LAW OF RETURN

(The title of this entry is a jocular variation on the only extant fragment of Anaximander. This is a lengthy reference entry, but the reason for its length is that Anaximander is a particularly interesting philosopher, and his extant fragment, discussed here at length in a number of interpretative renditions, is considered by some as the most famous phrase in the history of philosophy. Even if this may be an exaggeration, there is no doubt that such characterizations are not thrown around by serious academics without some good reason.)

Our next philosopher of interest follows their traditional sequence in the history of philosophy. He is none other than Anaximander of Miletus (610/609 BC–ca. 546 BC), a purported pupil of Thales, and teacher of Anaximenes. Little is known of his life and work. An astronomer and a geographer, he is believed to have introduced the sundial and the gnomon to ancient Greece. He is also credited with having created the first map of the world. A fragment of his philosophical work has survived; it is much quoted and we will quote it too, soon enough in this entry, and not just once, but in several renditions.

First comes an academic rendition, scholarly, but of no particular luster. We are providing it here as a sort of background for the next two entries, where far more eminent renditions have found their homes.

Anaximander was the first known to the later Greeks to venture a written account of Nature. The title was thought to be On Nature, but it was common to attribute a book of such title to each of the ancients whom Aristotle would designate as physical philosophers. A number of other specifically titled works were said to have been written by Anaximander, but we can have no certitude that they were actually written by him. What we can be sure of, however, is that he did write; for a sentence of his is preserved by Simplicius in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, and it is thought that Simplicius, in his turn, owes this information to Aristotle’s disciple Theophrastus. We begin our consideration of Anaximander with this fragment. A few remarks on the difficulties of interpretation provide a concrete example of the character of our sources for thinkers prior to Parmenides. More importantly we are going to use the doctrine of the fragment to control our other more indirect information, though of course not all of the latter should be considered operative in the fragment.

Anaximander said that the principle and element of all things is the Boundless, being the first to introduce this very term principle. He says that “it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some different boundless nature from which all the heavens arise and the world within them; out of those things whence is the generation for existing things, into these again does their destruction come to be, according to necessity; for they make amends and give reparations to one another for their offences, according to the disposition of time,” speaking of them thus in poetical terms. It is clear that having observed the change of the four elements into one another, he did not see fit to make any one of these the material substratum, but something else besides these.

That a direct quote, whatever its length, is involved in this passage from Simplicius seems assured by the comment on the poetical style of Anaximander. Those who feel that the quotation is shorter than we make it point out that since Theophrastus, like Aristotle himself, inevitably sees early philosophy from Peripatetic viewpoint, we must be on our guard against attributing to the earliest philosophers notions elaborated only much later. In the present instance, “generation” and “corruption” (“destruction,” in the given translation) are taken to be technical terms of later philosophy, and not to have been used by the pre-Socratics. Kahn argued that these terms, in a sense close to that Anaximander requires, are used even in pre-philosophical literature (we have seen that Homer uses genesis, Hesiod, genet), and that it is not utterly impossible that these very words and, at the least, the thoughts they convey are Anaximandrian. If his arguments are valid, the passage gives us a solid textual base in Anaximander for much of what has been traditionally ascribed to him.

The doctrine of Anaximander is often epitomized by observing that, while Thales gave water as the origin or principle of everything in the universe, his pupil Anaximander argued that none of the regular elements could serve such a function, and that consequently it must rather be some boundless or indefinite (apeiron) nature. The passage brings this doctrine immediately to the fore, and we must inquire, what Anaximander meant by the boundless, and what relation this bore to the elements. We notice that Simplicius speaks of the four elements, which is perhaps a later restriction of their number. So, what could Anaximander’s own view of the elements have been?

At the end of the quotation, Simplicius gives us a reason for Anaximander’s choice of the boundless as the origin of things, namely, that, having seen that the elements change into one another, Anaximander would have concluded that none of them could be the source of the others. There is a passage in Aristotle making the same point, and it is thought to have been written with Anaximander in mind.

