in the
formation of air, while in Anaximander air existed before the moisture came into being.
Yet I believe this is but a minor inaccuracy on Aristotle's part; the account may well
240
amount of air in the world, thereby preparing its final dissolution into air.
Further, the early monists believed that the human soul was of the same
material nature as the arche. This is a natural and perhaps even inescapable
idea, since the arche was conceived of as not only the single stuff of
everything in existence but also as the divine substance which is the pri-
mary bearer of vitality and intelligence in the world. Now Aetius (iv 3, 2 =
DK 12 A 29) counts Anaximander with those philosophers who believed
that 'the nature of the soul is airy'. In so far as the report may be trusted43 it
fits in with the view that Anaximander conceived of the arche as air.
Finally, Aristotle repeatedly speaks, in all probability having Anaximan-
der in mind, of the principle intermediate between fire and air44 or between
air and water.45 One may wonder whether, in considering Anaximander's
teaching, Aristotle felt that some detailed points of it suggested the airy
nature of the Apeiron; but if so, why did Anaximander not say this in so
many words? Does this not suggest that he might have been thinking of a
stuff which was very close to, but somehow different from air, say nearer to
fire or to water?
Significant parallels in Anaximenes offer an additional confirmation of
the hypothesis of the airy nature of Anaximander's Apeiron.
In his report on Anaximenes Ps.-Plutarch (Strom. 3
= DK 13 A 6) relates
that 'all things are produced according to some condensation and again
rarefaction' of air and adds that 'as the air condensed, first, he says, the
earth has been generated, very flat...'. It may seem that this account is at
odds with the series of the air's transformations as reported in Simplicius
and Hippolytus (Phvs. 24, 26; Ref. i 7, 3
=
DK 13 A 5, 6), but in fact it is
not. While the latter reports account for the way in which air can become all
things, the former refers to the actual order of the cosmogony.i6 Anaxi-
menes' cosmogony thus begins with the sharp condensation of a portion of
air, which turns it into 'very flat' earth. The following synopsis will help us
to determine the next cosmogonical phases.
refer to Anaximander and then should be understood to the effect that, on its evap-
oration, the moisture tums into air thus increasing the amount of air already existing.
4
On the question of the reliability of the report see Kahn, Anaximander, 114.
4 Phys. 187al4; De gen. et corr. 328b35, 332al9; Met. 988a3.
45 Phys. 203al8, 205a25; De caelo 303bl2; Met. 989al4.
46 Holscher, 'Anaximander', 317, is thus correct in that Hippolytus' and Simplicius'
series of elemental transformations 'had nothing to do with cosmogony', but it does not
follow from this that this series was 'only a schema of Theophrastus'.
241
Simpl. Phys. 24, 26:
(i)
LcLpEQELV be 1Ctvo6TrTL
xai rVxv6lTTTL XaTE
Tlg
o1koiaq.
(ii) xca d
Qatoi,ucvov
pv
JTiQ
yNEvGOCL, rVVXVOV-
IEVOV & 6VECJOV, ElTa
VW4Og,
TL &E WLaXXOV
D&wQ, ELTCa ytV, E'T
kfOOvSr, la & d? a tx
TOVIfwV.
(iii) XCV1OLV b& XCQL ObTO
dLLOV 3TOLEl, bt "V xa&
TIV
[LETUIOXiV
yCvEOOLLL.
(iv)
(v)
(vi)
Hippol. Ref. i 7, 3-4:
3Uxvo01cEvov y6Q xCLE
d4QCalo4LVOV btL(4OQOV
qDaLveOOQL
6Tav
y&Q
E To dtQaL-
6Tc-QOv
68LaXUOIi,
0n.
yivEcOCtE, &vE4ov; 6U
3raXLv civat azea
JtUXVOf)[LFVOV,
te
&Qeoq
<6c>
vWqOg
&rOTEkEio-
OaL xCET TIV r Tl
ICrlV,
PTE b LaXXov 6bwQ, bJtL
7tAEiOV JvIxvWOvTa yijv
xaw ct; rb Fa6Xtota
tu,xv6wtlov XiOou;.
yEV?EO); teVCVTLE NCVtL,
OEQ[t6V
TE xol PVXQOV.
riv bK yi\ _X _a
T'V &?
Y8V
AkaT?aV
Elvat tr'
dE(Qog
6Xov-
[dVTV
XlT.
Ps.-PIut. Strom. 3-5:
yEvvaEoOi TE 3TdVTCE
xCLT& TLVa 7tXVG)(JLV
TO1 TO XO.L JTEkLV
ZQaiwVw.
T1V yE
[IlV
XiV1OLV ?
Cdwvog l57tcQXEtv*
JTLXOV[4LVOV
bc TOi
yEyEvfoiO(XL
XEYEL
T1V
;tAC1TELaV .LaXu 6L6 xai
xUT& XWyov Onhi)v
btO tCFOU(L TO &Qt
XTk.
That (v) should be located here rather than conclude (ii) is suggested by the
fact that (ii) speaks not of the generation of the world's constituents, but of
the diverse forrns or the appearances of air, and stresses rather the gradual
character of the changes and their smooth sequence than the contrast of the
opposites. Now if I am correct in locating (v) after (iv), this order would
entail that (iv) only partially preserves the Theophrastean account. To justi-
fy the conclusion that 'thus the most principal in the generation are oppo-
sites, hot and cold' (iv) should mention not only cold (earth) but also hot
(fire), and then account for the further steps of the cosmogony as due to the
interaction between fire and earth in order to prepare the conclusion that hot
and cold are the most principal opposites in generation. We must therefore
conjecture that the phrase 'as the air condensed, first, he says, the earth has
been generated' was originally followed by some clause like 'and as it
rarefied, the heavenly fire has been produced'; then should have followed a
242
statement to the effect that the interaction between the heavenly fire and the
earth, i.e. the heating of the latter, was the cause of the coming-into-being
of those things which were still to be generated, and, first of all, of water.47
If this reconstruction of Anaximenes' cosmogony is correct, it exactly
parallels Anaximander's. It begins with the change of the portion of the
arche (cf. Theophrastus' gonimon in reference to Anaximander) partly into
cold earth and partly into hot heavenly fire; the first cosmogonical phase
consists, precisely as in Anaximander, in the formation of three gross world
constituents, the fiery sky, the earth, and air, which is the remainder of the
arche, between them; in both cosmogonies the formation of moisture is
postponed to the next phase. Further, air as a component of the differ-
entiated world, i.e. the portion of the arche which has remained unchanged,
is said by Anaximenes to 'embrace
(rtEQLEXeL) the whole world' (Aet. i 3, 4
= DK 13 B 2), the expression presumably used by Anaximander in refer-
ence to the portion of the Apeiron which has remained unchanged,
-
'and it
embraces (3EtEpL?xLv) all things and steers all' (Arist. Phys. I' 4, 203b9, cf.
