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Anaximander and the Relation Between Myth and Philosophy In Anaximander and the Relation Between Myth and Philosophy in the Sixth Century B.C. A thesis submitted to the faculty of the Institute for Christian Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Philosophy by William V. Rowe Toronto, Ontario 1979 Table of Contents Page Preface......................................................... 1 Part One: Prolegomena.............. ..... ....................... 2 A. Current Status of the Anaximander Question............... 2 B. A Basic Polarity in Views Concerning the Genesis of Philosophy................................. 4 C. Four Basic Lines in Pre-Socratic Research................ 11 D. Summary Remarks......................................... 45 Footnotes........................................ ............... 47 Part Two: Four Interpretations of Anaximander.................... 59 (1) Olof Gigon.......................................... 60 (2) Uvo Holscher........................................ 76 (3) Charles H. Kahn..................................... 93 (4) Jean-Pierre Vernant................................. 114 Summary Comparisons and Transitional Remarks................. 132 Footnotes....................................................... 136 Part Three: Myth and Philosophy in Anaximander................... 146 A. Underlying Hermeneutical Assumptions..................... 146 (1) What is Philosophy?............... ................. 146 (2) What is Myth?...................................... 150 (3) What is Their Relation?............................. 156 B. Anaximander............................................. 169 (1) Exegesis of the Fragment............................ 169 (2) Anaximander's Relation to the Myth.................. 201 Conclusion.................................................. 213 Footnotes........................................................ 218 Bibliography..................................................... 230 Preface This paper is a study of the pre-Socratic, Milesian philosopher Anaximander, in light of the question concerning the rise of philosophy and its relation to myth in the sixth century B.C. We are restricting our inquiry to Anaximander to make our consideration of the myth/philosophy relation more manageable. Thus we will assume that Anaximander's thought is indicative of the general status of this relationship in his time and milieu. We chose Anaximander also because of the great diversity of interpretations of his thought in current pre-Socratic scholarship. Differences in approach to Anaximander reflect differences concerning the nature of pre-Socratic thought in general. Differences with regard to the pre-Socratics in turn reflect ultimate assumptions as to the nature of philosophy and the historical circumstances in which it arose. There­ fore, a considerable part of our study will concern itself with the major Anaximander-interpretations in the literature, their key assumptions and their relationships to existing traditions in pre-Socratic research. This part of the study will be carried out in preparation for our own inter­ pretation of Anaximander and the relation between myth and philosophy visible in his thought. The latter will be conducted in dialogue with the other interpretations and with a conscious awareness of its own hermeneutical assumptions. The project owes much to the supervision of Dr. Albert Wolters whose help in planning, translation and organization was greatly appreciated. 2 Part One: Prolegomena A. Current Status of the Anaximander Question A useful introduction into contemporary Anaximander scholarship is Cl. Ramnoux's 1954 article entitled "Sur quelques interpretations modernes ,This article summarizes, and to some extent ■*־". de la pensee d'Anaximandre interprets the history of modern views concerning this sixth century Milesian. Ramnoux examines the exegeses of such notables as Nietzsche, Burnet, Guthrie, Cornford, Jaeger and Heidegger. He demonstrates that each of these interpretations offers a picture of pre-Socratic thought and of Anaximander's place in its dim beginnings. But each interpreter views this chapter in the history of philosophy from a unique vantage point, giving his own judgement as to the significance of Anaximander's work. That being the case, these interpretations conflict at many points, as Ramnoux clearly shows. It is not surprising that an author whose world is nearly lost to us, and whose work survives in a two-sentence fragment and a handful of testimonia, should be the subject of so much scholarly debate. As Ramnoux points out concerning the paucity of evidence, "C'est peu, mais ce peu a dechaine !'imagination de nos contemporains." That is to say, it is precisely our lack of knowledge that has sparked the interest of philologists, and of historians of religion, science and philosophy. If we possessed an entire text of Anaximander there would be little to argue about. Debates in the historiography of philosophy are most lively when they concern the boundary between knowledge and conjecture. But what we know for sure about Anaximander is so little that debaters cannot agree as to the fundamental questions Anaximander entertained. And the amount of reconstruction necessary for any Anaximander interpretation is 3 so high that the interpreter must be prepared to exercise his or her philo­ sophical imagination. The combination of this skill with the required philological knowledge is not easy to come by. For that reason, out of the perhaps hundreds of treatments of Anaximander found in modern scholar­ ship in every field from aesthetics to political theory, there are only a handful of interpretations which are convincing. Furthermore, this hand­ ful consists of the leading representatives of certain traditions of interpretation, traditions that have had great influence in the development of pre-Socratic criticism. It is clear from Ramnoux's article that by 1954 it had become as interesting to study the developments of Anaximander interpretation as it was to study Anaximander himself. As he says, "tout * le travail fait pour cerner l'engime, ou pour 1'exploiter, constitute comme *s -s. >. ^ une seconde aventure ou se reflete un drame de la pensee contemporaine." In the twenty-seven years since the publication of Ramnoux's article, as one would expect from the enormous growth in literature concerning the pre-Socratics since the Second World War,** the picture drawn by Ramnoux has become considerably more complex. Seemingly»Anaximander has replaced Thales as the index for questions concerning the emergence of philosophy. If this is true, it is partly because we possess even less information about Thales than we do about Anaximander. But this shift is based as much on qualitative as upon quantitative judgements. G. B. Burch, in his article entitled "Anaximander, The First Metaphysician," calls Thales "one of the most over­ rated figures in the history of philosophy."^ In Seligman's opinion, Anaximander was the first Greek to posit a genuinely metaphysical conception · · of a transcendent reality. Holscher's article, "Anaximander und der Anfang der Philosophie," in which he treats both Hesiod and Thales summarily, 4 reflects the same tendency. He claims that Anaximander "ist der erste der den Namen eines Philosophen verdient, unabhangig and kuhn."^ Kahn, in his book, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, defends the thesis that Anaximander was largely responsible for the Milesian world-view and that this outlook, in turn, comprises the common background of every pre- Socratic philosopher. Says Kahn, "That the system of Anaximander"— who, he says, "is far more accessible to a modem historian than are such fabulous figures as Thales and Phythagoras"8--"represents for us is nothing less than the advent, in the West at any rate, of a rational outlook on the natural world. This new point of view asserted itself with the total force of a volcanic eruption, and the ensuing flood af speculation soon spread from Melitus across the length and breadth of the lands in which Greek was spoken."9 Thus we see the growing importance attached to Anaximander and his conception. In fact, he has become preeminent in a field of intellectual historiography that we may call the ”archeology of philosophy." B. A Basic Polarity in Views Concerning the Genesis of Philosophy The search for philosophical beginnings has received an impetus from the field of archeology proper. The discoveries earlier in this century of the pre-Hellenic Minoan civilization and the subsequent decipherment of the late Minoan script, has done much to raise our consciousness concerning the problems of the origins of ancient culture. These discoveries and the questions they raise find their analogies in the roughly contemporaneous discoveries at Ugarit. In this case, the decipherment of an ancient language cast a new light on our understanding of Biblical and Hebrew origins. But in both cases, philology, cultural anthropology, history, sociology, as well as theology and philosophy have greatly benefited from the discoveries of archeology. However, both fields of research--Hellenic and Hebraic--have also suffered from the exaggeration that accompanies sudden discovery. Another example is 5 provided by the phenomenon of Pan-Babylonism in ancient Near Eastern studies. When the importance of Mesopotamian civilization for the history of the ancient Middle East came to light, this philosophy of cultural diffusionism dominated the field. Its advocates saw behind every cultural phenomenon, from Asia Minor to
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