But nor can the infinite body be one and simple whether it be as some say that which is beside the elements from which they generate the elements or whether it is expressed simply. For there are those who make what is beside the elements the infinite substance; for the elements are opposed to each other (for example, air is cold, water is moist and fire is hot), and if one of these were infinite, the rest would already have been destroyed. But, as it is, they say, the infinite is different from these, and they come into being from it.

The elements are considered to be opposites that change into one another; the boundless of Anaximander is not one of the elements, as then it would seem necessary that sooner or later all things would change into it. Not being itself an element, the boundless is not opposed to any of the things that are, that is, to any of the elements which are in opposition to one another. There seem to be two notes of the boundless: its indeterminateness in quality or nature, and boundlessness in extent: that which cannot be traversed. And it is this latter sense, which accords best with previous usage of the term apeiron, we are told, and indeed, it answers best to the later discussion of infinity. The indefiniteness in quality follows from the denial of the boundless being one of the elements. From the boundless nature are believed to arise the heavens and the worlds within them. For some posit one substance only, and this some posit as water, some as air, some as fire, and yet some as finer than water and thicker than air; which surrounds all the heavens, being infinite.

The boundless here seems in the present state of things to be a kind of enclosure for the heavens. And this is the divine, for it is immortal and indestructible, as Anaximander says, “It is said to be the beginning of the other things and to surround all things and steer all.” It appears that Anaximander taught that things had their beginning when the opposites separated off from the boundless nature, due to the eternal motion of the latter.

He says that that which is productive from the eternal of hot and cold was separated off at the coming to be of this world, and that a kind of sphere of flame from it was formed round the air surrounding the earth like the bark round a tree. When this was broken off and shut off in certain circles, the sun and the moon and the stars were formed. The picture suggests a separation of fire and mist from the boundless, with fire encircling the mist like bark or skin. At the core of the air or mist, the earth condensed, and its shape is that of cylinder with its diameter to its height in the proportion of three to one. The fire encircling air bursts, forming wheels of fire enclosed by air. The earth is at the center of things not floating on water as for Thales, but it is where it is from considerations of geometrical symmetry. Men live on one side of the cylinder of earth and the sea is what remains of the original mist. The heavenly bodies are simply the fire, disclosing itself through holes in the formed wheels. Eclipses are explained as temporary closings of the holes in the fire-encircling wheels of mist. Since Anaximander explained eclipses in this manner, it is thought to be highly unlikely that Thales had hit upon the true explanation earlier.

With this sketch of Anaximander’s picture of the universe, we can turn once more to our basic text. Just as the position of the earth is dictated by the notion of geometrical symmetry (if it is at the center, why should it go elsewhere?), so the alterations of the opposites, separated off from the boundless, are seen in terms of a proportion expressed by a judicial metaphor: “Out of those things from which is the generation for existing things , into these again does their destruction take place,” the plural here is sign enough that the passage does not say that as all things come from the boundless nature so do they return to it, but rather, that the elements first separated off are such that one comes to being from another, and it ceases to be in the reverse change. If we think of day coming to be from night, and then once more giving way to night, Anaximander asks us to see something like injustice in the coming to be, an imbalance, which is righted when the day is destroyed by night. In some such way, the elements are related, and the rhythm, from hot or cold and back again, is seen as injustice and retribution, according to necessity, and to the disposition of time. The world is looked upon as governed by a law likened to human justice; proportion is achieved in time. Interchange of the opposites everywhere observable in the world is what arrests Anaximander’s attention in the extant fragment, and Simplicius’ comment on his style must, in the light of the previous chapter, arrest ours. The “rather poetical terms” of Anaximander refer to the justice metaphor. The opposites Anaximander has in mind are first of all the hot and cold, namely, fire and air, then, wet and dry, corresponding to water and earth. We recognize here what were to become with Empedocles the four elements, but there is no cogent reason for saying that the Empedoclean doctrine is already taught by Anaximander. Indeed, Aristotle tells us that Empedocles was the first to speak of four elements. We may add that a striking point of continuity with Thales is found in Anaximander’s teaching that living things come from the moist element.

