Phil 2602A Presocratics and Plato W 21 Instructor And.docx

Phil 260/2A
Presocratics and Plato
W 2/1
Instructor: Andrea Falcon
Anaximander
A) Anaximander and Thales
1. Diogenes Laertius Lives 1.13
The men who were commonly regarded as sages [sophoi] were
the following: Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulos, Chilon,
Bias, Pittacus …. Philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom, has a
twofold origin; it started with Anaximander on the one hand,
with Pythagoras on the other. The former was a pupil of Thales,
while Pythagoras was taught by Pherecydes. The one
school was called Ionian because Thales, a Milesian and
therefore an Ionian, instructed Anaximander; the other school
was called Italian from Pythagoras, who worked for the most
part in Italy.
2. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 10.14.11
Anaximander was a student of Thales, being son of Praxiades
and himself Milesian by descent. He first fashioned
gnomons for distinguishing solstices, times, seasons, and
equinoxes.
3. Diogenes Laertius Lives 2.1-2
Anaximander, son of Praxiades, of Miletus. He said the source

and element was the boundless [to apeiron], not defining it
as air or water or anything else. And the parts change, but the
totality is changeless. … He first discovered the gnomon
and set one up in Sparta, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous
Studies, to mark solstices and equinoxes. … And he first
drew a map of the earth and sea, and he also fashioned a sphere
of the heavens.
While Aristotle traces the beginning of philosophy back to
Thales, the tradition we find in Diogenes Laertius, Lives 1.13
favor Anaximander and Pythagoras as the founders of the two
main traditions of philosophy. More directly, Thales is
one of the seven sages and the teacher of Anaximander, who is
the founder of the Ionian style of philosophy.
B) Anaximander and his archê
A Presocratics Reader, pp. 16-19: T9 (Simplicius, Commentary
on Aristotle’s Physics 24.13-21);
T10 (Hyppolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 1.6.1-2), T11
(Aristotle, Physics 3.4.203b10-15), T15
(Hyppolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 1.6.3-7); T18 (Aëtius,
Placita 45.19.4) and T19 (Ps-
Plutarch Placita 2).
Anaximander develops his account in the framework of a
cosmogony, which is to say an account of how the present world
arouse out of a primeval undifferentiated state. He identifies the
starting point or archê for his cosmogony in the apeiron
or boundless. Apparently, he was the first to use this word (sc.
apeiron). The key text for us is T9. It contains a quotation
from Anaximander’s book. As with many putative fragments,
the extent of the quotation is subject to some disputed, but

the fact that Simplicius draws attention to Anaximander’s
chosen form of diction implies that some of the preceding lines
contain Anaximander’s actual words. At least the following
words should go back to Anaximander: “for they pay penalty
and
retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with
the ordering of time.” Here Anaximander seems to say that all
interchanges between the main things in his cosmogony as
governed by rule of exchange (e.g., all air that is converted
into water is done at a certain “exchange rate,” and over time it
will eventually be returned: water will in time repay its
debt to air). Within this theoretical framework, Anaximander
offers a cosmology which is to say an account of the present
world order. In his cosmology, Anaximander explains why the
earth remains at rest in the center of the cosmos, and how
phases of the moon and eclipses occur. He assign relative
dimensions to the earth and relative sizes to the surrounding
heavenly rings. Anaximander also provides explanation of the
existence of the sea, and of meteorological phenomena
such as wind, storms, thunder, and lightning. He deals with
biology within the framework of cosmogony: life originated
in the sea, and some animals migrated to land, where they
emerged from protective shells. The first human beings must
have been nurtured inside fish, so that they could grow to
maturity before they emerged on land. There is no doubt that
Anaximander offered the first obvious example of theory in
which we are given a framework for thinking about nature
as a whole in a certain way.
C) Apeiron
Etymologically apeiron is the neuter form of an adjective
ultimately connected to the root *per- which shows up in the
verb peiraô, “cross through,” and in the noun peras, limit or
boundary. Early uses of this negative compound suggest that
“uncrossable” may be the original sense. But from there it