Hippol. Ref. i 6, 1
=
DK 12 A 15, 1 1; cf. also Arist. Phys. F 6, 207al9, 7,
208a3; De caelo F 5, 303b10).48 Not less significant is the fact that Anaxi-
4 In the continuation of the reports of Hippolytus and Ps.-Plutarch adduced in the above
synopsis we find accounts of Anaximenes' view of the heavenly bodies. Ps.-Plutarch's
report is garbled here and attributes to Anaximenes the teaching of Anaxagoras (cf.
H6lscher, 'Anaximander', 285; Kirk, KRS, 152). As to Hippolytus' report, the following
may be noted. Anaximenes could not possibly have explained the formation of the sun
as resulting from the evaporation of the terrestrial moisture, for evaporation requires the
heat of the sun (or the heavenly fire from which the sun may later be formed). It is
therefore not at all incidental that when Hippolytus speaks of the generation of the
heavenly bodies as a result of evaporation he mentions only the stars. We have thus to
conclude that Anaximenes had different explanations for the origins of the sun and of the
stars.
48 J Classen, 'Anaximander', Hermes xc (1962), 117, doubts whether JtEQLEXELV may be
Aristotle's terminus technicus or imported from the doxography of Anaxagoras. Yet the
appearance of the word in Aetius' paraphrase of Anaximenes (on which see Kirk's
sound discussion in KRS, 158-60) considerably diminishes such a possibility. For
xi43teQvdv
see parallels in Heraclitus' B 41, Parmenides' B 12, 3, and Diogenes of
Apollonia's B 5; cf. Xenophanes' B 25; see also W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early
Greek Philosophers, Oxford, 1947, 202, n. 39. Anaximander's description of the Apei-
ron as 'embracing all things' is often interpreted to the effect that it encompasses the
world from without, but Anaximenes' similar description shows that this construal is
unnecessary. The Milesian rTEQLEXEt is a forerunner of the later to 7TErLExov, 'the earth's
environment', though it is obvious that in the Milesians it means much more than this, as
Anaximenes' comparison of air 'embracing the whole world' with the soul in us in-
dicates. An additional, temporal aspect of the term was suggested by M. Stokes, 'Anaxi-
mander's Argument', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, suppl. vol. ii, 1976, 15-16.
243
menes was the only early monist apart from Anaximander who described
the principle as TEitQO; (Simpl. Phys. 24, 26; Ps.-Plut. Strom. 3; Hippol.
Ref. i 7, 1, etc. =
DK 13 A 5, 6, 7). This description was obviously bor-
rowed from Anaximander. Since however in Anaximenes the 'boundles-
ness' of air is of no use and consequence, it must have been borrowed not
for its own sake but rather as an integral part of another conception of
which Anaximenes' doctrine made a real use, that of the airy arche.
The cumulative evidence adduced cannot be considered a sufficient proof
of the airy nature of the Apeiron unless it can be shown that although he
envisaged the Apeiron as air, Anaximander had good reasons to avoid de-
fining it as such. This is the question I shall now go on to discuss.
2. The Apeiron as the unchangeable 'whole'
Let us make a new start. Among the doxographical reports on Anaximander
there is one which has not attracted the due notice of commentators but is, I
believe, of great consequence for adequately understanding Anaximander's
intended idea of the Apeiron. I mean the following account by Diogenes
Laertius (ii 1 = DK 12 A 1): 'Anaximander... said that the arche and the
element is the Apeiron, not determining whether it is air or water or some-
thing else. And [he said that] the parts change but the whole is unchange-
able (xac lTa
[&v
tE'Qrj ItEtaj6aXkELV, Tlo
&
JT6v
&[tETa(XflTOV
tvaL)'.49
The second clause thus states that the universe as a whole remains one and
the same notwithstanding the ceaseless change of its particular constituents.
Fundamentally, this is the view found in other Ionian monists, but accord-
ing to Diogenes' evidence, Anaximander fashioned this view differently.
The other lonians identified the eternally selfsame unified nature of the
whole with one or another definite body, water, air or fire, and in conse-
quence were compelled to postulate the great changeability of this body
which would enable it to become the rest of things. The ensuing doctrine
was patently contradictory: the capacity of a definite body, assumed as the
49
Parallels with reports of the Theophrastean descent (Simpl. Phys. 24, 13; Ps.-Plut.
Strom. 2; Hippol. Ref. i, 6, 1-5 = DK 12 A 5, 6, 7) make certain the Theophrastean
provenance of Diogenes' account (cf. DK, ad loc.); therefore though the statement in
question does not reappear in the sources mentioned, there can be little doubt that it too
came from Theophrastus. Kahn, Anaximander, 43, asserts that 'Hippolytus' description
of the Boundless as "eternal and unaging"... has become "unchanging" in D.L.'. This
conclusion is philologically unwarranted: there is nothing in the wording, antithetic form
or, at the least, content of Diogenes' sentence which would suggest, even faintly, that it
might derive from a phrase like Hippolytus' TaOTIv
6' dLC6LOV Elvat xat
&Yt(eQ,
iv XaU
navTag J[EQ1?XE1V
TOVC
x6toaugr.
