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ADDITIONAL STUDIES on ANAXIMANDER in These APPENDIX ADDITIONAL STUDIES ON ANAXIMANDER In these paragraphs we shall briefly discuss studies on Anaximander which became available after our book was completed. In "L'uno-molti naturalismo degli lonici. Prima puntata: Da Talete ad Anassimandro," Sophia, 36 (1968), 56-97, Mirella Carbonara Naddei investigates the texts of the Ionian philosophers in the light of recent interpretations (e.g., Gomperz, Jaeger, Robin, Franchini) on the occasion of the publication of A. Maddalena's Ionici. Testimonianze e frammenti (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1963). In place of Maddalena's dualistic inter­ pretation (see pp. 57, 70, 81, 88) and Aristotle's monistic interpretation (see p. 57), Carbonara Naddei opts for a dialectical understanding of the texts (see pp. 57,58,66,67 for mention of Hegel). With reference to Anax­ imander (pp. 75-97), this option allows to apeiron to entail opposing factors simultaneously. The apeiron is by nature indeterminate and yet it actually and organically contains hot and cold and other opposites (see pp. 80-81). It is the material cause of things, as well as their active principle through an internal dynamism (p. 79). It surrounds and governs them all, while simultaneously serving as their substrate. Thus it is at once container and contained (pp. 82-84). It is one and yet many: "L'infinito e uno ed e il principio come momento attivo e divino che circonda e govern a tutte Ie cose, e come cio che tutte Ie contiene, concretamente ed attualmente sede e vita della molteplicita. II problema di questo filosofo di Mileto non si puo risolvere ... [except] accettando la posizione di una unita dinamica che e unita, ma in quanto simultaneita del tutto, e quindi anche molte­ plicita" (p. 83). It dialectically joins simultaneity with succession, passivity with activity, actuality in eternity with potentiality in time (p. 88), im­ mutability with transformation, identity with otherness (p. 90). It harmon­ izes transcendence with immanence. In the guise of Time it serves both as judge and as the place where injustices occur and expiation takes place: one must "intendere il tempo come una realta trascendente e immanente ADDITIONAL STUDIES 181 insieme, trascendente, in quanto e giudice che ordina un'espazione; im­ manente, in quanto sede dell'espiazione stessa e, innanzi tutto, come principio della stessa colpevolezza. II tempo, potremmo dire con termino­ logia moderna, heideggeriana, e la struttura dell'esistenza: colpa, castigo, riscatto non al di sopra della vita, rna nell'ima profundita della vita stessa" (p. 96). All this contrasting alignment is possible because of Carbonara Naddei's dialectical conception of Anaximander. But how valid is it? It is, I would say, an anachronism. Anaximander is not Hegel or Heidegger or, even, Heraclitus. Even so, she could have made her point much more briefly and succinctly. Another study which we became acquainted with only after the manu­ script of our book was at the publisher is Rosario Conti's Cosmogonie orientali e filosofia presocratica (Roma: Editrice Ciranna, n. d.). This volume was triggered by Conti's distress at Western ignorance of the relationship between oriental culture and the occidental philosophical speculation initiated by the Presocratics (p. 4). Parting company with Roth and Gladisch, who exaggerated the debt of the Presocratics to their oriental predecessors, and also with Zeller, who saw no debt at all, Conti takes the middle road. He is convinced that a scientific or philosophic system is not created but develops from primitive sources, which it transcends however (pp. 4-5). Accordingly, the rational method of the Presocratics is a con­ tinuation of the thrust of mythical cosmogonies of the Orient, which nonetheless it enriches and organizes, thus giving the illusion of being an original creation (p. 5: "II me to do razionale dei Presocratici non fara che continuare 10 sforzo delle cosmogonie mitiche delI'Oriente, arricchendole di nuove ricerche e di nuove impostazioni, dando cosi l'illusione di una creazione completamente origin ale e quasi spontanea"). As one would expect his book consists of two parts, the first of which (pp. 9-164) recounts cosmogonical myths from India, Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel and Greece. The second (pp. 165-470) takes up the Pre­ socratic philosophers from Thales to the Atomists. The chapter on Anax­ imander is, of course, found there (pp. 193-206) and consists of four sections: "Vita e Opere:' "To Apeiron," "Pluralita di mondi," and "Af­ finita mitiche." Let us concentrate briefly upon some points in the last three. The principle from which all things have originated is the Infinite, a single reality which is not any particular element or any substance inter­ mediate between the elements. Rather, it is a primal, ungenerated, eternal principle which sustains and directs all things and which grounds an in­ exhaustible and perpetual process of generation (p. 196: "l'lnfinito (to 182 ADDITIONAL STUDIES apeiron) una realta che non PUQ essere un elemento particolare, ... ne una so stanza intermedia tra questo e quell'elemento, ma un principio originario, ingenerato, eterno, che sostiene e dirige tutte Ie case, la con­ dizione delle indifettibile perpetuita delle generazioni"). But in what sense is that principle infinite? In size, as qualitatively indeterminate (ibid.; "un infinito per grandezza, che e nello stesso tempo qualitativamente indeter­ minato"), in duration (p. 197: "I'infinita temporale") and as a bottomless resource of existents (ibid.: "la reserva inesauribile del divenire"). It is, then, "una sostanza unica, infinita per grandezza e priva di specificazione, dinamica per tendenza" (ibid.). Moreover, it is the origin of infinite worlds, which co-exist in it but separately and without knowledge of one another (pp. 200-201). As the primordial abyss and unformed matter from which all things come about, the Infinite is like Chaos in oriental and Grecian cosmogonies and, even, in the Orphic tradition, which pictures Chaos as "eternal, limitless, 'ageless and imperishable,' as neither darkness nor light nor wet nor dry nor hot nor cold but all those factors mingled to­ gether in a formless whole" (p. 203). In fact, we need not stop there: factors are also found in Sumerian, Egyptian and Brahmanic cosmogonies which are similar to the Infinite or Chaos (p. 204). Comments. Conti seems to have strayed from the middle of the exegeti­ cal road (see p. 4) by exaggerating the influence of the Orient upon Anax­ imander. Certainly, to apeiron does resemble Chaos and one can easily understand how Hesiod could have influenced the Greek philosopher. But to conclude that the counterparts of the Grecian Chaos in Sumerian, Egyptian and Hindu cosmogonies actually exerted influence on him one needs proof, which is absent because documentation is lacking. The In­ finite could be similar to factors in them without having historically origin­ ated from them. On most occasions Conti seems to have forgotten his own advice that since Anaximander's own treatise is not extant, one should realize that what subsequent writers credit to him is marked by uncertainty, lacunae, and doubts (p. 196). He might well have imitated D. R. Dicks' scepticism on the validity of the doxographicaI accounts (see D. R. Dicks, "Thales," CQ, 9 [1959], 294-309 and "Solstices, Equinoxes, and the Pre­ socratics," IRS, 86 n9661, 26-40), but unfortunately he seems unaware of Dicks' articles. (But see C. H. Kahn, IHS, 90 [1970], 99-116). A third study worthy of mention was actually published before either Naddei's or Conti's but it became available only subsequently: Osvaldo N. Guariglia, "Anaximandro de Mileto Fragmento B 1 (Diels-Kranz)," Anales de Filologia Cldsica. 9 0964-1965), 23-155. As Guariglia explains in the final section of his article (pp. lSI-52), one may attempt to reconstruct a ADDITIONAL STUDIES 183 position in early Greek thought exteriorly. Then one sees it as a historical development from myths and as affected by the cultural, social, economic and political circumstances in ancient Ionia. But reconstruction can also be internal, whereby one reflects upon the extant textual fragments them­ selves of the Greek authors. Then one studies the language and modes of expression which they. as well as their predecessors and contemporaries, used so that he can grasp "coherencia y comprension de la totalidad" (p. 152). This latter method Guariglia himself chose. In an introductory section (pp. 23-30) he discusses the main textual sources of information on Anaximander: Simplicius. Hippolytus. Pseudo-Plutarch, Aetius and Dioge­ nes, all of whom depend upon Theophrastus. In the first part (pp. 31-49) of the main body of the article he investigates all the relevant texts from Aristotle's Physics. Metaphysics and De Generatiane. In the second part (pp. 49-87) he turns to Theophrastus. seeking to distinguish passages in which Theophrastus merely repeats Aristotle from those in which he transmits original information (p. 52). The final part on Anaximander's Fragment (DK B I) is itself subdivided into considerations of the context of the Fragment (pp. 92-102), its extent (pp. 102-117) and its interpretation (pp. 118-52). Guariglia's informative study is valuable for many reasons, not the least of which are his careful analysis of the texts relating to Anaximander and other Greek authors and his thorough awareness of modern and contemporary interpretations from scholars on every continent. But he spends relatively little time on fa apeiran itself-a fact which is not surprising in view of his conviction that Anaximander's own treatise offered little information on the nature of the apeiran (p. 43: for a survey of that scanty data see pp. 43-44. 53-56) and even that information was gravely disfigured by Aristotle and Theophrastus (pp. 56, 85-87). He does give considerable attention to topics textually linked with ta apeiran, though: ta ganimon (pp.
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