comes the mean “vast” and boundless”. Later the term will
come to mean “infinite” in a mathematical sense (Aristotle).
The apeiron is neither water not fire, neither hot nor cold,
neither heavy nor light, neither wet nor dry. As the ultimate
source of all things it can be none of those things and can
have none of their definite characteristics. Otherwise, it would
be subject to the same rule that is described in T9: “according
to necessity: for they pay penalty and retribution to each other
for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time.”
These appear to
be Anaximander’s actual words. Anaximander posited one thing
as the archê of everything, but this archê was not a thing
with definite characteristics (e.g. water). It is described as
“eternal” and “ageless”, “deathless” and “indestructible,” and
hence
“divine.” These too may have been his actual words.
D) Anaximander and his cosmogony
T12 is the key text for Anaximander’s cosmogony. Anaximander
seems to have argued that the apeiron is capable of
giving birth to the hot and the cold. More directly, the hot and
the cold are separated off from the apeiron. They are
described in concrete terms flame and dark mist. Since at this
state there are only two things, fire and mist, corresponding
to hot and cold, the mention of earth refers to a later stage of
differentiation which may occur at the same time as the
breakup of the sphere of flame into the circles to make the sun,
the moon, and the stars.
Anaximenes

A) Anaximenes and Anaximander
Diogenes Laertius Lives 2.3
Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, of Miletus. He was a student of
Anaximander, and some say he was a student of
Parmenides too. He said the source [archê] and the boundless
[apeiron] was air.
B) Anaximenes, his archê, and his cosmogony
A Presocratics Reader, pp. 19-22: T21 (Theophrastus, as quoted
by Simplicius, Commentary on
Aristotle’s Physics 24.26-25.1); T24 (Hyppolytus, Refutation of
all Heresies 1.7.1-3).
Anaximenes is often regarded as the founder of Material
Monism, the theory by which there is one on substance out of
which everything else is a mere modification. In T 21, we are
given a cosmogonic account in which the basis stages of
change are enumerated with determinate stuffs: (1) fire, (2) air,
(3) wind, (4) cloud, (5) water, (6) earth, and (7) stone.
Anaximenes links them in a series from the most rare to the
most dense, and he sees the degree of density as the cause
of the different stuffs. He identifies air as the archê of all the
others. He gives us a simple, clear, and elegant cosmogonic
account in terms of condensation and rarefaction. This account
replaces the inscrutable process outlined by
Anaximander.
T22 draws a close connection between air (aêr) and breath
(pneuma), and between soul (psychê), the provider of life, and
air (aêr). Aêtius, who quotes this passage, adds that aêr and
pneuma men the same thing. For more on the connection
between aêr and pneuma see the Hippocratic writing Breaths,
which is clearly influenced by Anaximenes (and Diogenes of

Apollonia).
GLOSSARY: apeiron, cosmology, cosmogony, material
monism, sage (sophos)
Phil 260/2 A
First Short-Paper
Teaching Assistants: Nicholas Kerklaan, Michael Giesbrecht,
and Madchen Specht
Choose one of the following passages and write a two
(maximum three) page exegetical account of that
passage. You should identify the main topic of the passage and
explain in your own words any claims,
distinctions, or arguments made with respect to this topic. You
should attempt to make the train of
thought expressed in the passage as clear as possible. Limit
your discussion to the passage you have
selected. Your paper should not contain lengthy quotations, an
introduction, a conclusion, footnotes or
other paraphernalia of the standard college paper. This is an
exercise in close textual reading. Due in
class on Wednesday, September 27, 2017. We will not accept
electronic submissions.

T1 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 1.6.1-2 (A
Presocratic Reader Chapter 2/The Milesians, T10, p. 17):
“(1) He [sc. Anaximander] says that the archê is neither water
nor any of the other things called
elements, but some nature which is apeiron, out of which comes
to be all the heavens and the worlds
in them. (2) This is eternal and ageless and surrounds all the
worlds. (3) In addition he said that
motion is eternal, in which it occurs that the heavens come to be
T2 Theophrastus, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on
Aristotle’s Physics 24.26-25.1 (A Presocratic Reader
Chapter 2/The Milesians, T21, p. 19): “(1) Anaximenes, like
Anaximander, declares that the
underlying nature is one and unlimited but not indeterminate
[apeiron], as Anaximander held, but
definite, saying that it is air. (2) It differs in rarity and density
according to the substances <it
becomes>. Becoming finer, it comes to be fire; being
condensed, it comes to be wind, then cloud;
and when still further condensed, it becomes water, then earth,
then stones, and the rest come to be
from these. (3) He too makes motion eternal and says that
change also come to be though it.”
T3 Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 152.21-
153.13 (A Presocratic Reader Chaper 13/Diogenes of
Apollonia, T5, p. 140) “(1) And my opinion, that which
possesses intelligence is what people call air,

and all humans are ruled by it and it rules all things. (2) For in
my opinion, this very thing is god, and
it reaches everything and arranges all things and is in
everything. (3) And there is no single thing that
does not share in this. But no single things shares in it in the
same way as anything else, but there are
any forms both of air itself and of intelligence.”
Phil 260/4A
W 1
“The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western
philosophy.”
(Bernard Williams, The Sense of the Past, p. 3)
PHILOSOPHY BEFORE SOCRATES: THE RATIONAL
INVESTIGATION OF NATURE
A) The goal and the scope of the investigation of nature before
Socrates The overriding goal of the investigation of
nature before Socrates was to provide explanations of natural
phenomena. In this tradition, the investigation of natural
phenomena was a search for their causes (aitia, aition), that is, a
search for an answer the question “why?”. The ambition was to
provide an explanation for all the natural phenomena. More
directly, and more boldly, the scope of the investigation of
nature

before Socrates was everything that there is.
EXAMPLE: From Plato’s Phaedo we learn that the investigation
of nature crucially consisted in an attempt to provide the
relevant explanations of a remarkable variety of natural
phenomena, on the crucial assumption that the natural world is,
at least
to some extent, intelligible to us.
<Socrates> (1) When I was a young man I was wonderfully
keen on that wisdom (sophia) which they call inquiry into
nature (historia tês physeôs), for I thought it splendid to know
the causes of everything, why it comes to be, why it
perishes, and why it exits. (2) I was often changing my mind in
the investigation, in the first instance, of questions such as
these: Are living creatures nurtured when heat and could
produce a kind of putrefaction, as some say? Do we think with
our
blood, or air, or fire, or none of these, and does the brain
provide our senses of hearing and sight and smell, from which
come memory and opinion and from memory and opinion which
has become stable, comes knowledge? […] (3) One day I
heard someone reading, as he said from a book of Anaxagoras,
and saying that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of
everything, I was delighted with this cause and its seemed to me
good, in a way that was best. If then one wished to know
the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or
exists, one had to first find what was the best way for it to be,
or
to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it befitted a
man to investigate only about this and other things, what is
best. The same man must inevitably also know what is worse,
for that is part of the same knowledge. (4) As I reflected on
this subject I was glad to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a
teacher about the cause of things after my own heart, and
that he would tell me, first, whether the earth is flat or round,

and then would explain why it is so of necessity, saying which
is better, and that it was better to be so. If he said it was in the
middle of the universe, he would go on to show that it was
better for it to be in the middle, and if he showed me those
things I should be prepared never to desire any other kind of
cause. I was ready to find out in the same way about the sun and
the moon and the other heavenly bodies, about their
relative speed, their turnings, and whatever else happened to
them, how it is best that each should actor be acted upon. I
never thought that Anaxagoras who said that those things were
directed b Mind, would bring in any other cause for them
that that it was best for them to be as they are. Once he had
given the best for each as the cause for each and the general
cause of all, I thought he would go on to explain the common
good for all, I would not have exchanged my hopes for a
fortune. (5) I eagerly acquired his books and red them as
quickly as I could in order to know the best and the worst as
soon
as possible (Plato, Phaedo 96 A-D).
B) The style of the investigation of nature before Socrates A r c
h a i (= beginnings, starting points, origins) are important
for the so-called Presocratics because of the narrative character
which their investigation of nature inherited from Homer and
Hesiod.1 The Presocratics (see below for more on the origin of
this term of art) usually gave an account of each natural thing,
as well as the natural world in its entirety, by explaining how
they arose, and their goal was to put all the individual
explanations
into the context of an overall narrative of the coming into
existence of the world order (the cosmos).
EXAMPLE: Hippocrates, Tradition of Medicine (you find this
text in your collection of Hippocratic Writings. This passage is
taken from p. 85)

(1) I think I have discussed this subject sufficiently, but there
are some doctors and sophists (sophistai) who maintain that no
one can understand the science of medicine unless he knows
what a man is; that anyone who proposes to treat men for their
illnesses must first learn of such things [sc. what man is]. But
their discourse/reasoning (logos) takes you into philosophy
(philosophia); as
may be seen in the writings of Empedocles and all the others
who have ever written about nature (peri physeôs); they discuss
the
origins of man/what man is from the beginning (ex archês) and
from what he was created (De Prisca medicina 20)
1 Incidentally, this helps us to see that their style of
investigation was firmly rooted in, and evolved out of, an
earlier and indeed older
mode of thinking
C) Aristotle’s account of the origins of the rational
investigation of nature: we derive a good deal of information
about
the early Greek philosophy directly or indirectly from Aristotle.
We need, however, to be on guard against his bias in much of
our evidence concerning early Greek philosophy. Today I would
like to focus on a crucial aspect of his account of the origins
of philosophy. According to Aristotle, the first philosophers
were materialists, that is to say, they thought that the principles
of
everything were material principles. These material principles
represent the ultimate level of reality. Put differently,
everything is

subject to generation and destruction and such does not
represent the ultimate level of reality. By contrast, the material
principles are that from which and that of which a particular
thing is made.
A Presocratics Reader, p. 15: T5 (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.3,
983b6-27)
We do not know whether Thales had left any writings.
Interestingly enough, Aristotle shows no traces of having read
anything
by Thales. It is also clear that Aristotle did not think much of
Thales and his identification of water as the first principle of all
things. Aristotle ventured two conjectures of a biological and
physiological kind. However, Aristotle could recognize in
Thales
the philosophical approach to the study of nature. By his lights,
Thales was interested in explanations, and he was interested not
just in the explanation of isolated natural phenomena but rather
in the explanation of everything that there is. However,
Aristotle did not approve of Thales’ materialist, i.e.,
reductionist, approach to explanation. But he could see in
Thales the first
thinker engaged in a distinctive style of philosophy. He refers
to Thales and the other early philosophers as physikoi, students
of nature. He decided that this was sufficient to draw a line
between Thales and Homer, Hesiod and the other poets, to
whom
he collectively refers as theologoi, theologians.
In our text (T5), Aristotle refers to these material principles
using the term e l e m e n t – in Greek stoicheion. In order to
understand what the term stoicheion is intended to evoke it is
necessary to go back to the use of this term in the Platonic
dialogues.
Plato was the first to introduce this term into the technical
vocabulary of Greek cosmology.2 Interestingly enough, in the

Platonic dialogues this term is normally used in reference to the
letters of the alphabet. Philebus 17 A-18 D is certainly among
the more significant passages regarding this subject. Here
Socrates attributes to the god – or demigod – Theut, first the
discovery of the vowels and then the discovery of the other
sounds that are not vowels but that can still be pronounced
(probably sounds such as /s/ and /m/). After the discovery of the
vowels and these other sounds, Theut would have
demarcated a third group of mute sounds different from both
(probably the consonants). Finally, Theut would have given a
name to each sound and would have called the sounds thus
distinguished letters – in Greek stoicheia. Evidence that the use
of
stoicheion in a cosmological context is derived from a reflection
on language is implicitly offered in a much celebrated passage
from the Timaeus. Here Plato exploits the letters of the alphabet
in order to illustrate one of the most characteristic theses of
the entire dialogue. According to Plato, the case of earth, water,
air, and fire is not analogous to that of the letters of the
alphabet. Some of the first philosophers were monists, that is to
say, they endorsed the view that there is one material principle
from which and of which everything is made.
D) Presocratics
The first known use of the term “Presocratic” is in a handbook
on the history of philosophy published toward the end of the
18th century. The term was not immediately adopted; rather, it
prompted a debate because of the difficulties encountered by
people who tried to use it in a rigorous, historical manner. It
was Eduard Zeller, the founder of modern historiography of
ancient philosophy, who established Socrates as the true
dividing line in his History of Greek Philosophy (first published
between 1844 and 1852). This periodization (before and after
Socrates) was accepted by Hermann Diels in his collection of
fragments and testimonies of early Greek philosophy: Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (first published in 1903). This

collection
is still the starting pont for any serious scholarly work in this
particular field of study.
GLOSSARY: Principle (archê), Element (stoicheion), physikoi
(students of nature), cause (aition, aitia), wisdom (sophia),
sophists
(sophistai), philosophy (philosophia), Presocratics.
2Empedocles called his four principles roots, rhizômata: (A
Presocratic Reader, Fr. 33, p. 64).

Phil 2602A Presocratics and Plato W 21 Instructor And.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Phil 2602A Presocratics and Plato W 21 Instructor And.docx

Similar to Phil 2602A Presocratics and Plato W 21 Instructor And.docx (20)

More from JUST36

More from JUST36 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Phil 2602A Presocratics and Plato W 21 Instructor And.docx