244
principle, to keep its identity while becoming other definite bodies is a
complete mystery.50 Anaximander, for his part, emphasised the unchange-
ability of 'the whole' while allowing the qualitative change of its constitu-
ents. That is to say, he considered material changes within 'the whole' as
not pertaining to the nature of 'the whole' as such, which, for this reason,
cannot be defined in terms of its altering material qualities. The Anaxi-
mandrean 'whole' is something different from wet, hot or the like which it
happens to be here or there, one time or another, and in the absence of a
positive definition of its nature it may be called TO i60tOV (Ps.-Plut. Strom.
2 = DK 12 A 10), Tno
iEtELQov
or other 'rather poetical' (cf. Simpl. Phys. 24,
13 = DK 12 A 9) names, but never 'air or water or something else' of the
sort. It goes without saying that the notion of 'the whole' as materially
manifold and changing but otherwise (in fact, conceptually) and more truly
one and unchanging is free of the fundamental difficulty arising from the
material definition of unity. The idea of the Apeiron was thus most probably
evolved by Anaximander in response to this difficulty.
But why should we believe that the idea reported in Diogenes was not
incidental or marginal but had bearings on the main body of Anaximander's
doctrine? The issue is of crucial importance and deserves the most careful
examination.
Let us begin with inspecting Anaximander's own idiom. The phrase
wpiA
&8 t tX TOf) &6COU
yovL[Lov
0?QOE TE xol
PVtxQO6
xatC
TIiV y7VEVLV
TOU6E TOi5 x60oiiOiU &ToxQL0ijvaL xrk. (Ps.-Plut. Strom. 2 = DK 12 A 10)
seems to be some sort of paraphrase, as suggested by the unusual TO 86LOV
instead of the habitual doxographic to &3TFrLQov, the syntactic peculiarity of
the expression, and the bark simile in the continuation.5' The Greek has
been declared obscure52 and is regularly rendered 'the gonimon of hot and
50
The contradiction inevitably involved in the material-monistic doctrine has only rare-
ly been noted by commentators and, as far as I know, only in connection with Anaxi-
menes; see H. Cherniss, Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, Baltimore,
1935, 380; F.M. Cornford, The Cambridge Ancient History, iv, 1939, Ch. xv, 'Mystery
Religions and Pre-Socratic Philosophy', 543.
5' That the report must have followed Anaximander very closely has repeatedly been
pointed out by commentators; see, among others, Comford, PS, 163; Holscher, 'Anaxi-
mander', 294; Kirk, KRS, 131; J. Classen, 'Anaximander and Anaximenes: the Earliest
Greek Theories of Change?', Phronesis xxii (1977), 90-91. On Theophrastus' leaning
towards paraphrasing original idioms see Diels, Dox., 219; G.M. Stratton, Theophrastus
and the Greek Physiological Psychology Before Aristotle, London, 1917, repr. Am-
sterdam, 1964, 162; cf. Kahn, Anaximander, 21.
52 For example: 'Eine in ihrer Bedeutung viel umstrittene Stelle, deren Worte wahr-
scheinlich schwer verderbt und noch nicht geheilt sind' (W. Capelle, Die Vorsokratiker,
Leipzig, 1935, 85, n. 1); 'The tortuosity of the expression', 'obscure meaning' (Kirk,
KRS, 131, n. 1). Diels, Dox., 579, ad loc.: 'fortasse & -Tt bX TOV'; what Diels considered
as a possibility Holscher, 'Anaximander', 289-91, turned into an emendation.
245
cold was separated off from the Eternal', viz. the Apeiron.53 Unfortunately,
this reading is grammatically impossible: tx TOVl &Lb'ou inserted as it is
between To and y6vwiov qualifies the latter and cannot be taken as the
object of d&noxQLOCvaL; the verb, for its part, may be used without an
object, so that we need not try to find an object in the phrase, and it need
not mean more than 'was formed', 'distinguished itself' or the like (see LSJ,
s.v.). The only grammatically warranted rendering of the clause is: 'he says
that at the beginning of this world the gonimon in54 the Eternal of hot and
cold was separated off', or, in more comprehensible English, 'at the begin-
ning of this world occured the separation-off of that in the Eternal which
was productive of hot and cold.'55 The Greek is plain unless one pre-
supposes, bearing in mind the doxography of the Apeiron as Anaximander's
principle, that ?x TOV3 6EL6o0 must be taken with &aoxQljvaL.`56 The
phrase thus says that the gonimon was formed in the Etemal or became
distinguishable within it, i.e. from its other part(s); the phrase by no means
says that the gonimon distinguished itself from the Etemal as such, and the
somewhat complicated grammar of the sentence suggests that this was pre-
cisely the meaning that was carefully avoided.
Another piece of evidence is Theophrastus' quotation from Anaximander
preserved in Simplicius (Phys. 24, 13 = DK 12 A 9 and B'): ...uv& TV ATCLV
67[ELQov, t
fg &7tavTC(g yNvuOcCL TOiUg o0IQavoi;g,
Xac TOll; tV (tlToLT
xooFoUg- t? 'v 6be f
y?vECJ( tO(TL TOts oiJi, xai
TIV
qOoOQv
rVEig tlfl)TC
yCvErOaEL xctrt Tlo
XQEwV
bLbo6VCL yaQ acllTQ btxXIv xCL TLOLV
6XXAXokg
Tr; L6LXLCL XaCT TI1V TOVU XQOVOU TdaLV,
JTOITLXWTE'QOL OtWTg
6v6[taciLv
ctllTct XEywv.
The traditional view that the fragment refers to the eventual destruction
of the world has been largely abandoned in recent decades on the
reasoning
that 4XkkXikoM indicates that the penalty is paid by things reciprocally and
53
So, among others, in Comford, Kahn, Guthrie, and Barnes.
