ANAXIMENES IN RUSSELL AND NIETZSCHE

(See my previous entry Out Of Thin Air.)

Thales was the first philosopher, and thus deserving of special attention. Anaximander was by far the most interesting specimen of the “Milesian trio.” Which leaves us with Anaximenes, the last of the three, and as Bertrand Russell puts it, not so interesting as Anaximander, but (he) makes some important advances. His own section on Anaximenes is very short and pointed, and the following three paragraphs are good enough to be quoted in full:

The fundamental substance, (Anaximenes) said, is air. The soul is air; fire is rarefied air; when condensed, air becomes first water; if further condensed, earth, and finally, stone. This theory has the merit of making all the differences between different substances quantitative, depending only upon the degree of condensation.

He thought that the earth is shaped like a round table, and that air encompasses everything: “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so breath and air encompass the whole world.” It seems that the world breathes.

Anaximenes was more admired in antiquity than Anaximander, although almost any modern would make the opposite valuation. He had an important influence on Pythagoras and on much subsequent speculation. The Pythagoreans discovered that the earth is spherical, but the atomists adhered to the view of Anaximenes, that it is shaped like a disc.

Nietzsche’s opinion of Anaximenes is sufficiently well expressed in this already quoted sentence from his Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks, where the name of Anaximenes is missing from his list of major pre-Socratics:

Any nation is put to shame when one points out such a wonderfully idealized company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates.

In so far as I’ve been able to establish, the name of Anaximenes is never mentioned once in all Nietzsche’s works. This does not mean, however, that he is not worth being mentioned. I would say, far from that. For this reason, I have written a separate informative entry, which precedes this one.