The view that some boundless, unlimited, indefinite thing was the first stage in the world’s coming to be, and even now surrounds and steers the universe is a giant step beyond Thales. This is true if Anaximander made his choice from a consideration of the consequences of singling out one of the elements as the origin and the beginning of all else. Moreover, the sentiment expressed by the said fragment is that the ceaseless changes in the world around us are governed by a law like the law of the courts and attributed to the divine, steering all things. In his cosmological teaching the heavenly bodies are explained in terms of wheels which rotate above the earth, with the sun ring being the farthest from the earth; the aperture, through which what we call the sun is visible, is said to be approximately the diameter of the earth cylinder. The moon ring is closer; then comes the star wheel, which, of course, has many openings.

Here very quickly is another academic rendition somewhat more entertaining than the previous one and by all means deserving to be in this reference entry anyway.----

There are far fewer anecdotes connected with the name of Anaximander than with that of Thales. We can mention the story that he set up a gnomon at Sparta, that is, an instrument for measuring time, presumably erected on an inscribed surface, on which the hour and the seasons could be read. He is also credited with having made a map of the known world.

The history of written Greek philosophy starts with Anaximander, who was the first who dared to write an essay in prose, which has been called traditionally On Nature. This book has been lost. Only one fragment has come down to us, quoted by Simplicius (after Theophrastus), in the sixth century AD. It is perhaps the most famous phrase in the history of philosophy.

The only existing fragment of Anaximander's book is surrounded by all kinds of questions. The ancient Greeks did not use quotation marks, so we cannot be sure where Simplicius, who has handed down the text to us, is paraphrasing Anaximander, and where he begins to quote him. The text is cast in indirect speech, even the part, which most authors agree is a real quotation. One important word of the text (allêlois, here translated as upon one another) is missing in some manuscripts. As far as the fragment’s interpretation is concerned, it is heavily disputed whether it refers to Anaximander's principle, the Boundless, or not. The Greek original has relative pronouns in the plural (rendered by ‘whence’ and ‘thence’), making it difficult to relate them to the Boundless. However, Simplicius’ impression that it is written in rather poetic words has been repeated in various ways by many authors. Therefore, we offer a translation where some poetic features of the original, such as chiasmus and alliteration, have been imitated:

Whence things have their origin,

Thence also their destruction happens,

As is the order of things;

For they execute the sentence upon one another:

The condemnation for the crime

In conformity with the ordinance of Time.

In the fourth and fifth line, a more fluent translation is given, for what is usually rendered rather cryptically, by something like “giving justice and reparation to one another for their injustice.”

We may distinguish two lines of interpretation, which may be labeled the horizontal and the vertical. The horizontal interpretation maintains that in the fragment nothing is said about the relation of the things to the Boundless, whereas the vertical interpretation maintains that the fragment describes the relationship of the things to the Boundless. The upholders of the latter horizontal interpretation do not deny that Anaximander taught that all things are generated from the Boundless, but they simply say that this is not what is being said in the fragment. They argue that the fragment describes the battle between the elements (or of things in general), which accounts for the origin and the destruction of things. The most obvious difficulty for this “horizontal” interpretation however is that it implies two cycles of becoming and decay: one from and into the Boundless and the other caused by the mutual give and take of the elements or things in general. In other words, in the horizontal interpretation the Boundless is superfluous. This is the strongest argument in favor of the vertical interpretation holding that the fragment refers to the Boundless notwithstanding the plural relative pronouns. According to the vertical interpretation, the Boundless ought to be regarded not only as the ever-flowing fountain, from which everything ultimately springs, but also as the yawning abyss (as some say, comparable with Hesiod’s ‘Chaos’), into which everything ultimately perishes.

The suggestion has been raised that Anaximander’s formula in the first two lines of the fragment could have been the model for Aristotle’s definition of the principle (Greek archê) of all things, in Metaphysics. There is some sense in this suggestion. What could be more natural for Aristotle than to borrow his own definition of archê to indicate the principle of the first Pre-Socratic philosophers, from Anaximander, that is, the one who introduced the notion in the first place?

This now concludes my present Anaximandrian compilation.