54
See LSJ, s.v. tx, i 6.
*5 The correct translation of the report exactly accords with its correct visualisation, -
'...something has been isolated in the Indefinite' (Kirk, KRS, 132, my italics). H.C.
Baldry, 'Embryological Analogies in Pre-Socratic Cosmogony', Classical
Qualrterly
xxvi (1932), 29, goes too far in reading embryological sense into all details of Ps.-
Plutarch's description. Yet the general point seems plausible (Theophrastus' gonimon
may well be intended to convey that). But if so, the analogy with the secretion of a seed
(as also Comford's laying of an egg) implying as it does spatial detachment is inappro-
priate; the correct analogy would be the development of an embryo which emerges into
distinction within the parent body.
-56 Thus W.A. Heidel, 'On Certain Fragments of the Presocratics', Proceedings of the
American Academy xlviii (1913), 687, even believes that the phrase originally had &Jro
TOV)
&TEQov
which was
dropped.
246
this kind of interaction cannot possibly result in their final destruction.
However, apart from the fact that reciprocal justice is not necessarily in-
compatible with the eventual destruction of the world,57 the objection is
based on a linguistic fallacy: LSJ, s.v. dkkXkwv, adduces unambiguous
examples of the non-reciprocal use of the word.58 The Anaximandrean
phrase may thus well mean that penalty is paid by things to one another in
turn. But just as the reciprocal understanding of WkXiot; does not auto-
matically rule out the possibility that the passage refers to the destruction of
the world, so the chain-like rendering of justice does not necessarily entail
its eventual destruction; one may think of the endlessly ongoing cyclical
transformations within the world. What therefore is indeed decisive is the
sense in which the fragment is quoted by Theophrastus. Yet some critics59
though recognizing the fact that Theophrastus understood the phrase as
referring to the destruction of the world dismiss his understanding as mis-
taken. This approach suggests that Theophrastus might prove to the uncapa-
ble of understanding the verbal meaning of Greek or that he might support
his judgements by citing random sentences; neither suggestion is tolerable.60
A more sophisticated argument is found in Kahn, who claims that not only
do Anaximander's words not refer to world destruction but that neither
Simplicius nor Theophrastus ever took them to mean this.61 Now instead of
criticising Kahn's exegesis of the broader context in which Simplicius
quotes Anaximander's words, let us suppose that Kahn is correct and Sim-
plicius indeed does not take the fragment as referring to the destruction of
the world, and let us check, with the help of a synoptic examination of the
Anaximandrean doxography derived from Theophrastus, whether, as Kahn
asserts,62 Simplicius and Theophrastus 'are in this instance indistinguishable
from one another', viz. whether Simplicius' supposed understanding of
Anaximander's phrase is the same as Theophrastus'.
"' As Freudenthal, 'The Theory of the Opposites' has conclusively shown. G. Vlastos'
attempt to combine the reciprocal construal of justice with the eventual perishing of the
world, 'Equality and Justice in Early Greek Cosmologies' in FA, 73-83, is based on the
difficult notion of the Apeiron as a mixture.
5 Od. 22, 389; Aesch. Pers. 506, Thuc. 2, 70; Plat. Phaedr. 264 B, etc.
5 Kirk, KRS, 121-22.
6' Of course, much depends on one's personal tolerance. Thus J.B. McDiarmid, 'Theo-
phrastus on the Presocratic Causes', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology lxi (1953),
98, suggests that the generation - destruction phrase is Theophrastus' application to
Anaximander individually of what Aristotle asserted of the lonians as a group, and
concludes that the phrase 'is not to be connected with the metaphor' (viz. the fragment);
this however intimates that Theophrastus is quoting a random sentence or, even worse,
falsifying Anaximander's meaning.
61 Anaximandet, 166-96.
62
Anaximander, 167.
247
Simpl.
Phys.
24, 13 Phys. 41, 17 Hippol. Ref i 6, 1-2 Ps.-Plut. Strom. 2
(i)
...
dQxrV
TE
XQl
YTOLXELOV
El]QxE
TW)V 6VtWV To
&?tELQOV,
ITQWTOg
TOVTO TOtVOcLC(
XOMKLag
Tn5
[LTE blbWQ [InT
d?iXTo T(1V
xaXoujtuvwv Elm
aoTlXECwv,
dXk'
tTcQaV
TLV6 4VXLV
6.3TCLQOV,
(iii)
(iv) M
h;
tidnavTa;
Y(VCFOEdl TOUg
obQavovs xai
TOt; V aCfrTO!
x6a~Lovg-
(V) t JOV 6& f ytvu(;5
?lTL TOiL oi,l, xai
T1V
(PoQ
v
Etg
TavbTC
y(VE00at
Xaat.Ta
1XyCOQ6V
6L66vaL yaQe cbTc
8(%XIV
xCi T(LYLV
xx.rAol .ril
dtLX(Ctg
XC(T6
ThV
TOV XQ6VOtI TCEtlV,
(Vi) 3TOtTrUXfrtwQoL;
ODTOr; &v6watv
abLT& Xcyo)V.
(vii)
(viii)
... 6maXQ6V TtVa
(fVO(LV eikkqv
oLTrE1v T(LVc
OWJaV TW)V
TETTaQWV
tTOlXCwOV
&QX1V
h5
TVV dC6LOV
Xt(viCotV QtTU1V
rIVC Ta )V
OiQtVwl15IV
ob avdyv
yevhjuo;
fEYEV.
OVTOg
[tV
&QX8V
XOaL
10TOXEZOV
EtQ1XE TOV 6VTOV
T6 6elTLQOV,
3tQWOTO
TOf)VO[kC
OVIOS
&QXpv
E9
Ti)V 6VTOV
qiotLV TLV6 TOV
7t6 tT& T
XCVUL.
LV
6
0t4LctV
Elvatt, tv (i
U[tpcta-
VEL y(VECOal TOVu
ubcctvov5-
TOUR O'tQLtVO1JR
XaL ToV aV vbtTOt
&C6tov TvalT xai
dtYiyW, ilV xai
aVTcag LItEQLEXELV
TO1J
x6O[OVo;.
