Anaximander’s 'Boundless Nature'

Peitho 4 (1):63-92 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The usual interpretation has it that Anaximander made ‘the Boundless’ the source and principle of everything. However, in the works of Aristotle, the nearest witness, no direct connection can be found between Anaximander and ‘the Boundless’. On the contrary, Aristotle says that all the physicists made something else the subject of which ἄπειρος is a predicate. When we take this remark seriously, it must include Anaximander as well. This means that Anaximander did not make τὸ ἄπειρον the source or principle of everything, but rather called something else ἄπειρος. The question is, then, what was the subject that he adorned with this predicate. The hypothesis defended in this article is that it must have been ϕύσις, not in its Aristotelian technical sense, but in the pregnant sense of natura creatrix: the power that brings everything into existence and makes it grow and move. This ‘nature’ is boundless. It rules everything and in this sense it can be called ‘divine’. Being boundless, the mechanisms of nature, in which the opposites play an important role, are multifarious. The things created by boundless nature are not boundless, but finite, as they are destined to the destruction they impose onto each other, as Anaximander’s fragment says.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Some Problems in Anaximander.G. S. Kirk - 1955 - Classical Quarterly 5 (1-2):21-.
Anaximander.Dirk L. Couprie - 2001 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Der Ursprung der Wissenschaft bei Anaximander von Milet.R. Ferber - 1987 - Philosophia Naturalis 24 (2):195-215.
Der Ursprung der Wissenschaft bei Anaximander von Milet.Rafael Ferber - 1986 - Theologie Und Philosophie 61 (4):551-561.
Explaining the cosmos: The Ionian traditIon of scientific philosophy (review).Robert Hahn - 2008 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (3):pp. 475-476.
Anaximander und die Anfänge der griechischen Philosophie.H. Schmitz - 1990 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 52 (2):334-335.
Anaximander and the Multiple Successive Worlds Thesis.Christos Panayides - 2010 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 17 (3):288-302.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-12-06

Downloads
20 (#656,480)

6 months
8 (#158,054)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations