Abstract
The usual interpretation has it that Anaximander made ‘the Boundless’ (τὸ ἄπειρον) 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 (Phys. 203 a 4). 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.
Highlights
As Finkelberg[1] already said, one of the most obscure terms in Greek philosophy, ascribed to Anaximander, is τὸ ἄπειρον, which may be tentatively translated as ‘the boundless’
Naddaf devotes a whole book to the Greek concept of nature, starting from the observation that it is “unanimously accepted (...) that the concept of phusis was a creation of Ionian science”
He hangs his argument on a discussion of the expression ἱστορία περὶ φύσεως, which is the title, ascribed since Plato to the investigations of the Presocratic philosophers, Plato, hinting at Empedocles, Archelaos, Anaximenes, Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Alcmeon, does not mention Anaximander, nor his alleged principle
Summary
As Finkelberg[1] already said, one of the most obscure terms in Greek philosophy, ascribed to Anaximander, is τὸ ἄπειρον, which may be tentatively translated as ‘the boundless’ (or ‘the infinite’, or ‘the non-finite’; some authors even transliterate ‘the apeiron’). Others have doubted whether Anaximander used the term in the spatial sense at all They maintain that in connection with boundless generation, τὸ ἄπειρον is described as “an endless, inexhaustible reservoir or stock”.13. We will first clear the field by discussing the etymology and meaning of ἄπειρος and by looking more carefully at the doxographical evidence This will, we think, support our suggestion that Anaximander used the word ἄπειρος as an adjective, which will lead to the question of what ἄπειρος must be thought to be a predicate
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