{"_index":"sire","_id":"749","_score":null,"_source":{"id":749,"authors_free":[{"id":1114,"entry_id":749,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":113,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","free_first_name":"Aryeh","free_last_name":"Finkelberg","norm_person":{"id":113,"first_name":"Aryeh","last_name":"Finkelberg","full_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1124815007","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Anaximander's Conception of the \"Apeiron\"","main_title":{"title":"Anaximander's Conception of the \"Apeiron\""},"abstract":"Anaximander's Apeiron is perhaps the most obscure notion in Greek philosophy. Aristotle was puzzled by it, suggesting various and greatly differing interpretations of the concept. But while Aristotle's construals were, in a sense, predominantly ad hoc and exempli gratia, Theophrastus committed himself, at least in the expository sections of his Physical Opinions, to a concise presentation\u2014with attention to their authentic setting and idiom\u2014of the teachings of the earlier thinkers. Theophrastus' statement concerning the Apeiron has come down to us in the following three versions:\r\n\r\n Simpl. Phys. 24, 13 (DK 12 A 9): Anaximander... said that the arche and the element of existing things was the Apeiron... and he says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other infinite nature...\r\n Diog. ii 1 (DK 12 A 1): Anaximander... said that the arche and the element is the Apeiron, not determining whether it is air or water or something else.\r\n Aet. 1 3, 3 (DK 12 A 14): Anaximander... says that the arche of existing things is the Apeiron... but he errs in that he does not say what the Apeiron is, whether it is air, or water, or earth, or some other body.\r\n\r\nThe question of whether Simplicius or Diogenes and Aetius are true to Theophrastus' genuine wording is not of purely philological interest. As Barnes notes, \"the view that Anaximander's principle was qualitatively indeterminate loses in plausibility if he did not positively distinguish it from the elements.\" Kahn adds, \"here again the words of Simplicius must closely reflect the text of Theophrastus. The parallels [in Aetius and Diogenes] prove this, even if they are not precise enough to establish the original wording.\" However, Barnes also admits that \"we cannot tell whether Simplicius or Diogenes better represents Theophrastus' judgment.\"\r\n\r\nA decisive answer, however, has already been provided by H\u00f6lscher, who assessed Simplicius' words as \"clearly a distortion; the correct phrase is in Diogenes, ob \u1f40\u03c1\u03b8\u1ff6\u03c2,\" and this not merely because Simplicius is in a minority, but for the simple reason that \"otherwise there could have been no discussion about it [i.e., the Apeiron] at all.\" Thus, what Theophrastus actually said is that Anaximander did not determine his arche and element in respect of qualities.\r\n\r\nIt is one thing to say that Anaximander did not determine his arche qualitatively and quite another to say that he posited a qualitatively indeterminate body as the arche; concluding from the former to the latter is not an inference that logicians would approve.\r\n\r\nThat being said, it is not to imply that Anaximander provided his arche with no qualification at all\u2014he called it to Apeiron. The Greek word may mean \"boundless, infinite, countless\" or \"endless\" in the sense of \"circular\" (see LSJ, s.v.). However, the third meaning\u2014\"without outlet\"\u2014is surely irrelevant to Anaximander. Gottschalk correctly pointed out that the widely accepted idea that under to Apeiron Anaximander meant \"that which is without internal boundaries or distinctions,\" effectively \"qualitatively indeterminate,\" has no linguistic justification.\r\n\r\nIn calling his principle to Apeiron, Anaximander may have meant to specify it as spatially infinite (or, more plausibly historically, indefinitely large), temporally infinite (i.e., eternal), or most probably both; he may even have intended to denote it as spherical. However, qualitative indefiniteness was certainly not what he intended to express by this term.\r\n\r\nThe scholarly belief that Anaximander posited a qualitatively indefinite body as the principle is thus, at best, a speculative conjecture and, at worst, a confusion which has neither doxographical nor linguistic support and, moreover, strictly speaking, goes against our evidence. [introduction p. 229-231]","btype":3,"date":"1993","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/KFH07EnbKOSrtwC","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":113,"full_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":749,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Phronesis","volume":"38","issue":"3","pages":"229-256"}},"sort":["Anaximander's Conception of the \"Apeiron\""]}