XAyEL bt X6OVOV
();
b6QL([LE'V1] tT]
YEWVaEOE) Xaii T1]
oit,OiU; xcii til;
wOoQaX
T
v6 ?itLo qA ... tO
&AEL(OV (pd-
VCtt T1V :t&CQCV
adTftaV
tXELV
TPS
TOU JUQVTOg YEV-
OCW5 TE XClj
yooeas.63
Ee Ot 6~
(pAl
TOV5 TE
Oi(CQVOU;
eTOXcXQiFaL
xci xacO6XoU
Tolg
&ajuvTct;g ?Jt;cEQovg
6vTag
x6a[oug.o4
e?T;UJ)Va1TO bt TIV
qOoev yiNvEcOat
iTQoTEQov
TfV
-Ytveotv t~
aefgQOv
(xi(QVOC
mvmxuXXoU Uvwv
JTdvTwv 0v1',(dv.P5
248
Whatever Simplicius may be supposed to have thought about Anaximan-
der's words, Theophrastus certainly took them as referring to the eventual
destruction of the world (as in fact Simplicius also did66). Indeed, (v), i.e.
the fragment, is preceded by (iii), where the Apeiron is said to be the cause
of the genesis and destruction of the worlds (Toiig
obQavovs') and then by
(iv), where the eternity and agelessness of the Apeiron is contrasted with the
generated world (clearly suggesting the transient character of the latter) and
again (Hippol. iv), with all such worlds which it embraces. The fragment is
followed by the explanation of 'the order of time', which concludes the
63
In his synopsis Kirk, KRS, 106-7, places this phrase at (ii); he thus apparently believes
that this is a gloss of Theophrastus' &QXilV
xcti OUOLXELOV Tov 6VTOV, but the parallels
in Simplicius and Hippolytus show that the phrase should be located at (iii) where it
furnishes a smooth transition to (iv) and (v) which specify the general statement con-
tained in (iii).
64 Kirk, KRS, 106-7, fails to notice that Ps.-Plutarch's (iv) correspondes to both clauses
of Hippolytus' (iv) and not to its first clause alone. When it is recognized, the superiority
of Hippolytus' text becomes obvious: Ps.-Plutarch gives a condensed and garbled ver-
sion of what is more fully and accurately preserved in Hippolytus (on non-Theophras-
tean expressions in Ps.-Plut. Strom. 2 see Diels, Dox., 156, n. 1). Simplicius' account
shows a similar distortion, - it also lacks a part of the report and has in common with
Ps.-Plutarch
tiJtavTag
and the plural Toy;.. .x6ojtou. The trust some commentators
(see Holscher, 'Anaximander', 290, n. 17; Kahn, Anaximander, 34) put in Simplicius'
and Ps.-Plutarch's plural as against Hippolytus' singular is therefore misplaced.
65 Kirk, KRS, 107-8, following in this Holscher, 'Anaximander', 297 (cf. also H.
Schwabl, 'Anaximander. Zu den Quellen und seiner Einordnung im vorsokratischen
Denken', Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte ix (1964), 61), places (vii) and (viii) at (v),
although he recognizes the possibility that they may come after (v), i.e. the quotation.
But (v) on the one hand and (vii) and (viii) on the other, let alone their lack of verbal
resemblance, convey ideas that are indeed connected but not identical: (v) speaks of the
perishing of the world, while (vi) and (vii) specify this event as a part of the eternal cycle
of the genesis and destruction of the world and thus contain the explanation of xaTra TI'v
TOV) XQ6Vou'UTdL`
Vwhich they therefore must follow. (But it is unnecessary to insert
(vii) between (v) and (vi) as a parenthetical note, as Kirk, KRS, 107-8, alternatively
proposes; (vi) is itself a parenthetical note which cannot be detached from (v).) Aetius'
report (i 3, 3) corroborates the order assumed in the synopsis: 'Avcta(4tv6Qo;
. . .
(flJL
TO)V 6VITOV dtQrV tvCLi TO ?JtELQOV (= i)- X
yc'LQ
TOVIOV) iudvTCt yiyvEcO0cL xui -ig
Trouo AcTvc
cP0?QEr30CU
(= V). 6L XOcL yEVVaoOctL dcur(QoVi x6O(itovg
x(tl rA6LV
OECQECoOCl Etg TO6 ? Ot ylyvro0l (= viii). As to the sequence (vii)-(viii), it seems to
me that (viii) continues and specifies (vii) rather than presents a parallel version of it, as
Kirk's synopsis proposes.
66 For a recent lucid exposition of Simplicius' passage see J. Engmann, 'Cosmic Justice
in Anaximander', Phronesis xxxvi (1991), 10-11. Kahn's exegetical approach is justly
criticized by Schwabl, 'Anaximander', 60: 'Indem bei ihm besonderer Wert auf die
Koharenz der Gedankenfolge bei Simplikios gelegt ist, kommt es dazu, daB die etwa
existierende Koharenz der Parallelberichte praktisch ignoriert wird'.
249
quotation, as eternally recurring alloted spans of the genesis, existence and
destruction of the world (vii-viii). That the destruction of the world was also
the intended meaning of Anaximander's phrase is warranted by Theophras-
tus' citing it in this sense, and I see no reason whatever to query his judge-
ment.
The next question is the precise extent of the quotation. Diels took as
authentic ?t Jv... TOV5 XQOVOVU Tdlv, but since then many and reasonable
objections have been raised regarding the authenticity of the words t Jiv...
Etg
TcvTa y(vFcOaL. It can be observed indeed that the language of this
clause is too abstract, its framing is too like the recurrent Peripatetic state-
ment of the issue,67 and there is nothing in its style to exemplify the poetic
fashion of Anaximander's expression as noted by Theophrastus. Thus the
language, content and style all agree in producing the impression that the
quotation cannot begin before xaTrt T'o
XQEc6v.
