This
is the first of my four entries on Anaxagoras, and it has no philosophical link
to Schopenhauer, except for the controversy over their historical evaluation.
Like the latter, who is sometimes called the first among the second rank,
Anaxagoras is generally placed below the universally recognized giants.
Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, allots to him a
tiny chapter, in which he twice repeats at the start and at the end that
Anaxagoras is hardly “the equal of Pythagoras,
Heraclitus, or Parmenides; not quite of the first rank,” but “has nevertheless a
considerable historical importance.”
On
the other side of this evaluation, we have Nietzsche’s opinion of Schopenhauer
and Anaxagoras, both of whom, in his view, are definitely of the first rank.
Anaxagoras is of course prominently included among his Group of Eight, and
in the Philosophy in the Tragic Age of
The Greeks Nietzsche probably talks about Anaxagoras more than about any
other pre-Socratic. We shall quote Nietzsche’s remarkable passage on Anaxagoras
and Pericles in the next entry. Anaxagoras is also afforded a special
distinction (although to be taken with a grain of salt) as the inspirer of
Euripides, in the following passage from The Birth of Tragedy:
“As a poet then Euripides was mostly concerned with rendering his
conscious perceptions, and it is this that gives him his importance in the
history of Greek drama. With regard to his poetic procedure that was both
critical and creative, he must often have felt that he was applying to drama
the opening words of this Anaxagorian treatise: ‘In the beginning all things
were mixed together; then reason came and introduced order.’ And,
just as Anaxagoras with his concept of reason seems like the first sober
philosopher in a company of drunkards, so Euripides may have appeared to
himself as the first rational maker of tragedy.”
And
now we shall proceed with Nietzsche’s discussion of Pericles as a disciple of
Anaxagoras, which is so important in this context that we are allotting it a
separate entry.
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