Brief Biography:

>    Lived: 610- 546 B.C.

>   Lived in Miletus. Was a student of Thales. He succeeded Thales and became the master of the school Thales is believed to have founded. His students included Anaximenes and Pythagoras.

> Like his contemporaries Anaximander sought the Ürstoff except that for him it was not a form of matter (earth, air, fire or water) but a universal principle-the arche.

> In the development of his theories he sought to move away from mythology (although he is believed to have used a poetic style similar to that of mythology in his writing little of which still exists) using instead observation and natural phenomena as the basis for his cosmologies. Is has been attributed with the expansion of the "Greek miracle," that is, the attempt to explain the natural world employing natural principles rather than mythology.

Theories of the Arche and Apeiron :

>    Anaximander did not believe that the four elements could be the arche, the "substratum" from which all things are derived.

> He developed the idea of the apeiron, the "boundless." The apeiron was eternal and the source of all being to which all things return although it in itself was changeless. It is both the genesis and decay of all being. The apeiron was and is eternal and ageless, the primal abyss.

> The universe comes into being as opposites separate within the apeiron giving rise to the elements and subsequently all being and worlds (ours and others).

»  Anaximader develops a complex cosmology based upon his apeiron model to explain the structure of the earth and the universe, the cause of the seasons, and so-forth.

> Being can remain in existence so long as the boundaries of opposites remain. Here Anaximader employs mythic poetry to explain the continuance and annhilation of being (from: Simplicius, Comments on Aristotle's Physics).

Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.

» The Greek goddess of Justice, Dike, is represented here as overseeing the continuance of being and the return to the apeiron.

» Most scholars believe that Anaximader was employing a these terminology of justice in the context of natural laws which he believed governed the universe.

» The work Dike is believed to have its origin in the Greek word that described the boundary of a man's property. It became to represent the proper sphere of activity. Remaining in one's proper sphere was considered acts of justice whereas moving outside the boundary, adike, came to be known as injustice.

 

Interpretation & Critique

>    So what inovation did Anaximander bring to philosophy?

» His apeiron introduced abstraction to Greek thought. Other attempts to described the arche were focused on matter or material causes: the four elements. Anaximander forced his students to perceive a universe beyond the senses and to speculate as to how this abstraction could give rise to the reality that they lived in.

» Anaximander develops the notion of opposites as being the origin of being and annhilation of being. This is a theme that is not only developed throughout the centuries in philosophy, but also in religion and science.

» He modified and then employed mythic poetry in an attempt to explain phenomena using a natural laws.

> Fredrick Nietzche believe that Anaximander's theory of the Apeiron was essentially pessimistic since, as he interpreted it, existence itself was an act of injustice for which the only recompense was to return to the nonbeing of the boundless.

"...all coming-to-be as though it were an illegitimate emancipation from eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance."

»Yet, Nietzche was likely influenced by Anaximander in his own theory of the Eternal Recurance.

> This idea that existence itself carries with it its own guilt that can only be paid in death (the Greek notion of death is that of "nothingless) can be found throughout Greek literature and thought.

» It was the duty of man to live within the proper boundary of his being. It is an act of hubris (hybris) to act outside the proper order, eunomia, and could bring about adika (injustice) for which there would be a natural recompense paid by the individual and/or the polis (city).

» We can also see within these ideas the beginning formation of the Natural (moral) Law.