Grammatical considerations
make this impression a plain fact. The plural tu Jv -
Fig
Tairc cannot
refer to the singular
tEQCtv
TLVat
(F1J0LV
dIQOV68 (the same logical subject
in the singular is also in Hippolytus and Ps.-Plutarch, see above synopsis,
iv); therefore if we wish to believe that the quotation begins with t J)v we
must also believe that Theophrastus sought to support or embellish his
account by citing a phrase whose logical subject is other than the one he is
speaking of, in effect, a random phrase; that he did not mind this and took
no trouble to conceal it by bringing the quoted passage into grammatical
agreement with the previous text, as he could easily have done by changing
the neutrum plural #t iv and ci;
TCEiTCLa into the feminine singular coor-
dinate with
(pVioiv
6tTELcQov;
and that Simplicius also did not mind this and
reproduced such a concoction without paying attention to it. This is surely
intolerable.
But if the tu Jv... ci; Tai5Ta ytvcoOac is Theophrastus', why was it
framed in the plural and what was it intended to convey? The answer is that
the sentence stands in the plural precisely because it is not a part of the
67
See McDiarmid, 'Theophrastus', 97, n. 51, referring to the relevant passages of Aris-
totle.
68
Unless, of course, we are ready to follow Cherniss, Aristotle's Criticism, 376, n. 69,
in suggesting the Apeiron to be an unlimited plurality. Kahn, Anaximander, 180-83,
believes that #t 'v - EtW TaiTc refers to the elements which are allegedly also meant
under ClT6t and
ctXXiXotg.
This exegesis makes Simplicius switch without warning
from the relationship between the Apeiron and the generated world to the mutual trans-
formation of the elements. This not only contorts the intrinsic logic of Simplicius'
passage, but also, as appears from the synopsis, makes his account disagree with Theo-
phrastus'. For a more detailed criticism of Kahn's as well as Kirk's exegesis of Simplici-
us see Engmann, 'Cosmic Justice'. 9. (Engmann's own interpretation of Anaximander's
meaning is difficult, for it disregards - and is hardly compatible with - dkWiXXot.)
250
quotation and its very from is intended to indicate this; it is in plural be-
cause it formulates the general principle that in the physikoi the arche of the
generated things is also their teleute. Theophrastus thus says that, according
to Anaximander, the worlds come into being 'from some infinite nature'; he
then states the general rule that in the physikoi 'from which
[principles]
the
generation of existing things is, into those [elements] their destruction also
happens', and he finally quotes Anaximander's description of how the
world perishes 'according to necessity' as the result of a series of penalties
paid by things.69 It appears that Theophrastus conjectures, on the strength of
a general rule deduced from other physikoi, that in speaking about the
destruction of the world Anaximander means its destruction into the Apei-
ron. As far as air is the material principle of Anaximander's world, air, it is
true, must also be the stuff into which the world eventually returns. Yet it is
quite another thing to say that in due course the world will tum into the
Apeiron, - and Anaximander did not say that, for otherwise Theophrastus
would not have been compelled to infer it.7n
Significantly, on both occasions when we may hope to reach Anaximan-
69
Holscher's 'Anaximander' contains the following two statements: '...with t (lv 6U
he [sc. Theophrastus] takes up E$
h;
from the previous sentence, extracting the general
law like Aristotle's Metaph. 983b24' (p. 297); and 'The fragment is quoted for the rise
and decay of the worlds, but expresses a general law; this is clear from the neutral
plural' (p. 298). I do not know whether Holscher means that the generalization is Theo-
phrastus' (as the first of the above statements seems to suggest) and hence my in-
terpretation comes close to Holscher's, or rather Anaximander's. Schwabl, 'Anaximan-
der', 66, n. 13, seems to approach this conclusion: 'Mir scheint, man muB aus dem
Umstand, daB der Plural der Formel "generic" ist [the reference is to Kirk's view, KRS,
119], den SchluB ziehen, das die peripatetische Formel uberhaupt nur vom nachfolgen-
den Zitat her mit Sinn erfuillt werden kann, und daB Theophrast nicht irrt, sondern
verallgemeinert'; yet in the next sentence Schwabl retreats: 'Im iibrigen hat Kirk (wie
auch Brocker und Kahn) das Richtige, daB das Fragment sich auf einen innerweltlichen
ProzeB bezieht, mit Entschiedenheit vertreten.' It thus appears that Theophrastus is any-
way mistaken.
'o
Scarce as it is, our evidence nevertheless suffices to give us a general idea of how the
world would come to an end. We know that the primary moisture, which most probably
was formed as a result of a partial liquefaction of the earth (for such a transformation see
Heraclitus' B 31), is gradually drying up and will eventually completely disappear; the
exhaled vapours are tuming into air, the amount of which therefore gradually increases.
As far as air is Anaximander's arche, its gradual increase at the expense of other world
constituents (of the moisture directly, and of the earth indirectly) prepares the final
dissolution of the world into the arche (on the traditional view of Anaximander's arche
still another transformation, that of air into the Apeiron, must be postulated). This gradu-
al telescoping of the gross world components into each other and eventually into the
arche is, in Heraclitus' terms, the life of one thing by the death of another. The chain of
material transformations is thus a sequence of penalties for the usurpation of the other's
'life' paid by way of a new usurpation, which is a sort of a relative or partial justice. Yet
251
der's authentic idiom he appears reluctant to speak of the Apeiron as the
material principle: he avoids saying that the gonimon separated off from the
Apeiron and that the world will perish into the Apeiron. Scant as this is it is
nevertheless clear testimony that the unchangeability of 'the whole' was not
an incidental idea in Anaximander. The idea was not confined to a single
isolated statement probably reflected in Diogenes' report; rather it appears
to be widely operative in Anaximander's teaching, deternining the way in
which he phrases his specific doctrines as well as the abstract name of this
unchangeable essence, Tlo 6Pu1QOV.
