Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Lectures on Greek Philosophy (1888)/Anaximander
ANAXIMANDER.
15. The next philosopher of the Ionic school was Anaximander. This philosopher was born in the year 610 B.C., and died in 547 B.C. Miletus was his birthplace, and he was the friend and disciple of Thales. He is said to have lived for some time in the island of Samos, at the court of the great Polycrates, where also Pythagoras and the poet Anacreon were at that time residing. Anaximander is said to have been the first philosopher who put down his thoughts in writing. He made a map of the earth and the sea, in which it is probable that a good deal of conjecture was embodied. He invented the sundial, and was celebrated generally for his attainments in mathematics, and for his invention of mathematical instruments.
16. The German historian of philosophy, Ritter, followed by Mr Lewes, takes Anaximander out of his place in the Ionic school, and connects him rather with the Pythagoreans. They do this on the ground that his speculations were rather mathematical than physical. It seems to me, however, that the position usually assigned to him as the immediate successor of Thales, and as a member of the same school, is his right place in the history of philosophy. And, accordingly, I have ranked him among the Ionic philosophers, both on account of his birthplace and of his philosophy, which seems to have been an attempt to develop and improve the system propounded by Thales.
17. The three following sentences from Diogenes Laertius, from Simplicius, a commentator on Aristotle, and from Aristotle himself, contain the substance of the philosophy of Anaximander, in so far as it has been handed down to us. Anaximander, they tell us, laid down the infinite or unlimited (τὸ ἄπειρον) as the principle and element of all things; and not any determinate matter, such as water, air, and so forth. This was his principle, because that which is the ground of all must be susceptible of receiving every form or variation. Accordingly, he assumed the infinite or indeterminate as a principle adapted to every species of production. "That indeterminate not being itself any particular thing, is capable of becoming any particular thing. This principle is itself without beginning, being the beginning of all other things; it embraces and governs all—it is the divine, the immortal, and the incorruptible." Such is the substance of Anaximander's doctrine, as gathered from the three authors referred to. (Arist. Phys. iii. 4; Simplic. ad loc.; Diog. Laert., ii. 1.)
18. In explanation of these words, this may be added, that if we attempt to explain all things by means of a material principle or element, we can easily see that that principle must in itself be indeterminate, without form or quality; for, suppose it to be determinate, or to have a form, in that case it becomes one of the very things which call for explanation. In other words, the question instantly arises, Whence this determinate matter? And suppose that the answer again is, It arises out of determinate matter, this determinate matter again requires explanation, and so on for ever, so that no approach at all is made to an explanation if, in explaining the origin of determinate or apparent matter, we are always referred to an antecedent determinate matter; and therefore, if this explanation of the origin of material things is to be held good for anything, we must ultimately be thrown in upon a matter which is altogether formless and indeterminate. This is the conception which Anaximander appears to have reached, and which he expressed by the term ἄπειρον, the conception of a materia prima, a matter which, having no form or determination in itself, is capable of receiving all forms or determinations. That which is open to, and recipient of, all forms or qualities must in itself be invested with no form or quality, otherwise it would be foreclosed against the reception of other qualities.
19. Such is the ἄπειρον of Anaximander, in which we seem to find the germ of the distinction between matter and form, a distinction which afterwards became conspicuous in several schools of philosophy, and which, when construed into logic, became convertible with genus and difference; genus was matter, form was difference. The ἄπειρον of Anaximander was a πρώτη ὕλη, a first matter, from which all form or difference had been stripped, or rather to which no form or appearance was as yet appended, although Anaximander seems to have accorded to this matter a power of developing or secreting differences.
20. As an illustration of this conception, you may take the case of flour baked into bread. The bread, we shall say, exists as loaves and cakes in every variety of form. You explain these loaves and cakes as determinate flour, as flour determined or fashioned in a multiplicity of different ways. But then flour is itself something determinate, and therefore you will next be asked, What is flour the determination of? What is its principle? You must assign as its origin either something determinate or something indeterminate. If you assign something determinate (wheat, for example) as its origin, you are again asked, But what is the origin of the wheat? Again your answer must yield something determinate or something indeterminate. If determinate, then the same question recurs, and your explanation goes for nothing. It has reached no ultimate, so that you are driven in the last resort to assign an indeterminate matter as the ultimate origin of the bread. This indeterminate matter is this matter without form, the ἄπειρον of Anaximander.
21. So far, then, the position of Anaximander is an 21. So far, then, the position of Anaximander is an advance beyond that of Thales. The principle of Thales (water, namely) was too definite and particular to serve as the common ground or basis of all things. Being already qualified, it was not open to all qualification. Anaximander thought that this objection was obviated by his ἄπειρον. This, being unmodified in itself, was susceptible of all modification; being absolutely unconditioned, it was capable of becoming conditioned to any extent; and accordingly he adopted this as his universal, and set it forth as the principle of all things. The ἄπειρον was perhaps the prosaic and philosophical name for the chaos of the poets. In the language of Ovid—
" Ante, mare et tellus, et quod tegit omnia, cœlum,
Unus erat toto Naturæ vultus in orbe,
Quem dixere chaos, rudis indigestaque moles.
Quaque fuit tellus, illic et pontus et aer:
Sic erat instabilis tellus, innabilis unda,
Lucis egens aer; nulli sua forma manebat,
Obstabatque aliis aliud, quia corpore in uno
Frigida pugnabant calidis, humentia siccis,
Mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus:
Hanc Deus et melior litem natura diremit."
22. To this matter, originally indeterminate or unconditioned, Anaximander seems to have ascribed some inherent power of assuming form or of secreting differences, and thus the various objects of the universe arose. The process is very insufficiently explained. All that we can say is, that Anaximander's doctrine probably was that things have assumed the forms in which we behold them in consequence of certain affinities and certain repugnances pervading the boundless and chaotic mass in which everything at first lay blended and enveloped.
23. The only two points, then, in the system of Anaximander seem to be these: first, the principle of all things, the universal in nature, the groundwork of the universe, the ultimately real and true, is, according to him, an unbounded, indeterminate, formless matter; this he calls ἀρχή, the beginning, and ἄπειρον, the unlimited; and secondly, to this ἄπειρον he seems to have assigned some power of self-limitation, through which a shape was given to the different objects of the senses.
24. When we look to the mere letter of Anaximander's system, we find in it as little to satisfy the demands of reason as we found in the system of Thales, when embraced according to the letter. Even from the scope and spirit of the system we cannot gather much which is of philosophical or speculative value. Perhaps the chief merit of the system lies in its tendency to bring to light the opposition between the finite and the infinite. All true philosophy, I conceive, is based on a conception which conciliates, or reduces to one, these two, the finite and the infinite. But that this conciliation may take place, the opposition between them requires first of all to be signalised. And Anaximander seems to have been the first in the history of philosophy who marked the distinction. Finite things, the various objects of the universe, these cannot be explained out of the finite. Such an explanation explains nothing, because it lays down, as the ground of the explanation, the very thing to be explained. The finite has to be accounted for. But it is certainly not accounted for when we say that the finite accounts for it. It is obvious, therefore, that the finite must be an outcome from the infinite, that is, its ground or principle must be the negative of the finite. The negative is a very important element of conception; it is essential to the very constitution of reason. Affirmation seems to be the moving principle of intelligence; but the power of negation is equally necessary; without this, intelligence could not work—all would be a blank. Anaximander seems to have been the first thinker who recognised the power and significance of the negative. His ἄπειρον is the negative of the finite. But he does not carry out his own principle. The finite being convertible with the material, the right inference would have been, that the infinite, being the negative of the finite, was also the negative of the material, was the non-material; but Anaximander falls short of this conclusion. His ἄπειρον, though the negative of the finite, is still regarded by him as some sort of formless or unlimited matter.