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Anaximandrovy nekonečné světy

100%

Kočandrle R.

Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Journal)

2017

vol. 65

issue 4

491-512

Some ancient authors attribute to Anaximander of Miletus the doctrine of infinite worlds. By this could be meant worlds which exist simultaneously, follow consecutively, or merely transformations in one world. Co-existing worlds, however, were attributed to Anaximander most probably as a result of his unique cosmology of circles of heavenly bodies proceeding under the Earth. Aristotle’s reference to the account of the alternating inception and demise of the world would then correspond to the remarks about the temporal cycles in Anaximander. In comparison with the continuous changes of the world, however, the emergence of a new world originally means the demise of the preceding one. On the basis of the incompatibility of the “unmoving” infinite and the biological background of cosmogony, it may be supposed that just as everything living emerges, so the emerged world is subject to demise. After its emergence, however, there comes the time for a further world, in a similar way to how everything living maintains a continuity in the succession of generations. Progressively, thus, the particular worlds follow on from one another.

Anaximander’s 'Boundless Nature'

63%

Couprie D. L., Kočandrle R.

Peitho. Examina Antiqua

2013

vol. 4

issue 1

63-92

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.

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1 Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Journal)

1 Peitho. Examina Antiqua

2 Kočandrle R.

1 Couprie D. L.

1 2017

1 2013

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Anaximandrovy nekonečné světy

Anaximander’s 'Boundless Nature'