not all 'justice' is such: the arche cannot properly be said to 'live' at the expense of
some other thing; rather all other things, directly or indirectly, 'live' at the expense of
the arche, and it is only on the return of all things into the arche that complete, absolute
justice is restored. As one may see, relative justice is the way to the restoration of
absolute, which is the restitution of the entire 'life' or portion of the arche. It would be
wrong however to say, as Diels does, that the very existence of the world is an injustice
against the arche. If a comes into being at the expense of the arche, it must restore to the
arche the usurped portion of 'life', viz., it must pay the death penalty. But the death of a
is the 'life' not of the arche, but of b, etc. The manifold world is thus a transitory state
through which the arche has to pass in its way to the restoration of its entire 'life', and
the later phases of the cosmogony are the beginning of this process (thus the emergence
of the primary moisture is a cosmogonic event whose rationale is the penalty the earth
must pay for its coming into being at the expense of the 'life' of the arche). It may be
seen that it would be wrong to regard the generation of things from the arche and the
mutual transformations of the world constituents into each other as alternative options,
as notably Kahn, Anaximander, 195, does. These transformations are the instrument of
the restoration of 'absolute justice', i.e. of the gradual telescoping of the world compo-
nents into the arche, which is carried out by the progressive encroachments on one
opposite by others (the asymmetry of the relationship between the opposites is pointed
out by Freudenthal, 'The Theory of the Opposites', 212; cf. also Holscher, 'Anaximan-
der', 298-99). The process, as Freudenthal, art. cit., 217-25, shows is the shifting of the
manifold from one balanced state to another. This is to say that the encroachments are
allowed, measured, and even partially counterbalanced (as, for example, winter rainfalls
provide a partial compensation for the rapid drying up of the sea in summer) by the
'all-stirring' divine arche with a view to the 'relative' justice which is to be maintained
at any given phase of the process directed to the attainment of 'absolute' justice. The
justice which things render to each other is hence both chainlike and reciprocal - it
would be unnatural to try to isolate one sense of dlXkkXoL, to the exclusion of the other.
(When Aeschylus, Ag. 654, says that blows of wind caused the ships to clash - vais
7Q0g
dkkXCULoL rvoai iQELXOV
- he most naturally means that they did this in both a
reciprocal and chainlike manner.) Nevertheless reciprocal justice is 'relative' and as such
is a subordinate and subservient part of 'absolute' justice, and, as Holscher, 'Anaximan-
der', 300, observes, 'on the whole the picture is not a schema of complementary oppo-
sites, but "the arrangement of time" ', 'the contrast of the Finite with the Eternal'.
252
3. The Apeiron as the unchangeable 'whole' and the airy arche
If Anaximander conceived of the Apeiron as the unchangeable 'whole', it
cannot properly be the material principle: it is no more the arche than the
differentiated world, more air than, say, water or stones, - it is all of them
but, strictly speaking, none of them but rather some other higher nature.
Should we conclude that the Peripatetic notion of the Apeiron as Anaximan-
der's arche and element is mistaken?
It should be noted from the outset that the very fact that Anaximander did
not professedly state that air is the principle of the world (since being
thoroughly airy was the material condition of the Apeiron before assuming
another material condition, that of the manifold world) is the most eloquent
evidence that he failed to draw a clear-cut distinction between the higher
nature of the Apeiron and its material appearance as air. More specifically,
Anaximander is reported to have been the first who used the notion of
arche: 'he was the first who named the substratum arche'.7" The phrase
undoubtedly means that Anaximander called the Apeiron arche, and the
report must be correct: in the absence of the explicit mention of air the
Apeiron is the only thing left to be so called. In so far as the argument in
Arist. Phys. F 4, 203b6 (DK 12 A 15) can be trusted to be Anaximander's72
it offers an example of such an application of the term arche to the Apeiron,
namely it is intended to prove that the Apeiron must needs be the arche:73
'For everything is either an arche or from an arche, but there is not an
arche of the Apeiron, for this would be its limit... That is why... there is no
arche of this, but it is this that... is the arche of other things...'. Theophras-
tus' attribution of 'eternal motion' to the Apeiron reflects Anaximander's
' Simpl. Phys. 150, 22, - cf., among others, Guthrie, HGP, i, 77; M. Stokes, One and
Many in Presocratic Philosophy, Washington D.C., 1971, 28 and n. 23; Barnes, PP, 32.
Burnet's construal of Simplicius' Greek (EGP, 54, n. 2) is not only linguistically forced
but does not fit in with the context. As to Simpl. Phys. 24, 13 (= DK 12 A 9), the phrase
can hardly have any other sense than 'to call the arche by the name of the Apeiron'.
72 For the presumable authenticity of the argument see Jaeger, The Theology, 24-25; C.
Kahn, 'Anaximander and the Argument Concerning the AIEIPON at Physics 203b4-
15'; in: Festschrift Ernst Kapp, Hamburg, 1958, 19-29; F. Solmsen, 'Anaximander's
Infinite: Traces and Influences', Archiv far Geschichte der Philosophie xliv (1962),
109-31.
73
Fortunately, we need not enter here into a discussion whether under arche, in addition
to its literal sense as a first thing (as also a sovereign one,
-
cf. M.L. West, Early Greek
Philosophy and the Orient, Oxford, 1971, 78; M. Riedel, 'APXH und AAnEIPON.
tUber das Grundwort des Anaximander', Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie lxix
(1987), 14), Anaximander also meant a persistent nature of everything. A minimalistic
understanding will suffice for our purposes.
253
view of the Apeiron as the originative stuff of the world.74 We must thus
conclude that Anaximander's book contained at least one passage in which
the Apeiron was professedly identified as arche and moreover shown to be
necessarily such. The conclusion that in his conception of the Apeiron
Anaximander combined two different, actually incompatible,
ideas
-
the
unchangeable 'whole' and the airy arche
-
thus seems unavoidable. And
when regarded in this light the presumably Anaximandrean description of
the Apeiron as 'embracing' and 'governing' all things, suggesting as it does
the view of the Apeiron as a distinct component of the differentiated world
(and hence, as air) can hardly be considered as incidental. (In this connec-
tion Anaximenes' association between
&tqQ
and ?irElQo; is also worth re-
calling.)