{"_index":"sire","_id":"748","_score":null,"_source":{"id":748,"authors_free":[{"id":1113,"entry_id":748,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":113,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","free_first_name":"Aryeh","free_last_name":"Finkelberg","norm_person":{"id":113,"first_name":"Aryeh","last_name":"Finkelberg","full_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1124815007","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Studies in Xenophanes","main_title":{"title":"Studies in Xenophanes"},"abstract":"Here, our reconstruction of Theophrastus' account can be regarded as complete: we have determined his general approach to Xenophanes' twofold teaching and dwelt on the main points of his report on Xenophanes' monistic doctrine. The examination of Xenophanes' cosmological conception, however interesting and desirable, is a separate task which should be left for another opportunity. After such a lengthy discussion, one should perhaps briefly recapitulate the results arrived at, and the best way to do this seems to be to present the Theophrastean account in the form of the ordered series of statements reconstructed above. In this list, the sources from which a given statement is excerpted or on the basis of which it is formulated are referred to by the name of the author and the page and line(s) of the Diels-Kranz edition. Statements and parts of statements that are purely conjectural are italicized.\r\n\r\n [Ps.-Plut.; 122.15-18] Xenophanes of Colophon, who pursued a certain way of his own different from [that of] all those spoken of beforehand [i.e., the Milesians], allows neither coming-to-be nor destruction but says that the whole is eternally selfsame.\r\n [Simpl.; 121.28] He says that this One and Whole is God, saying thus (fr. 23).\r\n [Simpl.; 121.27-28] The mention of this Xenophanean opinion rather belongs to a study other than that concerned with natural philosophy [that is, in that concerned with first philosophy].\r\n He says that God is ungenerated and eternal, which he proves as follows: [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.18-20] had it [the Whole or God] come to be, it is necessary for it not to be before this; but not being, it can never come to be: neither nought can produce anything nor can anything come to be by the agency of nought.\r\n That God is one, he proves so: [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.23-24] among gods, there can be no supremacy, for it does not suit the divine holiness that God should be under lordship; but were there many gods, there would be lords and subjects among them (perhaps also: or all of them would be lords of each other).\r\n [on the basis of Simpl.; 121.24-25; 122.3-6] He does not say whether God is finite or infinite.\r\n Nor does he say [on the basis of Simpl.; 121.25; 122.3-6] whether he is moved or unmoved.\r\n But [on the basis of Simpl.; 122.6-9] actually, he conceives of God as unmoved, for he calls him eternally selfsame and says (fr. 26).\r\n He says that God is thoroughly seeing, hearing, and thinking (fr. 24). He demonstrates this in the following way: [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.25-26] God is altogether free from any want; but had he seen, heard, and thought only in one part of him, he would be in want of these in another part; hence he sees, hears, and thinks wholly and not in one or another part of himself.\r\n [on the basis of Simpl.; 122.13-14] And he says that God governs all things by his mind, saying (fr. 25).\r\n [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.20-21; Aristocles; 126.6-8] Thus he throws out sense-perceptions while trusting logos alone.\r\n [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.15-18; Theophr. ap. Alex.; 219.31-33] The other way, that of accounting for the coming-to-be of existing things, he dismisses, declaring such accounts to be no more than opinion deprived of any certainty, saying this in such words (fr. 34).\r\n Nevertheless, he proposes some such opinion which he himself seems to adjudge plausible, as his own words show (fr. 35).\r\n [Theophr. ap. Alex; 219.31-33] But Parmenides, who came after him, took both ways [i.e., that of Xenophanes and that of the Milesians, cf. (1)]. For indeed, he both says that the whole is eternal and tries to account for the coming-to-be of existing things, not however thinking about both [ways] alike, but according to truth assuming the whole to be one, ungenerated, and spherical, while according to the opinion of the many, accounting for the coming-to-be of perceptible things by positing two principles: fire and earth, etc.\r\n\r\nThis reconstructed account represents that of the first book of the Physical Opinions. Indeed, (1) is the counterpart of (14), which is explicitly related by Alexander to the first book. (2)\u2013(10) also belong there, for they either come from Simplicius' report or correct and complement it where it is wrong or incomplete, while this report itself comes from the first book of the Physical Opinions.\r\n\r\nIf Theophrastus' account was as I suggest, it seems to have been of great accuracy. True, it misrepresents Xenophanes' position in that his epistemic approach is interpreted in terms of the contrast logos:aistheseis, but this is the only major misinterpretation I can find in the account. On the whole, this is a precise report that moreover does not show any tendency to assimilate Xenophanes' teaching to that of Parmenides.\r\n\r\nYet it would be hard to point out even one important Parmenidean doctrine which is not, in one way or another, rooted in Xenophanes' teaching. Such is, first and foremost, the Parmenidean idea of the intelligible unity of the sensible manifold, which in Xenophanes himself was, as we have suggested, the development of one of the facets of Anaximander's Apeiron. This is the view of unity as one of two aspects\u2014true, the most essential, significant, and sublime\u2014but nevertheless one aspect only of reality, complementary to its other aspect, that of the manifold.\r\n[conclusion p. 163-167]","btype":3,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/H8YttvfJXlsVkrJ","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":113,"full_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":748,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Harvard Studies in Classical Philology","volume":"93","issue":"","pages":"103-167"}},"sort":["Studies in Xenophanes"]}