Anaximander's conception of the Apeiron adumbrates the idea of the One
74
Simpl. Phys. 24, 13; Hippol. Ref. i 6, 2 (= DK 12 A 9, 1 1). There is no need to take
Theophrastus' 'eternal motion' as applied to Anaximander as well as to other early
monists as some kind of mechanical motion, as it is often understood (see e.g., Burnet,
EGP, 61-62; H. Cherniss, 'The Characteristics and Effects of Presocratic Philosophy' in
FA, 8, cf. I 1; or S. Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, London, 1956, 186),
sometimes only to, rightly, dismiss it as an irrelevant notion (see Kirk, KRS, 126-28).
The correct sense of Theophrastus' 'eternal motion' is stressed by Holscher, 'Anaximan-
der', 285, 295, who points out that in both Aristotle and Theophrastus kinesis as applied
to the teachings of the physikoi primarily means changeability (cf. Simpl. 24, 26 = DK
13 A 5). Therefore Theophrastus' attribution of eternal motion to the Apeiron is unmis-
takable evidence that Anaximander spoke of it as a generative source of existing things.
At Phys. 24, 23 Simplicius states that Anaximander 'produces the generation not by
the alteration of the principle but by the separation-off of the opposites because of the
eternal motion.' That Anaximander 'produces the generation by the separation-off of the
opposites' (or more accurately, of 'what is productive' of the opposites) is correct, but
separation-off of parts of a homogeneous body which is not assumed to be a blend or
mixture of what is afterwards separated off is, necessarily, a qualitative change. Simpli-
cius then draws a wrong contrast because, as Holscher, 'Anaximander', 285, points out,
he imagines that Anaximander's separation-off is just like Anaxagoras'. We may go
further and ask why he makes such a mistake which is the more unexpected as Theo-
phrastus drew a rather clear distinction between Anaximander and Anaxagoras in this
respect, as Simplicius himself informs us (Phys. 27, 2
=
Physic. Opinion. fr 4
=
DK 59 A
41). Holscher believes that Simplicius here leaves Theophrastus and follows Aristotle.
But I believe there is a better explanation which does not saddle Simplicius with contra-
dicting Theophrastus, whose opinion on the subject he quotes elsewhere, without even
noting his disagreement with the authority. One may observe that Simplicius' statement
would be entirely correct had he spoke not of the physical processes themselves, but of
the terms involved. I suggest therefore that the original sentence contained Theophras-
tus' observation concerning Anaximander's idiom: in speaking of generation he did not
employ terms like alloiosis but rather described it as apokrisis of opposites. Simplicius'
source was simply corrupted here.
254
whose nature is not expressed in its changing material conditions. Yet the
distinction between altering material states and some other, unchanging
essence is new and sophisticated, and the more difficult to maintain since
this essence remains undefined. To evaluate the difficulty adequately we
should take into account not only the subtlety of the distinction itself but
also the fact that the cosmogonical doctrine actively counteracts it. That the
manifold world is a secondary and transitory material condition of the Apei-
ron whereas air is a primary one, and that it is qua air and in virtue of this
quality, that the Apeiron is the divine source of everything, works in the
direction of the straightforward association of the Apeiron with air, while
the only barrier to such an association, a positive determination of the
nature of the Apeiron as such, simply does not exist. In these circumstances
it is not surprising indeed that Anaximander failed to fashion his idea into a
clear-cut conception. That the resulting doctrine is loose and inconsistent
and that it rather faintly expresses the idea does not belittle the fact that
Anaximander discovered the possibility of envisaging the higher unity of
the manifold as a conceptual unity rather than a material one.
The Peripatetics approached the previous philosophers from the stand-
point of typological classification and conceptual criticism, and when ap-
plied to such a vague and inexplicit teaching as Anaximander's this ap-
proach inevitably produced a simplified picture by moulding, so to speak,
multi-dimensional insights into one-dimensional concepts according to fa-
miliar patterns and by suggesting a straightforward logic where there might
actually be a long way roundabout.75 But Anaximenes is another story. He
was well acquainted with the actual machinery of Anaximander's thought,
but he seems to have taken no particular interest in Anaximander's concep-
tual subtleties and not to have felt that the material notion of unity presented
any real difficulty. He simply made Anaximander's tacit visualisation of the
Apeiron as air the explicit starting-point of his own doctrine and explained
(so he apparently believed) in plain language how air can turn into other
things and at the same time remain air (had not, after all, Anaximander
thought that changeable air is the unchangeable nature of 'the whole'?).
Another Anaximander 'disciple', Xenophanes,76 proved more sensitive to
the conceptual facets of his teaching and more perspicacious in under-
standing the true meaning and great efficacy of his idea of the unchangeable
Apeiron. In Xenophanes' doctrine, with its clear-cut distinction between the
75 At the same time, it is perhaps not incidental that in Met. A Anaximander is not
mentioned among the early philosophers preoccupied with material causes.
76 According to Theophrastus (fr. 6a ap. Diog. ix 21 = DK 21 A 2) Xenophanes was an
associate of Anaximander.
255
plurality and changeability of the material world and the oneness and im-
mutability of the cosmic god, the Anaximandrean idea was elucidated and
consistently applied.77
Tel-Aviv University
77
On Xenophanes' God as coextensive with the world see my 'Studies in Xenophanes',
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology xliii (1990), 105, 113 and esp. 116 with the
synopsis on p. 120.
256

Finkelberg A Anaximander's Conception of The Apeiron

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Finkelberg A Anaximander's Conception of The Apeiron

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Anaximander's Conception of the "Apeiron"

Author(s): Aryeh Finkelberg

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi